We are so used to rubber in many forms, particularly the tires on automobiles, airplanes, bicycles, etc., that it’s hard to think of times - a hundred years or so ago - when there was not much of it around. But today it is a very important item throughout the world.
What is known as pure India rubber is sometimes called gum elastic, as well as a technical name pronounced “coochook.” Much of it comes from rubber vines in India and Africa, as well as from large rubber trees in South America, particularly in the forests of Brazil.
The method of getting rubber from the trees is interesting. In some ways it is quite similar to that used to draw sweet maple sap from trees in northeastern United States and Canada.
For many years great quantities of pure milk-white latex, which is made into rubber, has been coaxed from these trees by workers called “rubber tappers.” Without seriously harming the trees, workmen with sharp curved knives reach high up the bare part of the trunk and cut shallow circles into the thin bark, slanting them downward. At selected spots they attach buckets into which the latex drops after winding downward in the tapered grooves. These buckets are carefully watched to make sure they don’t overflow and waste any of the precious liquid.
The pails of latex are taken to a shed and dumped into a large vat for heat-treating and partial drying. Soon a workman brings a big roller with a bare wooden handle on which he carefully pours the treated latex. He slowly rotates this, and when it gets to a proper thickness, takes it to another area where it is fully dried and stripped from the roller. Then it is flattened into smooth sheets about two or three feet wide and five or six feet long. This, in turn, is packaged and shipped to rubber factories, some in South America but mostly to the United States and Europe.
Rubber trees continue producing latex for many years. People who own groves of rubber trees and properly work them have discovered that they make more money per acre producing rubber than by cutting down the trees and using the land for farming. That makes many people happy, because cutting down trees in Brazil over the years has meant destroying many forested areas and depriving some of the world’s most beautiful birds and animals of their homelands.
The above Bible verse reminds us that the world itself and all things in it or on it were created by God and that He well knew the benefits His creation would bring to people all over the world. There is another Bible verse that has an important message for children and young people about their Creator. Read it in Ecclesiastes 12:11Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; (Ecclesiastes 12:1).
ML-09/19/1993