The short session of Congress is unfavorable to private bills,
even when they are unopposed. These arts sufficed to prevent the
introduction of the bill desired, and the patent has since expired.
The immense increase in the demand for the gum has frequently
suggested the inquiry whether there is any danger of the supply
becoming unequal to it. There are now in Europe and America more than
a hundred and fifty manufactories of India-rubber articles, employing
from five to five hundred operatives each, and consuming more than ten
millions of pounds of gum per annum. The business, too, is considered
to be still in its infancy. Certainly, it is increasing. Nevertheless,
there is no possibility of the demand exceeding the supply. The belt
of land round the globe, five hundred miles north and five hundred
miles south of the equator, abounds in the trees producing the gum,
and they can be tapped, it is said, for twenty successive seasons.
Forty-three thousand of these trees were counted in a tract of country
thirty miles long and eight wide. Each tree yields an average of three
table-spoonfuls of sap daily, but the trees are so close together that
one man can gather the sap of eighty in a day.
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