By a decree of 7 March 1917 The Swift Packing Company was authorized to carry on a packing business in Brazil under the name of the Companhia Swift do Brazil with a de clared capital of $500,000 United States cur rency.
A modern slaughter-house and cold storage plant was erected in Santos in 1917 under the name of the "Companhia Frigorifica do San tos,° with a capital of $250,000 United States currency and working under a charter author izing it to do business in cattle and meat and the products of its refrigerating machinery. It has a capacity of 500 head of cattle a day. Of late years there has been an appreciable diminution in the production of jerked beef in Brazil with the growth of wealth and the de sire for fresh meats. This has opened up a very wide field for the packing-house. The impetus given to the refrigerated beef busi ness in Brazil through conditions induced by the European War is shown in the exports of the month of January 1916 as compared with those of January 1917, the former being 2,593,180 pounds and the latter 15,142,322. All the exports of refrigerated beef in January 1916 were shipped through the port of Santos, while during the corresponding month of 1917 over 56 per cent of the exports were shipped through Rio de Janeiro.
Among forest-products, the first is rubber,— with respect to which a recent pub lication of the Pan American Union (see Bibliography, etc.) says °India rub ber, as it is generally called in textbooks and official reports, is a native of Brazil and grows wild there. Although efforts at cultivation have been successful with the seed in other countries, and even in Brazil, by far the greater part of the rubber exported from the republic is gathered from the forests of the northern interior of the country; no system atic preparation of the ground has ever been necessary and the entire care of the rubber gatherers has been given only to obtain the Juice from the rubber trees and getting it to market. This essential factor of modern in dustrial life was utilized first by the natives of America and they found some place for it in their domestic economy as a waterproof covering for clothing, boats and their kind of bottles. Cauchu, or, in the aboriginal, cahu chu, from which comes the corruption caoutchouc, is the earliest word applied to rubber. The Brazilian speaks of borracha
and this refers particularly to the product of the hevea, the rubber tree par excellence. It is indigenous to the region of the river Ama zon and in the tributary areas of Peru, Bo livia, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. Hevea is a large tree, of slow growth and long life. It has been found 12 feet in cir cumference. It requires low-lying, rich, deep soil and abundant moisture. It grows wild in Brazil, but not in clumps, being found rather scattered through the tropical forest, but it is well adapted to cultivation and has been planted in the East Indian Islands with suc cess. Manihot produces the Ceara rubber of commerce, but its habitat is a high, stony and arid country. This also is native to Brazil, but in the region south of the Amazon. [Cas tilloa, next to Hevea the best known rubber producer, has its principal range in Central America and southern Mexico]. Other trees, shrubs and vines (lianas) yield rubber. . . . Rubber is not the sap but the cream from the juice, the milk or latex of these trees, shrubs and vines' In 1915 the rubber crop was 36, 750 tons and about 37,000 tons in 1916. The total exports of crude rubber from Para, Manaos and Itacoatiara during 1916 amounted to 72,836,393 pounds. Shipments to the United States aggregated 48,874,578 pounds and to Europe 23,961,815 pounds.
After the opening of the European War the export of Brazilian rubber began to flow toward the United States in ever Increasing quantities until, during the first quarter of 1917, the American market received more than two-thirds of the Brazilian output. Dur ing the months of March and April 1917 the exports of Brazilian rubber from the ports of Para, Manaos and Itacoatiara to the United States was 9,918,412 pounds, while to all Old World ports it was only 4,633,774 pounds. In the following month 5,447,610 pounds reached the United States markets from Para alone and an additional 2,243,206 pounds from Manaos, making a total of 7,691,037 pounds from these two ports as against 1,528,789 shipped to all European ports.