ABSTRACT
Rubber is a cash crop. Apart from occasional trivial use as glue for envelopes, or repairing punctured bicycle tyres, there is no direct use to which rubber can be put in the village. A peasant would sell rubber land only if in great need. Most peasants do not have the cash reserves to buy such holdings as are sold, and rubber land sales tend to mean the concentration of holdings in the hands of those few individuals, peasants and officials, who have a surplus income. Village rubber is old and of poor quality. Much of it is diseased and has suffered from bad tapping. The usual lot for a tapper to work is about two acres, but this is not a precise measure because the trees are unevenly planted, some being densely packed while others stand alone in a mass of scrub.
