Rebound

The U.S., whose stockpile of natural rubber is down to a scant 100,000 tons, got good news from Wallace Ellwood Cake, U.S. Rubber Co. official. He arrived in Manhattan from Sumatra, where he had been a Jap prisoner, with a first-hand report on Far Eastern rubber. Said Cake: 1) the Far East has 250,000 tons of rubber ready to ship; 2) production next year may reach 550,000 tons.

Damage to trees and plantations, in general, was small. In Malaya the British estimated that only 5% of the trees were destroyed. But on its $38-million plantation in Sumatra the U.S. Rubber Co....

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