Word: rubber
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...home for liberated slaves. Liberia has become the scandal and pesthouse of West Africa. Slavery is rampant in the interior, so is malaria. Both have made inroads in neighboring British and French territory, but the only respectable firm that has ever made serious inroads in Liberia is Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. of Akron, Ohio. Many times in recent years there have been delicate hints that the League of Nations would be more than pleased if the U. S. would accept a mandate over Liberia. The U. S. has persistently dodged. Roaring defiance in Manhattan last week Liberia's dusky...
When he was a little boy, Grover Loening built model planes of bent wire and toilet paper, powered them with rubber bands, begged his mother to remove the chandeliers so they could fly better. One day in 1908 his mother took him to see a real airplane fly. The plane was wrecked because the propeller had been put on backward. Grover Loening (pron. Loaning) decided then & there to become an aviation engineer...
This story of a Dutch rubber planter during the pre-War boom and the post-War gloom will not seem to U. S. readers so colorful as Conrad's nor so mordant as Maugham's. But as a straight report of a planter's life from A to Z it is a first-rate job. As a novel it cannot be rated quite so high...
Pieter Vos was a sallow, bandy-legged little city boy, who hated his menial job and poor prospects, jumped at the chance to make a pile as a rubber planter. When the rubber company took him on and paid him a month's salary in advance Piet had big visions. They began to get knocked out of him on the boat. He was horribly seasick. The stewards bullied him. His cabinmate bullied him, made him sleep on deck while he entertained a girl below. The reality of the tropics was so much too much for him that he immediately...
Gradually, painfully, Piet began to find his niche. A friendly planter got him a native housekeeper; her respectful affection and competent managing gave him some degree of comfort. He worked hard, never took a holiday until the doctor made him, saved every guilder. About the time rubber prices began to boom Piet's antlike qualities landed him a really good job on an isolated island. Then his boss catspawed him into marrying a European mistress who was getting troublesome. Piet, who was innocent enough to think the girl was in love with him, was overjoyed, gave his faithful brown...