G

BY EDWARD S. BABCOX

OLD and good resolutions are popularly supposed to pave, respectively, the streets of heaven and the road to hell. More ordinary pavements have ranged from cedar blocks to tarvia. And now comes Thomas A. Edison with the statement that it is commercially possible to cover streets with rubber as well as the tires of the vehicles which traverse them.

The future of rubber is full of interesting probabilities. Already we have rubber traveling bags, suit-cases, and portfolios; we may look for rubber to replace leather in many fields. Yet less than forty years ago a rubber pioneer Iwas jeered by the Fire Department of Cincinnati for suggesting rubber hose to replace the then universally used leather fire-hose!

One of these days you'll buy a hat with a rubber sweatband. It will be light, porous, "cushiony," and comfortable.

Thousands of trouser belts made of rubber compound are now sold daily. They are much cheaper than leather, last longer, do not wrinkle, crack, or become frazzle-edged. They have just enough stretch, and can be washed. Whoever thought of washing leather belts?

Last year America produced enough rubber heels to make a pile thirty-four miles high; seventy-five per cent of all shoes made in 1921 will have rubber

heels. Rubber soles will outwear leather and will be much more widely used after further improvements now under way are concluded.

The other day a rubber man showed me a piece of hard, solid rubber compound to be used as inside sheeting or wainscoting for rooms. Rubber gasoline tanks for airplanes, lately patented, though punctured fifty times by bullets, do not leak! All-rubber bathing suits are being worn. Innumerable new rubber toys are shown. Shaving-mugs, teapot spouts, umbrella covering, acid carboys, lathing, floor covering, and furniture made of rubber are being projected.

THE HOPES OF ENGLAND AND EDISON

Before me is the annual report of Rubber Roadways, Limited, an English corporation, organized to pave streets with rubber; for years a certain prominent London street has been rubberpaved. Think what that would mean on streets adjacent to hospitals and schools!

In opening the International Rubber Exhibition in London on June 3, Sir Ernest Birch reported that the Rubber Growers' Association had offered $25,000 in prizes for new uses for rubber. Over two thousand entries have been received. Sir Ernest emphasized the need of rubber as floor covering, and urged that English rail stations should reduce the noise by using rubber on pavements,

floors, and package trucks. In America we've done this already.

My friend Thomas A. Edison writes:

I have great faith in the future of that most wonderful of all colloids, india-rubber.

Since the great success of the rubber plantations in Asia, the cost of producing crude rubber has been so surprisingly reduced that it now opens a very extensive field of use.

The recent discovery of the English chemist Peachey of a method of vulcanizing rubber at ordinary temperatures with inexpensive steam heat permits its use in hundreds of directions which were not possible until this discovery was made.

With the Peachey process we can mix fibers and material of all kinds with the rubber without the fibers, etc., being attacked or changed in the slightest.

It is now commercially possible to cover streets with rubber as well as the tires on the vehicles which pass over the streets. The linoleum industry will be able greatly to increase the beauty and quality of their products. In fact, the rubber field is now immense by reason of the cheap production in rubber plantations and chemical discoveries.

Rubber has come into almost innumerable contacts with modern life. An official of one large rubber company declares that rubber is "with us from the cradle to the grave the nipple on the nursing bottle and the little bumpers on the lid of the casket." Speaking of rubber, he continues:

Whether it be found in the hose of the city fire department, an ice-bag to reduce a fever, a hot-water bottle to check a chill, or an automobile tire to reduce shock and jar, it is a singular fact that the fundamental purpose of rubber is to conserve human life and promote comfort. Wherever it is used it is always protecting something. It is the rubber receiver and transmitter that makes the telephone safe. It is the rubber raincoat that keeps you dry, and rubber insulation conserves electrical power. It prevents waste in a thousand different ways.

We are inclined to overlook the important function of tires in highway transportation. Over

one hundred years ago an ingenious Englishman invented a self-propelled vehicle for highway service, but, while feasible from every other point of view, it lacked speed. The horse and wagon traveled faster, and naturally this sounded the death knell of that early It was only when pneutype of car. matic tires were applied to the motor car that it achieved the necessary speed to make it commercially practicable. Hence it is not overdrawing the picture to say that the third largest industry in the country is dependent upon rubber for its being.

DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS

When Columbus discovered America in 1492, he found the natives playing

Number of establishments..

with balls that bounced. These curious balls were made from a milky substance exuded from certain trees; from it the Indians also made crude moccasins, shoes, and garments, vulcanizing them in a rough way over their wood fires. Samples of these articles were taken to Spain, and the story is told that to the King of Spain Columbus presented the first complete suit of rubber clothing— unique, waterproof, wonderful-but one day the King wore his suit too long in the blazing sun, with disastrous results, for the suit had not been vulcanized.

In 1770 an Englishman named Priestley discovered that rubber would erase pencil marks; and from this episode its name is derived. Soon afterwards McIntosh, another Englishman, discovered that rubber was waterproof for clothing; hence the raincoat long known as the Emackintosh.

The next important step in the commercial development of rubber occurred in 1831 when Charles Goodyear, an American, began extensive experiments to improve the quality of rubber goods. He was not a trained scientist, but was fascinated by the study of rubber. In his note-book was found this statement:

I was encouraged in my efforts to improve the quality of rubber goods by the reflection that that which is hidden and unknown and cannot be discovered by scientific research will most likely be discovered by accident if at all, and by the man who applies himself most persistently to the subject, and is most observing of everything relating thereto.

This being Goodyear's belief, he neglected the wants of his family and borrowed all the money he could from friends and persisted in experimenting with rubber for seven years before he discovered vulcanization.

In 1835 he manufactured shoes, but failed and became bankrupt. Still Goodyear persisted, willing to proceed with his experiments in face of the fact that he knew he was bringing great distress upon himself and family and knew that he would be debarred from the sympathy of other people.

From Nathaniel Haywood and his family, Goodyear learned to mix sulphur with rubber, but it never occurred to him to try the effect of heat until he accidentally dropped some of the compound on a hot stove.

That "accident" meant as much to

$1,138,216,000

civilization, some say, as Benjamin Franklin's experience 'with his famous kite in the lightning storm.

WHITE GOLD

Brazil, the upper Amazon region, was for years the rubber-producing center. Para was the shipping port. Hence Para (pronounced Pa-ráh) became the trade vernacular for fine rubber-"Fine Up-River Para," as we say.

Volumes have been written on the romance of the aborigines developing riches overnight with their "white gold." And with English and American inventive genius perfecting ways of utilizing the "latex" (a white, milky fluid exuded from the bark, not the sap) there came a great demand for the jungle product. The latex was gathered by natives by tapping the trees and placing cups under the taps. Over a wood fire was

"BRAZIL, THE UPPER AMAZON REGION,

WAS FOR YEARS THE RUBBER-PRODUCING CENTER"

turned a paddle (usually supported by crotches on either side of the fire) which was repeatedly dipped in the tub of latex. The smoke acted chemically and solidified or coagulated the liquid. When a ball or "ham" of forty to eighty pounds was on the stick, it was cut off and shipped, in the early days at a cost of two to three dollars a pound, to American manufacturers.

In the 1870's Selden began the work which resulted in the gas engine, and from that work was born the automobile industry of to-day.

About the same time, far off in Brazil, Henry A. Wickham, an Englishman, conceived the idea of transplanting rubber trees from the Far East and cultivating them in orderly plantation fashion. His idea was to organize rubber production -to get away from the tropical weather, jungle, and fevers. The little plants were set out at Kew Gardens, London, in June, 1876. In August thirty-eight cases were shipped to Ceylon. The first tree flowered at Heveratgoda in 1881, and tapping began. In 1884, after the thinning-out process, there were one thousand bearing trees. In 1893 seeds were distributed to Ceylon planters. Malaya, unlike Ceylon, fostered rubber, while Ceylon grew tea.

Cultivation and planting continued, and in 1900 four tons of plantation rubber was produced. In 1905 there were 116,500 acres of trees, in 1919 about 2,910,750 acres, and last year the output was 343,731 tons of rubber, of which seventy per cent was consumed in the United States.

England controls the rubber-plantation industry and claims investments aggregating $900,000,000. But there is a growing sentiment in America that we should control our sources of rubber supply, and efforts have been made to permit its greater cultivation in the Philippines, where now 2,500 acres are all one individual may own.

During the war, to prevent rubber reaching Germany, Americans were pledged to the British Government to ship no goods made of English rubber into the Central Empire. Before this, it will be recalled that the submarine freighter Deutschland, which visited our shores, took back a limited cargo of vital essentials, most of it being rubber. Even then Germany's motor cars ran on tires of rags, paper, and wood.

Up to early in 1920 the rubber plants of America had seldom, if ever, been able to keep up with their orders. Production had been the great problem. Buildings were added, new land secured, cotton plantations and rubber plantations bought to insure ample raw materials.

The war brought the climax, and twenty-four hours of work a day was the rule. It was then that Akron gained the reputation of "standing room only." They said that its pcople used their beds in eight-hour shifts, that they lived in tents. I never saw either of these, except perhaps in rare, isolated cases. Anyway, to a trained journalist and

observer who spent a few days in Akron, the people appeared in that guise.

I well remember the day in 1917 when Pershing's cable for gas masks reached Akron. This factory at once agreed to make this part, that factory another part. In record time the War Department got results from Akron on masks, artillery tires, balloons, airplane fabric, boots, hospital supplies, cable insulation.

The armistice found Akron at its peak. For two years and more it has been coming down that mountain. All business has. We entered the so-called buyers' strike, but it has been well for business to stop and take account of itself. Charles M. Schwab said at South

Bend in early June that he believed this present condition to be the best thing that ever happened to American business.

Rubber was among the first to feel the

"TO THE KING OF SPAIN COLUMBUS PRESENTED THE

FIRST COMPLETE SUIT OF RUBBER CLOTHING"

corrective influence of a readjustment. There have been a few receiverships and the plants sold, but the significant fea ture of this is that the plants have been in every case taken over by other rubber men, who will continue their operation as rubber factories.

Rubber has made its way, by its own well-earned right of way, into innumer. able services to human life. The rub ber manufacturers are not worried about the future. Their organizations, like their products, have on the whole had enough shock-absorbing quality to trav erse the recent rough going without undue disturbance, and enough resil iency to adapt themselves readily to changing requirements.

A

CLEVER essayist, writing on the subject of platitudes, comments on the fact that every fundamental truth which underlies a platitude has become so familiar that it is ignored. Constant dripping wears away a stone, and repetition is infinitely tedious. But the fact remains that water will still cause stone to disintegrate, and that two and two still totals four, no matter how many million times the formula is repeated.

So in any discussion that supports a practical application of the Golden Rule there is certain to be a superior chorus of disdain to the tune that: "We all know that!" Certainly, "We all know that." But do we follow it?

During the past year the writer has had occasion to interview the leading executives of several hundred of the largest manufacturing plants in the East and Middle West, and in the course of these interviews the question, "What is the matter with industry?" has generally arisen. Even to tabulate the answers would fill several columns of a magazine, while to give space to the remedies suggested would crowd out all the material of one issue of any periodical.

Yet, oddly enough, the question of personal relationship between employer and employed is very rarely considered. "Is it my fault, or is it his fault?" is a question scarcely ever voiced, practically never answered. Yet, as surely as agitation prospers and radicalism finds root, the real difficulty may be solved only by an honest answer to this question.

And of course to answer this question it is necessary to go back directly to the Golden Rule.

Only fifty years ago, when the bloody hostilities between the miners and coal operators in eastern Pennsylvania first marked the awakening of organized labor, the movement was looked upon by solid and substantial citizens as a most heinous infraction of the law; as shameful and intolerable as a race riot, a

BY KINGSLEY MOSES

gigantic bank burglary, or an armed mutiny upon the high seas. Wholesale hangings marked the swift vengeance that followed the crimes of the "Molly McGuires," as the famous gang of labor agitators about Pottsville, Pennsylvania, was called. And, summary and severe as was the penalty, there was hardly a single protest audible. The serene sovereignty of the employer was undisturbed and unquestioned. Who then would have dared to dream that one of those miners would eventually sit for eight years in the Cabinet of the President of the United States?

But as time passed, and with education and study the intelligence of the average workingman increased, there followed a succession of labor disorders which familiarized the public with the workingman's point of view. In the universities especially were those who dared query, "Well, is labor being fairly treated?"

IS LABOR FAIRLY TREATED?

This liberal attitude of mind rapidly spread. And with the general establishment of local unions and their gradual consolidation into larger National bodies the question was kept constantly before the public, until a very large percentage of the people became convinced that the workingman was not receiving his just due. As always, a liberal movement attracted many of the best intellects of the country, and the side of labor was championed by many fevered protagonists: politicians, orators, and editors, who made up in eloquence for whatever they lacked in wisdom. Finally, only some ten years ago there arrived a period when it was rather fashionable to consider the labor side of the controversy all right and the tenets of capitalism all wrong. It was the Golden Age of the man with the muck-rake.

The majority of sane souls with which America is blessed, who knew perfectly well that in no controversy is the right wholly and absolutely on one side, were, for the time at least, inarticulate.

During the late war conditions put labor into a position of imposing com mand. The success of the war was de pendent upon the products of labor. And labor was not slow to realize its power. To mulct the employer was, in many instances, a pleasant and profitable sort of game. So when as a result of overstocked markets and inflated prices the industrial crash arrived last fall, the employer sat back not wholly heartbroken.

"They've had me by the throat for a long four years; now I've got them. I can afford to wait. They can't." That is the sort of thing one hears very fre quently to-day.

Suggest the Golden Rule? Yes, and receive the beautifully garbled version: "I do unto others as others have done unto me."

UNEMPLOYMENT

There are those, however, more thoughtful, more far-sighted, who refuse to take this spiteful attitude. And with the very evident increase in unemploy ment, with all the accompanying evils and ills of such an unhealthy state, even the more complacent of the ultraconservatives are beginning to evince uneasiness.

This summer the number of people out of work was estimated variously from three millions to five millions. That means, on the basis of four to a family, that from twelve to twenty million people in this country are without a regu lar source of income. The figure is in deed appalling.

Chaos in Europe is quite comprehen sible. But in the United States, rich, fundamentally sound, normally prosper ous, what can be the cause for such a sad and unusual state of affairs?

There is but one answer, even when the explanations of that answer were as diverse as: "There is no present market for our goods;" "We are overstocked:" "We cannot get competent workmen:" "We have decided to hold out for an open shop;" "We must cut our wage

BEDEVILING THE EMPLOYER

The weak spot in this attitude of certain employers is discerned in the realization that labor also has some highly intelligent captains. There is much significance in the declaration of Mr. Gompers that

Whether we are to have a stabilization of industrial conditions, or whether we are to have a state of turmoil, depends to a large degree upon the policies to be adopted by large employers in this country. Developments from day to day make it clear that we have arrived at a time when deflation cannot longer be postponed. If large employers are to make the effort to pass the burden of deflation along to the working people, a great protest on their part will be inevitable.

On the employers' side, on the other hand, is a long record of grievances. One of the great shoe manufacturers says, for instance: "I increased the wage scale in our plant fifty per cent for a certain type of work on boot soles, twenty-five per cent for another type of work. Whenever it was possible, many men entitled only to the twenty-five

THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK

enough, after a full explanation the local decided officially that the strike was unjustified."

"Then the matter was settled satisfactorily?"

The employer grinned; a rather wry sort of a grin it was.

"No; the matter was not settled satisfactorily. For some reason, still unknown, the authorities of the local changed their minds the next day, and called my men out again."

"Any other instance of such unfairness?"

"Just one; to illustrate the point of view of the men. Last summer we painted the plant. It needed it. But one of the foremen said to me: 'I don't see why you don't give us all the money you're wasting on the outside of the factory.' Well, when I told him that the job cost three thousand dollars, and asked him how far such a sum would

MARCH APRIL

WAW

AW Employees

Booster

August 1921

COLGATE & COMPANY

THE PACKARD MOTOR CAR COMPANY

THE AMERICAN WOOLEN COMPANY