Rubber

This is the current rubber situation as it affects this country.

The U. S. consumes 75% of all the latex (sap) milked from rubber trees throughout the world. Great Britain, with Dutch assistance, controls the world's rubber supplies and, through its (Sir James) Stevenson Restriction Plan, the prices of crude rubber.

The Stevenson Plan went into effect in Malay States, Straits Settlement and Ceylon on Nov. 1, 1919. Rubber had sold as low as 11 1/2c a pound in 1921, well below production costs. The Plan immediately restricted output to 60% of tree capacity. Every three months restrictions were to be tightened or relaxed according to prices at the London rubber market. Thus production went down to 50% Nov., 1924, through Jan., 1925. Last February all restrictions were lifted. Rubber prices were amply high.

At present the price gauge is 42c a pound. But rubber has been selling slightly below this. So restrictions of 20% were again enforced a fortnight ago (TIME, Nov. 1) to endure at least through January.

Immediately market prices rose. In Manhattan last week rubber brought 42.5c a pound, with higher prices indicated for subsequent months. (The average price of rubber from 1906 through 1925, including War years, was 44.2c a pound. On July 20, 1925 the price was $1.21 a pound.)

Practically no rubber is grown under U. S. suzerainty. The Philippines might be practical for rubber plantations, but politics now prevent it.

rubber Further, trees it takes (Hevea) to five yield years latex. for Some experiments with low-yield rubber shrubs in the Southwest and Mexico are in progress. U. S. Rubber Co. has its own plantations in Oceana. Firestone Rubber Co. is trying to develop Liberian jungles. It has made little progress there so far. In their predicament U. S. rub ber manufacturers have five measures towards gaining some relief: 1) reclaimed rubber, 2) synthetic rubber, 3) factice, 4) mineral rubber, and 5) more economical meth ods of manufacture. Improved Manufacture. Last week a company was formed, the American Anode Inc., to exploit a new process of manufacture, which may have momentous effects on the entire industry. This process is no less than the electrolitic deposition of rubber globules on molds, emersed in an emulsified rubber solution through which an electric current is passed. The Anode method was devised by and Dr. Drs. S. Paul E. Klein Shepherd of and L. Budapest W. Eberlin of the Eastman (kodaks) who did Laboratory at research work Rochester, along N. similar Y., lines. The Ungarische Gummi-waaren-fabrike Aktiengesselschaft (Hungarian Rubber Goods Manu process. facturing Co.) has been using the There is an Anode Rubber Com firm pany Ltd. joined of with Great the Britain. Eastman This Kodak Co. and the B. F. Goodrich Co. to form the American Anode Inc. Goodrich's President Bertam G. Work is chairman of the U. S. Company. The president is Julius Klein, vice chairman of the Hungarian General Credit Bank of Budapest (not Julius Klein, director of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce of the U. S. Department of Commerce).

The B. F. Goodrich Co. will manufacture according to this new method, which in all respects duplicates the electroplating of objects with metals. Only instead of a metallic salt solution (copper sulphate, for example), finely divided rubber is held, not in solution, but in emulsion. The negative wire of an electrical circuit is attached to any desired mold, which is placed in the emulsion. The positive wire is suitably attached to the container. Then the flowing current drives the particles of rubber on to the mold. There is absolute control of the process at all times.