More Rubber

Frank R. Henderson, president. New York Rubber Exchange, last week accepted as fact a report of vast latex* production from rubber trees cultured in the Dutch East Indies. Buds of exceptional rubber trees had been grafted into trees that normally yielded but three or four pounds of rubber a year. After bud grafting the trees, by report, began to yield enormously, in some cases 100 pounds a year. At such report Arthur A. Judd, writer for the Chicago Journal of Commerce, scoffed: "The exchange president's report on the outcome of the experiment smacks of the fairy tale. Trees from which only three or four pounds of latex trickled previously were made to produce pails of the valuable liquid, reaching, in some instances, a total of more than 100 pounds a year, so the story goes. No hitches were reported in the experiments, which, carried on in the interior of the islands, were not publicly discussed until those interested were thoroughly satisfied with results and all details of the operation economically worked out."

Harvey S. Firestone, Akron, Ohio, rubber fabricator and exploiter of rubber plantations in Liberia (TIME, Aug. 16, 1926), did not scoff. Said he: "It is no new discovery. It is going to help in increasing production, but not so much as is claimed for it."

Nor did Thomas Alva Edison scoff. He has been conducting an intricate and extensive series of experiments on some 200 trees, shrubs and other plants that produce a sap with the characteristics of rubber. Mr. Firestone said of him: "No one knows more about rubber than Edison." Said Mr. Edison of the Dutch East Indies report: "There is no doubt that the method will greatly increase output as well as cheapen it. ... I am not working to cheapen rubber. ... I believe enough rubber can be grown in the U. S. to. pull us through [in case of war]. The price is not serious in such a case."

*A secretion, different from sap, gathered in tiny sacs between the bark and wood, occasionally in the leaves, of certain trees.