Here Comes Synthetic

One of the great races in U.S. industrial history ended last week. Both Firestone Tire and U.S. Rubber began to turn out synthetic rubber--the first produced under the Government's original 1,000,000-ton program. Who won the race nobody knows. Firestone claimed that its Baton Rouge, La. plant (capacity, 30,000 tons using petroleum-butadiene) had produced the fat, brownish synthetic rubber "loaves" 24 hours before its rival. U.S. Rubber claimed the pennant for its plant at Institute, W. Va., largest single unit in the world (capacity, 90,000 tons using alcohol-butadiene). Experts hinted that the U.S. Rubber plant was more complete, had used no handwork or improvised machinery to inch over the finish line. In Washington, Rubber Deputy Bradley Dewey said both companies had done a "superb job," called the race a dead heat.

To the U.S. as a whole, the race was unimportant. Big point was that the long and bitter fight over synthetic seemed to be over--the U.S. was rolling on the highway that led to enough rubber. The two plants which opened last week will produce, by themselves, three times Brazil's natural rubber output. Other plants scheduled for 1943 opening will boost this year's total production to about 250,000 tons, within respectable distance of the

425,000-ton safety goal set up by the Baruch report.

Success Means the Ash Can. But that 175,000-ton gap might make the difference between success and defeat. Unless every U.S. citizen conserves his tires, unless the Army & Navy cut their needs to the rim, the nation's rubber reserves may be nonexistent by Christmas. Said Rubber Czar William Jeffers: "The country is not yet out of the critical stage." But Rubberman Jeffers, no crier of "Wolf! Wolf!," was optimistic, gaily predicted that U.S. factories would be producing 850,000 tons of synthetic a year within a twelvemonth--more than enough for all military needs.

Late last week ex-Brakeman Jeffers proudly bounced an all-synthetic military tire before the Senate Agriculture Committee, added that the synthetic program was going so well that many substitute plans had been ash-canned, and he himself hoped to go back to his railroad by summertime. The once-ballyhooed guayule plan has been slashed from 200,000 acres to a paltry 15,000; schemes like cryptostegia vines, home-grown rubber trees and dandelions are headed the same way (see p, 54). Then he sent the hopes of U.S. motorists up: "By April 1944 . . . civilians will begin to get a little synthetic rubber."

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