12 



THE INDIA RUBBER W^ORLD 



[October i, 1905. 



means on lines well known to those who manufacture coal tar 



products. 



For many years as will be remembered the bulk of the retail 



business was done by Messrs. Ayres. Then three years ago 



Messrs. Slazenger, their most formidable oppo- 



LAWN rients. got the bulk of the tournament and club 



TENNIS _, "^ . J u. . .u 



BALLS orders owing to some extent no doubt to the 



fact of their having a very prominent British 

 player on their board. I understand that neither of these firms 

 make the ball ; they buy the balls from the rubber manufact- 

 urer and put the felt covering on. What difference there is 

 between them seems to be largely a matter of the quality of the 

 felt and of uniformity in size and weight. The ordinary player 

 no doubt would not see any difference between one make and 

 another, but the leading players are very discriminating and a 

 good deal of discussion has been going on lately with regard to 

 the relative merits of the balls supplied by the two firms. Of 

 course I am referring only to the championship balls, sold at a 

 shilling each ; the cheaper halls have not a very large sale and 

 when bought they are often made to do duty for a long time. 

 In the principal tournaments large numbers of balls are used ; 

 for instance in the final at Wimbledon between the American 

 and British pairs for the Davis challenge cup six new balls were 

 used in eachof the five sets played and no doubt a corresponding- 

 ly large number were used in the previous international contests 

 which did not come under my personal observation. The prin- 

 cipal makers of lawn tennis balls are Messrs. Charles Macin- 

 tosh & Co., The Irwell and Eastern Rubber Co., and the New 

 Eccles Rubber Works — the last firm, as will be remembered, 

 using the Cox patent machine. Owing to the fact of the quality 

 remaining the same while the price of rubber has advanced the 

 manufacturers have naturally had to advance their prices to the 

 middlemen ; as, however, the retail prices have not been raised 

 it is a fair supposition that the profits of the latter have suffered 

 a serious diminution. It may be therefore, though I speak with- 

 out any actual knowledge, that a lower quality of felt covering 

 has been used in order that the business may be maintained 

 without loss. A difference between Ayres's and Slazenger's 

 balls which I have not mentioned is the degree to which they are 

 blown up ; this difference is quite perceptib'e in some seasons 

 and players who have accustomed themselves to one make find 

 a difficulty in showing to advantage with the other. Of course 

 the middlemen are not limited to British balls; the Germans 

 have long had a cut in though what the present position is 

 with regard to their competition 1 am unable to say. 



A RECENT financial supplement of The 7VV«« contained a 

 special article on Ceylon rubber, attention being drawn partic- 

 ularly to the expected labor difficulty, and the 

 CEYLON need of more railway communication to deal 



RUBBER . 



PLANTING. With It. No doubt this matter will become of in- 

 creasing importance; it has already become 

 acute in the Straits Settlements where a partial solution has been 

 obtained by the importation of Javanese. At present most of 

 the Ceylon labor is obtained from India, the Cingalese not hav- 

 ing much reputation as workmen. In contradistinction to what 

 obtains in Brazil, however, there is no climatic reason against 

 the employment of Euiopean labor in Ceylon, and we may see 

 labor largely augmented from this source in the future. Of 

 course the labor question can never become of the same impor- 

 tance with rubber as with tea and coffee, fn the latter cases 

 the produce is spoilt unless gathered at the right time, while 

 with rubber the matter resolves itself merely into delay, the 

 product improving rather than deteriorating by remaining in 

 the tree. So far the canker pest seems the worst enemy the 

 Ceylon planters apprehend, though I understand that loss from 



this source can be largely minimized by energetic and prompt 

 measures at its first appearance. 



A LAW will shortly come into operation in France forbidding 



the use of white lead as a paint on account of its poisonous 



properties, a piece of legislation much on a par 



WHITE LEAD ^j^j^ ^jjg prohibition of phosphorus matches in 



LEGISLATION. *^ K I 



Holland and Scandinavia. With regard to the 

 white lead in France, this may have the result of raising the 

 price of zinc oxide, which must now be more generally used. I 

 only suggest this as a possible contingency which the French 

 rubber manufacturers may have to face. Against this, however, 

 there is the recent increased production of zinc in many coun- 

 tries of the world, notably in Australia, where the old problem 

 of treating complex zinc ores seems at last to have been satisfac- 

 torily solved. If one can gage the future at all, the outlook is 

 all in favor of cheaper zinc and consequently of cheaper oxide. 

 Despite the numerous attempts which have been made to pro- 

 duce the oxide direct from the ore, practically no success has 

 been attained in Europe, the Vieille Montaigne product made 

 by burning the metal still holding the field. In America, how- 

 ever, the oxide is prepared direct from the refractory zinc ores 

 of New Jersey, though this product hardly comes at all into 

 competition in Europe with the Belgian oxide. 



In my August notes (page 373) I made a short reference to a 



new process for recovering rubber from insertion by mechanical 



means alone. Having had some enquiries on 



^^'^ the matter, I will endeavor to explain the 



RUBBER SCRAP , . _, ., ^J 



MACHINE. process somewhat in detail. The rubber 



containing fiber and metal is first ground up 

 to powder by rolls in the ordinary way. The powder is then 

 allowed to fall on a grating through which a current of air is 

 blown. The grating has a jolting action, the result being that 

 the fiber is blown away while the rubber and metal fall through 

 the grating into a centrifugal fan. The action of this is to force 

 the material against a screen, but in its fall it meets with a cross 

 blast from another fan so regulated that it blows the compara- 

 tively light rubber down into a bag while the metal continues 

 its course into a receptacle farther on. This description may 

 not be very easy to follow, but at any rate it will give a general 

 idea of the process. 1 can't say that I am much enamored of it, 

 though I speak without any practical experience of it. It seems 

 to me that existing methods are simpler and likely to prove less 

 costly. Of course there may be special cases where its utility 

 could not be called into question, and I may take an opportu- 

 nity of again referring to the matter, should further details 

 come to hand. 



The fact that the monopoly of the world's sulphur supply so 

 long held by Sicily is now a thing of the past, owing to the suc- 

 cessful exploitation of the Louisiana deposits, 



FUTURE PRICE "^ , , . . , 



OF SULPHUR IS a matter of general interest. Among those 

 who have a special interest in forthcoming 

 events are the rubber manufacturers, for it is evident that a war 

 of prices must ensue between the Union Sulphur Co. — the new 

 American concern — and the Anglo-Sicilian Sulphur Co., which 

 rules the destinies of Sicily. The latter has not yet decided 

 whether to enter on a new arrangement lor a term of years. 

 Certainly in the past few years it has been a decided benefit to 

 the volcanic island in regulating output and prices, and at the 

 same time it has paid its shareholders substantial dividends. 

 From a circular sent out from Stuttgart, where the European 

 agency of the American Co. is located, it seems that a strong 

 bid will be made for European business, and the outlook for the 

 Sicilian miners is anything but promising, all the more if the 

 American claim of higher purity for their product is found to 

 be strictly the fact. 



