THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[October i, 1908. 



'Confined to a limited share of the population ; in times of 

 business depression the possibility exists that the demand 

 for them will decline ; and those persons who have taken 

 lip automobiling as a "fad" may lose interest in it in 

 time. It may be said, however, that during the first busi- 

 ness depression America has known within the history 

 •of automobiling, the makers of these machines appeared 

 to be less affected than any other class of manufacturers. 



The next important development in the field of self- 

 propelling vehicles requiring rubber tires evidently will 

 be in the widespread use of the small passenger cars intro- 

 duced for hire, which, as now appears, will become known 

 generally as "taxicabs." The failure of the "motor 

 'buses," hailed with so much enthusiasm in Europe two 

 or three years ago, to realize all the expectations enter- 

 tained regarding them need not be quoted to the preju- 

 dice of the smaller and more efficient taxicab. The motor 

 'bus was designed to follow fixed routes; it had to carry 

 a dozen or twenty passengers on every run in order to 

 earn dividends ; it was heavy and unwieldy, inconven- 

 ienced other forms of traffic and "ate up" tires at a costly 

 rate. The taxicab, on the contrary, can be utilized by a 

 single passenger, or a small party; it will go wherever 

 its fares wish, in or out of the city, without necessarily 

 making schedule time, and it has many other advantages, 

 not the least of which is the applicability to it of pneu- 

 matic tires. 



The taxicab has all the desirable features of the horse 

 drawn cab, with much greater speed ; its use encumbers 

 the streets less and renders the streets cleaner, and when 

 the new vehicles come into wider use they doubtless will 

 afford cheaper transportation than any one ever dreamed 

 of while horses were the sole dependence aside from tram 

 cars. Practically equal to the automobile for many pur- 

 poses, available, temporarily at least, for every man with 

 a shilling in his pocket, the taxicab promises to become 

 the most popular passenger vehicle ever yet produced, and 

 one that will give a new impetus to the rubber tire in- 

 dustry. 



TRYING TO DRIVE OUT AIR. 



THE impression evidently prevails in many quarters 

 that an exhaustion of the supply of atmospheric 

 air is imminent. We all remember the scare over the 

 threatened rubber famine. No sooner had the researches 

 of Goodyear and Hancock demonstrated the great num- 

 ber of uses to which the hitherto useless india-rubber 

 could be applied with success, than people began to fear 

 that there would not be enough of the elastic stuff to go 

 around. After a half century, however, and now that 

 planters are getting out rubber more cheaply than it can 

 be gathered in the forests, the old-time scare seems to 

 have dropped out of the stock list of topics in the news- 

 paper offices about which a column could always be writ- 

 ten when the presiding genius was in doubt about what 

 to use to fill his space. It is easier in these days for the 



hack writers to make their readers' flesh creep for fear 

 that rubber may become too plentiful for everybody now 

 producing it to find a market. 



After resilient tires came in vogue and rubber prices 

 for awhile soared to such an unprecedented height, in- 

 ventors busied themselves for awhile in trying to develop 

 tires which should require little or no rubber. That 

 seemed reasonable enough, but motorists still appear to 

 demand rubber of some sort for their tires — and rubber 

 doesn't cost quite so much as at one time. But the in- 

 ventors must be busy, and they are progressive, trying 

 always to keep ahead of the game, which is commendable 

 whether they succeed in setting the world on fire or not. 

 Automobilism having such a hold upon public interest to- 

 day, the old-time inventors of plows and churns and moth- 

 proof beehives have been supplanted by a class dealing 

 with automobiles and motor accessories, until the patent 

 offices are overflowing with surplus funds from fees. 

 And now the tire class is intent, not so much upon any- 

 thing relating to rubber as on rendering unnecessary the 

 use of air in "pneumatics!" 



The inventor does not always venture into deep water. 

 The type of tire which consists of an air tube with an 

 envelope having become standard, most of our friends 

 to-day who are trying to find substitutes for air stick to 

 this form, though it would seem that they would sim- 

 plify matters by filling "hose pipe" or cushion tires with 

 their compositions. We could present a list a mile long 

 of patents covering the use of innumerable materials 

 which have been suggested as substitutes for air, and 

 which at least are not so heavy as scrap iron, and not 

 much more expensive, though we doubt whether all of 

 them are more resilient. How to get the various tire 

 fillers in place is a problem with some of the inventors. 

 In one case, we notice, the patentee has been original 

 enough to discard the inner tube, and stuff his composi- 

 tion by hand into an ordinary envelope, after which it is 

 held in place by cementing a- strip of canvas over the 

 base of the envelope. 



Far be it from us busy journalists to invade the field of 

 invention, but when we read a patent specification like 

 this we are tempted to make remarks : "The composition 

 is introduced into the interior of the air tube, where it 

 forms a lining covering the inner surface." We at least 

 should have more respect for the originality of an in- 

 ventor who devised a lining for the outside surface of an 

 air tube, or any other manufactured product. And this 

 leads up to the thought that perhaps the whole school of 

 investigators we are corhsidering are on the wrong path. 

 Instead of getting their compositions inside a tube, why 

 not line the outside with layer upon layer, wrapping one 

 about the other, until the desired volume is attained, after 

 which they might put on an outer cover or an inner cover 

 or no cover at all. But most of all we should consider 

 the air tube superfluous, since the main object is to dis- 

 pense with the use of air. 



But why fear an air famine? Why not learn to use 



