418 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[September i, 1909. 



by use," Such is the iinviilcanized scrap which accumulates in 

 every factory producing goods of rubber and fabrics combined. 

 Such scrap has been admitted at 10 per cent, under an omnibus 

 clause of the Tariff law relative to manufactured articles not 

 enumerated, and this condition is not changed by the new law. 



SULPHUR AND THE TARIFF. 



"TPHE rate of duty on sulphur, other than crude, in the new 

 ■*■ Tariff law enacted at Washington is reduced from $8 to $4 

 per ton. Crude sulphur is continued on the free list. The in- 

 terest to the india-rubber industry is not great, since the im- 

 portations of retined or "flowers of sulphur'' have been very 

 small of late, as compared with crude. The references to sulphur 

 in the new law follow : 



DUTIADI.E. 



Si. Sulphur, retined or sublimed, or flowers of, $4 per ton. 

 [Old law: S8 per ton.] 



OX THE FKEE LIST. 



686. Sulphur, lac or precipitated, and sulphur or brimstone, 

 crude in bulk, sulphur ore as pyrites, or sulphuret of iron in its 

 natural state, containing in excess of 25 per cent, of sulphur, and 

 sulphur not otherwise provided for in this section. 



[Old law (Paragraph 6-4): The same.] 



Importations of dutiable sulphur into the United States have 

 been as follows : 



1904-05. 1905-06. 1906-07. 1907-08. 



Refined $5,937 $23,722 $18,080 $15,805 



Flowers of 23,209 IS,493 41.501 40,346 



The importations for consumption of lac, or precipitated, and 

 crude sulphur, or brimstone (all free), have been: 



1904-05 1905-06. 1906-07. 1907-08. 



Precipitated $4,754 $2,997 $5464 $5,783 



Crude (or ore) 1,685,662 1,597,562 638,856 428,983 



From these figures it will he seen that the india-rubber trade, 

 though large users of sulphur, have little reason to be interested 

 in the new tarifif schedules so far as sulphur is concerned. It 

 might, however, have had reason to be concerned very much 

 more had certain suggestions made to the tariff revisers been 

 adopted. .\s 0)7, Paint and Drug Reporter (New York, April 

 19) pointed out, while the tariff act was pending, if what is now 

 Paragraph 81 had been enacted in the form at one time approved 

 by the Senate committee, no imports of sulphur, in whatever 

 form, would be allowed without being subject to a duty of $6 per 

 ton. This wonld have given an absolute monopoly to the 

 .American producers, who within a few years have increased their 

 operations to a very important extent. 



.\s is well known, the production of sulphur in Sicily, for- 

 merly the chief source of the world's supply, is protected by the 

 government of Italy. .As Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter says, the 

 government "has created and maintains a monopoly at the ex- 

 pense of heavy financial obligations, not for the sake of any 

 benefit accruing to the country or to conserve its natural re- 

 sourci-s. but to provide employment for a large army of men 

 whose families woidd be rendered destitute in event of the clos- 

 ing of the mines or of the adoption of a more economic mode 

 of minin.g. Under circumstances such as these the difficulties of 

 meeting cunipetition and of conducting an industrial enterprise 

 of great n-agnitude in a successful way must be well nigh un- 

 surmountalile." 



Meanwhile the production of sulphur elsewhere tliau in Sicily 

 has been greatly increased, notably in the United States. In the 

 Louisiana mines, which represent over 90 per cent, of the total 

 American output, the sulphur is melted in the ground by an in- 

 jection of superheated steam and is pumped to the surface in the 

 liquid, where it crystallizes as it cools. In this form it is 

 known as crude sulphur, though it has l>een purged of extraneous 

 matter and purified to a certain extent in the process of melt- 



ing. Sicily sulphur, on the other hand, is dug in a rough state 

 from the earth and is afterwards melted, so as to separate the 

 rock, dirt and other waste matter in which it is imbedded. This 

 process of cleansing, however, does not advance it in value over 

 the crude Louisiana sulphur. In fact, as to purity, there is no 

 choice between the two. 



Our New York contemporary says ; "The American [sulphur] 

 industry, which was ;ui infant five or six years ago, has within 

 that time grown to a manhood of lusty proportions, that fed 

 by new and vastly superior methods of mining and nourished 

 by able and energetic management, it has thrived without assist- 

 ance of government, and in spite of certain ill-judged efforts on 

 the part of State authorities to cripple it. It has even gone so 

 far as to carry the war into Africa and to invade the European 

 markets. The imports of brimstone have fallen from 181.130 

 tons in 1903 to 25,740 tons in 1908." 



The same writer asks, then, why the government should con- 

 sider it necessary to accord this industry a high measure of pro- 

 tection. But as will be seen from what precedes these para- 

 graphs, crude sulphur continues to be admitted free, while 

 flowers of sulphur are dutiable at only one-half the former rate. 



* * .* 



While the tarifif bill was pending a correspondent wrote : 



To THE Editor of the India Rubber World : As you prob- 

 ably know, the Union Sulphur Co. of Louisiana produces about 

 all the sulphur made in the United States, and they work under 

 the patents of Herman Frasch, who first invented the process 

 of removing sulphur from Western petroleum, which the Stand- 

 ard Oil Co. used with great success. [See The India Rubber 

 World, September i, 1906 — page 381.] He persuaded these same 

 friends to spend a large amount of money on his process, and 

 now it is possible to produce sulphur at about one-fourth its 

 selling price, so that any protection is unnecessary. H. o. c. 



RUBBER IN MILKING MACHINES. 



A N inquiry comes from Sweden in regard to obtaining rub- 

 *^ her of extra soft quality for use in milking machines. It 

 is stated : "The grade usually obtainable in Sweden is too hard, 

 and as used to embrace the cows' nipples it causes pain." This 

 correspondence was referred to a prominent firm manufactur- 

 ing "milkers," who write to The India Rubber World : 



"The rubber used in connection with these machines is made 

 of a special composition, so that it will impart no odor to the 

 milk, and at the same time be least affected by the fat in the 

 milk. As you can understand, we have spent a great deal of 

 lime and money in order to obtain the proper compound, and 

 we feel that this is a justifiable trade secret." 



There appears to be a constant increase in the use of milking 

 machines, on which The India Rubber World published an 

 article September I, 1907. A single firm states that their 

 machines are used for milking 35,000 cows in the United States 

 and Canada and about 25,000 in Australia and New Zealand. 

 .A considerable amount of rubber is required for these ma- 

 chines, both for the teat cups and tubing to connect the machines 

 with the receiving cans. The latter are provided also with rub- 

 ber gaskets to render the covers milktight. 



Many inventors have busied themselves in the development 

 of machines for milking cows, a single firm now controlling 25 

 patents in this field, with other patents pending. 



G. van den Kerckhove, of Brussels, who is the inventor of 

 several types of apparatus for rubber extraction and coagulation, 

 has designed a stump-pulling outfit for use in clearing lands 

 for rubber plantations. He constantly advises rubber planters 

 to carefully take up all the roots of trees cut down, as the old 

 roots rot underground, and he regards this one of the principal 

 causes of fungus being propagated. 



