376 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[September 1,1902. 



manufactured wares will be less than now. But the actual 

 wealth of the country will not be less because some years 

 the farms are less productive, or prices for products lower ; 

 or because the demand for labor is slacked. 



There are, of course, dark spots even on the sun. There 

 is a great strike in progress in one branch of the coal 

 industry, with injurious effects upon many not directly en- 

 gaged in this industry — a renewal of a fight that has often 

 been waged in the same region and which may not be set- 

 tled finally in our era. There are tinplate mills idle, be- 

 cause their combined capacity is too great for the demand. 

 And there are regions where the crops have failed, as hap- 

 pens everywhere sometimes. The indebtedness abroad of 

 this country is large, but with this difference from our for- 

 eign debts formerly : Then they represented the cost of 

 our great utilities, which were under mortgage to secure 

 the debts, whereas the borrowing done now is of money for 

 current use in business, such as every manufacturer does 

 from his local banker. 



It is hardly necessary to add that the condition of 

 the rubber industry is most satisfactory, since this is the 

 branch of trade which, in the past, generally has been the 

 last to feel the effect of general depression and the first to 

 recover from it. 



States alone annually recovers from 50,000,000 to 60,000,- 

 000 pounds of rubber from waste, should be so dealt with. 

 Particularly is this true when from a score of sources could 

 have been obtained facts and figures and an accurate de- 

 scription of the principles involved in reclaiming. Then 

 too, if the Census office has blundered so in this partic- 

 ular, how about its articles on other industries? Are the 

 rubber manufacturers likely to respect them? Of course 

 the harm is done — that is as far as the Census publication 

 is concerned — but lies travel far and fast, and publications 

 equally ignorant are copying verbatim the Kittredge 

 blunders and spreading them broadcast. 



THE PITY OF IT. 



IT is really too bad that Census Bulletin No. 190, on 

 " The Utilization of Wastes and By-Products," by 

 Henry G. Kittredge, should have attempted to deal with 

 waste rubber, for what is said on this subject not only is 

 wholly inadequate, but it is pitifully inaccurate. In the 

 first paragraph he says : " One thing that formerly ren- 

 dered rubber comparatively valueless was because of its 

 being vulcanized. - - -" This, of course, is carelessness 

 on the part of the writer. He means old rubber, or vul- 

 canized waste, and should have said so. Continuing, in 

 the same sentence, however, he sins grievously in saying 

 ". . . . which rendered it of little use for manufacture, 

 due to the fact that it could not be remelted for mixing 

 with new gum, because of the sulphuric treatment it had 

 received." 



Who in the whole rubber trade melts rubber, or who 

 wants to melt it? What would one have but a soft tar like 

 fluid if it was melted ? And as once melted it will stay in 

 that shape, sticky, fluid, black, intractable, unworkable, 

 offensive, how on earth can any one — even the experts of 

 the Census Bureau — r<fmelt it ? Further, the best part of 

 the "sulphuric treatment" in rubber reclaiming is that it 

 destroys cotton fiber and in no way affects the rubber. 

 Does Mr. Kittredge imply that no more acid reclaiming is 

 done ? He says " this difficulty is now overcome, and old 

 rubber is blended with new," etc. Which difficulty — vul- 

 canizing, remelting, or the sulphuric treatment ? 



Rubber manufacturers and chemists, the world over, will 

 of course laugh when they read the Kittredge essay on waste 

 rubber, yet it is a pity that an industry so well known and 

 so important as that of rubber reclaiming, that has millions 

 of dollars invested in great factories, that in the United 



RUBBER SHOES FOR THE INDIANS. 



' I 'HE annual award of contracts for supplying rubber 

 ' boots and shoes — and some other things — to the In- 

 dians yet dependent upon the United States government, 

 leads the New York Times, in an editorial on " The In- 

 dian in Gum Shoes," to reflect upon the degeneracy of 

 that " once proud and virile, if not altogether admirable, 

 race." With the donning of waterproof shoes by the suc- 

 cessors of Philip and Tecumseh, Minnehaha and Nokomis, 

 goes " the last remnant of respect which the average 

 American citizen can have for the North American In- 

 dian," and the end of any sentimental regard which may 

 have existed for the picturesque aborigine exiled from the 

 hunting grounds of his fathers 



The Red Man has, indeed, changed from his former 

 estate — whether for better or for worse, or who is to blame 

 for whatever of wrong may have been done, it is not 

 for us here to consider. But he is to be congratulated 

 upon his introduction to the rubber shoe. It betokens 

 civilization, and no higher sentiment animated "our wise 

 and pious ancestors " (to quote from the constitution of 

 Massachusetts) than their desire to lift the benighted na- 

 tives out of their savagery. It was duty in this respect 

 that led good men and true to desert their homes beyond 

 the seas and put themselves in exile in this land of hard- 

 ships. But because the objects of their labor of love re- 

 fused to see some things in the same light as the newcom- 

 ers, the work of civilizing them was given up as a bad job, 

 and the belief accepted that "the only good Indian is a 

 dead Indian." 



John Eliot's Indian Bible and catechism left small im- 

 press upon the lords of the forest and the chase. The 

 would-be civilizers — was it because of being incensed at 

 their failure ? — thereupon drove the unregenerate natives 

 beyond their sight and left them to go unrestrained to per- 

 dition. But that was before Goodyear and vulcanization 

 and rubber overshoes. To-day there are North American 

 Indians who till the soil and trade, and dress and eat and 

 educate their children, after the manner of white men, 

 having been helped to this stage of advancement by 

 a different policy than was adopted toward them by the 

 pioneer settlers, until they are beyond dependence upon 

 the government's bounty. Such Indians as yet have to be 

 treated as wards must be regarded as giving evidence of 

 improvement when they begin to call for rubber boots and 



