March 1, 1913. 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



285 



country, they should go unheraldcfl and do their work 

 without the constant escort and assistance of the crim- 

 inals whose deeds are under inquiry. They should do 

 th(.'ir work unattended, unobserved and unhampered. 

 Then the true condition < will lu' disclosed. 



A MEMORIAL TO CHARLES GOODYEAR. 



TliUSE who were fortunate enough to be present at 

 the banquet given at the Plaza, New York, last 

 October, which concluded the International Ruijber Ex- 

 position, as well as the nienilicrs of the Rubber Club of 

 America who attended the annual dinner held in Janu- 

 ary, will recall the eloquent addresses made on both of 

 these occasions by Professor Franklin W. Hooper, of the 

 Brooklyn institute of Arts and Sciences, on the character 

 and achievements of Charles Goodyear. In both of these 

 admirable tributes the speaker urged the propriety of 

 some adeijuate and suitable memorial to the man, whose 

 life of heroic self-sacrifice had laid the foundations for 

 the great ruljlier industry of today. 



In his address before the Rubber Club, quoted in the 

 February number of The Ixih.\ Rup.hicr World, he- said: 

 "In the City of Washington, as one of the group of 

 buildings destined to become our great National Museum, 

 most comprehensive in scope, most useful in purpose, 

 most commanding in plan, will stand a nuiseum in 

 memory of Charles Goodyear ; a museum in which may 

 be placed, not only the history of the discoverv and of 

 the manifold inventions of Charles Goodyear, but in 

 which may be exhibited all of the inventions, examples of 

 manufactured products, illustrations of the many and 

 great uses to which vulcanite has been put in these latter 

 days. And in the grand vestibule of this Museum shall 

 stand a statue of Charles Goodyear, the greatest Ameri- 

 can discoverer and inventor." 



It is earnestly to be hoped that this vision may come 

 true. Undoubtedly it will — in time. It can hardly be 

 questioned that some day the Government will establish in 

 connection with the Smithsonian Institution or otherwise, 

 a great permanent national museum that shall adequately 

 represent our national development in all the mechanical 

 arts, and that the rubber industry will be allotted space 

 in that great exposition commensurate with its import- 

 ance. And such an exhibit of the rubber industry with- 

 out a proper memorial to Charles Goodyear would be 

 inconceivable. But in the meanwhile, and quite aside 

 from what the Government in its own time may under- 

 take, why should not the rubber men, through the club 

 to which so large and representative a number of them 



belong, or through some other suitable agency, inaugu- 

 rate a movement for some fitting and permanent memo- 

 rial to the illustrious founder of this great industry. 



The only public memorials to Goodyear in this country 

 are two life-size bronze busts — one in the railroad station 

 at Naugatuck, the scene of many of Goodyear's early 

 struggles and of his first triumphs, and the other in the 

 executive offices of the United States Rubber Co., the 

 president of that company, Colonel Samuel P. Colt, being 

 the donor of both of these memorials. 



THOSE EUROPEAN MUD-GUARDS. 



npHERE appeared in the November issue of The India 

 ••• RinnEK \\'oRLD an illustrated description of a mud- 

 guard — or splash-guard — in use on some of the heavy 

 automobile busses in the streets of Paris. In an account 

 of the automobile show recently held in that city, from our 

 special Paris correspondent, which appears on another 

 page in this issue, quite a good deal of space is devoted to 

 the rubber mud-guard. Our correspondent states that in 

 scmie of the side streets of Paris it is not an infrequent 

 occurrence for a pedestrian to be spattered with mud by 

 one of the heavy motor-vehicles passing through the 

 street, though he may be eighteen or twenty feet distant, 

 and that the stores along these streets are frequently dis- 

 figured by the splashing of the mud. He believes that the 

 mud-guard is so necessary that its use will soon be com- 

 pulsory, and he predicts that the development of this new 

 line of rubber manufacture will become quite important. 

 Accounts appear quite frequently in European journals of 

 competitive trials to test the merits of various mud- 

 guards ; the points chiefly taken into consideration being 

 their efficiency, economy of construction and maintenance, 

 and convenience in use and lightness. 



All this indicates a condition in European cities with 

 which we in this country, fortunately, are unfamiliar. 

 We have heard a good deal about the superior roads in 

 England and on the Continent, but the streets of their 

 cities evidently still leave much to be desired. A mud- 

 guard would be quite a curiosity to an American auto 

 owner, and if the streets in our cities were so deep in mud 

 that store-fronts and inoffensive pedestrians twenty feet 

 away were be-spattered by passing vehicles, it would 

 occur to us — not to put guards over the wheels — but to 

 practise the recall on the street commissioner and get a 

 new one. 



In most lines of rubber manufacture we believe that we 

 are fullv abreast — if not a little ahead — of our friends 



