August 1, 1913.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



555 



inflation, and is likely to let his car stand on its tires all 

 winter long. 



So, everything considered, wliilc ;i tire ni;iy liave the 

 factory good for 5,000 miles of travel, it is humanly im- 

 possible to guarantee one-half or one-quarter of that 

 amount. So would it not be better if the manufacturer 

 would simply make the best tire within his ability and 

 say "This tire, properly treated, will do 5,000 miles, but I 

 have no idea how it is going to be treated ; so here it is and 

 I am through with it"? It would be a great relief, cer- 

 tainly, to the manufacturer, and he could afford to give 

 the consumer considerably lower prices. It would tend to 

 make the sensible consumer much more careful in his use 

 of the tire ; and it would make strongly for general 

 veracity, for since time began there has been no other such 

 tremendous temptation to prevarication as the tire guaran- 

 tee. 



THE DEBT TO THE CHEMIST. 



DEPENDING ON THE POINT OF VIEW. 



A D.AII.V paper, ruminating on ruliber matters, makes 

 * *■ tlie interesting statement that the yearly produc- 

 tiiin and consumption of automobile tires in this coimtry 

 has now reached 60,000,000. As there are about 1,000,000 

 motor cars in commission, it requires no very profound 

 process of maliieniatics to determine that each car would 

 be consuming, on an average, sixty tires a \ear. Making 

 a conservative allowance of $25 per tire, it becomes clear 

 that the average car owner must lay aside from his 

 annual income an item of $1,500 to meet the unescapable 

 lite cost. Possibly there are some timid souls that might 

 shrink from the ownership of an auto if compelled each 

 year to part with $1,500 siinply to keep it shod. 



I'.ut let them take heart, for there is another chapter to 

 this mathematical story. The same writer goes on to say 

 that this yearly output of tires is worth $120,000,000. 

 From which it will appear that the value of tires has 

 dropped to $2 each. Now many a careful car owner who 

 avoids driving over broken bottles and grazing the curb, 

 goes comfortably through the year on a single set of tires 

 — which, at $2 each, brings the auto-shoeing bill down 

 to $8 for the twelve months, or a trifle over two cents a 

 day. Looking at it from this angle, owning an auto is 

 cheaper than staying at home and reading the paper. It 

 all depends on the point of view. 



In the meantime, if the statistician of the daily referred 

 to were to revise his figures, placing the annual American 

 consumption of auto tires at six instead of at sixty million, 

 he probably would come appreciably nearer to the facts. 



I '111'- motorist, as he skims along the smooth road 

 at 25 miles an hour — or faster, if the fear of the 

 local constabular\ has been removed from bis heart — may 

 possibly give an occasional thought to the debt he owes 

 to the big factory, with its brawny men and clangorous 

 machinery, that has turned out the lire which enables him 

 to ride on air, while still sticking to the earth. He may 

 even, if he is a man of some imagination, think of the 

 lonely scrini;;uciro threading his way through the Uraz- 

 ilian jungle, extracting the latex from one Ilevea after 

 another. But, as a matter of fact, his real debt is to the 

 patient man who is silently working away in his labor- 

 atory surrounded by his tubes, bottles and retorts. The 

 most notable of all laboratories was Mrs. Goodyear's 

 kitchen stove, where, between bakings of the family bread, 

 licr indefatigable husband utilized the oven for his inter- 

 minalile batches of rubber, variously compounded. But as 

 he, liy the aid of this little kitchen oven, discovered the 

 secret that gave the whole rublier inthistry its start and 

 made any sort of a pneumatic tire possible, the chemist 

 of to-day in his perfectly appointed laboratory must dis- 

 cover the secrets that will enable the manufacturer to 

 make tires still better, tougher and cheaper. 



A Western paper has made the important dis- 

 covery that the rubber plant has been driven from the 

 home and that it no longer dignifies the six rooms 

 and bath that constitute the domicile of the city 

 dweller, nor decorously decorates the craftsman cot- 

 tage of the suliurl)anite. According to this authority, 

 it has ceased to be catalogued among the Lares and 

 Penates of American life. And the cause also for this 

 great change is assigned, viz. : that the ruliber plant 

 has been of late so extensively exploited in the show 

 windows of the automobile emporiums that it has be- 

 come thoroughly commercialized and therefore unfitted 

 for the quiet family fireside. Probably the disappear- 

 ance of the rubber plant from the home — if in reality 

 it has disappeared — is simply one of the whims of 

 fashion ; for fashions swing back and forth in matters 

 of household decoration just as they do in the vogue of 

 literature, the choice of dogs and the popularity of 

 dances. The Ficus elastica is a comely plant and will 

 undoubtedly be able to maintain its position as an 

 ornament in the home, .even tho it has not done very 

 much in the way of adding to the crude rubber supply 

 of the world. 



