December 1, 1910. 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



81 



The India-Rubber Trade in Great Britain. 



By Our Regular Correspondent. 



A NEW 

 COMPANY 



THERE has been issued recently the prospectus of the Re- 

 inforced Rubber Co., Limited, with the capital stated of 

 i"100,000 1= $486.6S0J. Of iho 6C',000 shares issued. 20,000 

 shares go to the vendors, the All Rubber Pneumatic Tyre Co., 

 Limited. The patents taken over arc Nos. 24.661 and 21,66,3 of 

 190S and No. 23,308 of 1909. The goods 

 It appears are to be made from (1) new 

 rubber, (2) rubber substitute. (3) old 

 and waste rubber. As their manufacture is stated to exhibit a de- 

 cided saving of cost compared with similar quality goods turned 

 out of the ordinary rubber works, profits sufficient to pay a divi- 

 dend of 20 per cent, are confidently anticipated. So far I am in 

 possession of no details except so far as they arc disclosed in 

 the prospectus. I can understand the reference to goods made 

 from new rubber and from waste rubber, but surel) it can- 

 not be proposed to manufacture from substitute alone. Probably 

 this is a defect in drawing up the prospectus. 1 do not recognize 

 the name of any rubber man on the board, and there is no re- 

 port from any rubber chemist or manufacturer as to the value 

 of the patents. It appears that difficulty has been found in get- 

 ting rubber firms to manufacture the goods to order, and Mr. 

 J. L. Major, the chairman, has offered to put up a factory at 

 his own expense and to make and supply the goods to the com- 

 pany. .Arrangements are now being made to carry this through, 

 the locality being Sculcoates, near Hull, Yorkshire. In addition 

 to general mechanical goods, special attention has been given to 

 the boot and shoe trade, where it is stated the re-inforced rubber 

 sole has proved its advantage over leather. Orders for motor 

 car tires are also in hand. 



Mr. H. A. Dawson, managing director of the vendor cmnpauy, 

 who lias been connected with the invention from the beginning, 

 will act as sales manager to the new company. He estimates 

 that the profits will be 4yi pence per pound on the lowest qual- 

 ity, and a shilling per pound on the higher qualities. I don't 

 know whether any one else is in the field with "re-inforced'' rub- 

 ber, but the possibilit}' does not seem remote that, if the business 

 looks promising, we may expect some such competition as has 

 arisen in the case of "re-formed" rubber. 



Thk editorial article under this heading in The Iniii.\ Rubber 

 \\'oRLi) for September 1 (page 410) invites a word or two of 

 THE CHEMIST comment. Reference is made to the day 



IN THE when crude rubber was purchased prin- 



hubber industry cipally on the strength of its general ap- 

 pearance, and a comparison is instituted with to-day, when the 

 chemist's analysis "to a large extent" form the basis of pur- 

 chases. I am unable to speak for .America, but as regards Great 

 Britain 1 may say that no change has taken place in the pro- 

 cedure of buying and selling. The great bulk of raw rubber 

 changes hands to-day without the chemist coming into the mat- 

 ter at all. In the case of a few purchases he may be consulted, 

 but there is nothing in England to warrant the statement that 

 purchases are t(j a large extent controlled by analysis. I am not 

 concerned, in these few lines, to argue tlie pros and cons of this 

 matter of analysis; 1 merely wish to state the facts. Of course 

 one sees a great many more analyses of crude rubber to-day than 

 was formerly the case. Analyses are continually being made at 

 the Imperial Institute and by chemists attached to various forest 

 and plantation companies, and no doubt these analyses in many 

 cases form a guide to the buyer of crude rubber. This, however, 

 does not bring the sale of raw rubber into line with that of the 

 various commercial commodities whose sale is always carried out 

 on analysis. 



I don't altogether approve of the description of an analyst 

 as "a mechanic who potters in chemicals." Analysts of course 

 may be competent or otherwise, but if they are of the competent 

 variety many more appropriate designations are available. In 

 the case, however, of commercial commodities in bulk, the work 

 of the analy.st sinks into insignificance compared with that of the 

 sampler, who is frequently though erroneously looked upon as a 

 person of little importance or responsibility. If the sample taken 

 from a consignment of so many tons of a commodity does not 

 truly represent the bulk, the time and expense of an analysis is 

 wasted, and more than this, an incorrect value of the consign- 

 ment is arrived at. Owing to its uniformity year after year, fine 

 Para rubber is bought almost without inspection, and if analysis 

 were introduced I should expect the usual differences and dis- 

 putes between buyer and seller on account of the analysts on 

 each side differing. 



With regard to low grade dirty rubbers, the taking of a sample 

 really representative of the bulk would be a matter of great diffi- 

 culty, and a good deal of expense would be involved if the opera- 

 tion were extended to all the various lots on sale. If this is 

 really done to any large extent in America it would be interest- 

 ing to hear more detail on the matter. I am not speaking with- 

 out some knowledge of sampling: in the case of one low grade 

 commodity in bulk I am accustomed to spend as many days over 

 taking my sample as the chemist takes hours for his part of the 

 job. In work of this sort the method of procedure followed 

 has been hallowed by long experience, and I foresee many diffi- 

 culties in the way of putting the sampling of low grade raw rubbers 

 on the scientific basis which alone will satisfy buyer and seller. 

 Of course in the sale of washed or partially washed rubbers, 

 which are comparatively uniform in composition, samjiling and 

 analysis can be carried out with very little difficulty, but 1 have 

 no information whether this has become a regular practice or net. 



With regard to other observations in the position of the chem- 

 ist in the rubber industry, I think rather too much importance is 

 attached to his utilities. A post graduate course colU-ge man 

 may be able to take "a long distance view" of the various proc- 

 esses, but unless his knowledge of "chemical principles" has 

 been supplemented by a somewhat lengthy practical course in 

 the factory, I doubt if his services will be of the high value the 

 writer of the article imagines. What the manufacturer wants in 

 a chemist is a man who knows rather than one who is pre- 

 pared to experiment from his knowledge of "chemical principles." 

 A case in point occurred recently when, despite the abundance 

 of college trained men at hand, a prominent American rubber 

 firm engaged the services of an Englishman with no college 

 education whatever to put tlnni riglit on a certain branch of 

 their manufacture. He will go entirely by rule of thumb, but 

 he will get there, and that is what the firm want. 



A coMMtiNic.\TioN on the "Use of Pyridine in Rubber Analysis," 

 by W. J. nritland and H. E. Potts, appeared in the Journal of 

 the Society of Chemical Industry for 

 October IS. The general rule is that 

 papers are read before one of the local 

 sections of the Society, where they can be discussed, and it is 

 not clear \vliy in this case the very unusual means of publication 

 was adopted by the council. Briefly summarized, the authors 

 by means of mixings specially made up find that the method 

 given in Weber's book for the estimation of pitch or asphalt by 

 extractitjn with hot pyridine is quite worthless. They found 

 that where 5 per cent, of asphalt was present the pyridine ex- 

 tract was even less than where no asphalt was present. The 



PYRIDINE IN 

 RUBBER ANALYSIS 



