218 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



1 April 1, 1911. 



time, the rubber as rotten as blottingf paper and pos- 

 sessed of a singularly offensive smell. A searching 

 investigation finally located the trouble. A keg of 

 gear grease had been shipped to the manufacturer in place 

 of palm oil, and his compounder did not know the differ- 

 ence. Of course, this is an argument in favor of the 

 necessity for a chemist ; but that is another story. 



Get any one of the old superintendents gossiping and 

 his tales will be of hundreds of thousands of dollars' 

 worth of goods scrapped, or perhaps burned up. And 

 this is why in part, only in part, that rubber goods cost 

 more than the outsider believes to be just or right. 



THE ASKING OF QUESTIONS. 



THE broad acceptance of the dogma that "Any fool 

 can ask questions" is open to severe criticism, when 

 it is remembered that investigation itself is only a quest. 

 Certainly, any fool can ask and any other fool can answer 

 foolish questions. Questions and answers follow par- 

 allels of comparative intelligence. The desire to pene- 

 trate the why of anything is the beginning of wisdom. 

 Its presence in wise man or fool is to be commended, 

 for it is education's most prolific germ. The whole de- 

 velopment of the rubber industry, from the time of Good- 

 year to the present, rests upon ceaseless questioning. 

 The long mooted plan for an international school to in- 

 culcate the knowledge of rubber manufacture, excellent 

 in theory, were it realized, would succeed in turning out 

 a few real questioners. They would be of value to them- 

 selves and to the trade. The others who learn by rote, 

 who accept statements without question, would swell the 

 numbers of those who cherish secret compounds, use 

 "phony" weights and false thermometers — high priests 

 of compounding mysteries, that they themselves do not 

 comprehend. 



Thirty years ago, a certain rubber company essayed 

 the then difficult feat of vulcanizing rubber to iron so 

 that it would not strip of?. The superintendent, a "mys- 

 tery man," swabbed the metal surface with beef liver, 

 and when it was bloody enough dried it thoroughly. 

 Then he put the rubber on under pressure and vulcanized 

 it. Sometimes it stuck and sometimes it did not. Did 

 he ask himself or anyone why it succeeded or why it 

 failed? Not he. It was a mystery, a fetish, a part of the 

 worship of the ancient divinity Rule-of-Thumb. 



He had an eniploye, however, who was forever asking 

 "fool questions." This youth noticed that a spot of iron 

 that was touched with blue vitriol presented a surface 

 to which rubber adhered always and most tenaciously. 

 He at once wanted to know why, and quizzed and ques- 

 tioned until he extracted the factory theory that "it cut 

 away the grease and opened the pores of the iron." Not 

 quite satisfied, he sought out a professor of chemistry 

 in a neighboring town, learned about acids in general, 

 about copper solutions in particular, about the union of 



copper with sulphur in rubber during vulcanization, and 

 evolved a perfectly sound, scientific process. 



When the "Shoe Associates" controlled the rubber 

 shoe industry of the United States, a compound, of which 

 they made their goods, consisted of rubbtr, whiting, 

 lampblack, litharge, barytes, lime, sulphur and tar. All 

 except the rubber and tar were dumped into a great iron 

 tank and thoroughly mixed together by means of a hoe 

 in the hands of a husky darky. And the way the lamp- 

 black escaped and penetrated to every part of the factory 

 can hardly be described. The resultant mixture, called 

 "paint," was weighed out in six-pound batches for ad- 

 mixture with rubber. It was an awkward, unsatisfactory 

 method, but Nathaniel Hayward, Leverett Candce and 

 others of the ])ioneers evolved it, made it sacred, and no 

 one presumed to question it. No one? On second 

 thought there were two who mentally questioned both 

 process and compound. One, a Connecticut Yankee, de- 

 manded of each ingredient what good purpose it served. 

 All proved their value there with the exception of bar_\-tes 

 and lime. Those two were eliminated and the goods 

 became livelier and better. The other questioner, a 

 Rhode Island Celt, wanted to know if the mixing mill 

 could not do all of the amalgamating of the dry ingredi- 

 ents as they went into the rubber. The answer was 

 "Yes," and the tank and the "paint" became ancient 

 history. 



JMultiply the above questions and answers by a million 

 and the world's progress in all lines of rubber, from 

 forest to consumer, will be expressed. Moreover, the 

 further expansion of the business, indeed its continuance, 

 depends upon the constant questioning of managers, su- 

 perintendents, chemists, planters, machinists and in- 

 ventors. Nor is anyone barred. The field is free for all, 

 and for those who question wisely and answer well 

 greater rewards are in prospect than ever before in the 

 historv of the industry. 



WHEN SYNTHETIC RUBBER IS A FACT. 



IT IS the common thought that were synthetic rul)bcr 

 to become an accomplished fact not only would the 

 inventor reap an enormous pecuniary reward, but rub- 

 ber plantations would be abandoned and the gathering 

 of wild rubber cease to be remunerative. It is more 

 than probable that none of these things would happen. 

 Our basis for this l^elief is a consideration of the cam- 

 phor industry, which in many respects is similar to 

 that of crude rubber production. 



Camphor is, of course, a gum found in a forest tree 

 growing in the Japanese island of Formosa. For years 

 the trees were cut down and the chips steamed, the 

 vapor being di.stilled by the crudest possible means. As 

 the accessible forests of camphor trees disappeared 

 under this work of destruction, the Japanese drove the 

 bloodthirsty aborigines back, and opened up new tracts 

 where the trees were found. Not only that, but thev 



