December I, l';i3. 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



109 



Published on the 1st of each Month by 



THE INDIA RUBBER PUBLISHING GO 



No. 15 West 38th Street. New York. 



CABLE ADDRESS: IRWORLD, NEW YORK. 



HENRY C. PEARSON, Editor 



Vol. 49. 



DECEMBER 1, 1913. 



No. 3 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS ON LAST PAGE OF READING. 



THE RUBBER TRADE'S DEBT TO GUAYULE. 



TT is safe to say that every reader of this puhlication 

 ■*■ will be interested in the account which appears in this 

 issue of William Appleton Lawrence, the man whose ef- 

 forts more than those of any other man gave guayule to 

 the rubber industry. It was known for sixty years before 

 Mr. Lawrence began his experiments that the guayule 

 shrub of northern Mexico contained rubber, but no one 

 had been able to discover how to get it out. Mr. Lawrence 

 thought, as others had thought before him, that the ex- 

 traction must be effected chemically ; but he finally dis- 

 covered that the process was much simpler — that it was 

 merely one of rubbing and water. In 1905 — four years 

 after he began his experiments — he arrived at the proper 

 solution, and guayule extraction began to assume com- 

 mercial dimensions. 



In 1906 the first considerable exports were made from 

 Mexico, amounting to a little over 5,000,000 pounds. The 

 volume of these exports increased rapidly until 1910, 

 when they reached over 28,000,000 pounds. But in the 

 following year those Mexican disturbances which have 

 lately given the American dailies so much material for 

 scare heads, and are supposed to be giving the Washing- 



ton administration many sleepless nights, broke out, and 

 since that time the exports of guayule — along with all 

 other Mexican enterprises — have lanquished, for the pres- 

 ent year amounting only to a little over 5,000,000 pounds, 

 and practically having ceased early in May. 



Since 1906 the world's rubber supply has been increased 

 by over 128,000,000 pounds of guayule. To get some 

 idea of this vast contribution, it is only necessary to com- 

 pare it with the plantation output w liich, up to the end of 

 1912, had reached only 2,000,000 pounds more than this 

 figure, while as compared with the product of the 

 Amazon, it exceeds by 33,000,000 pounds the record fig- 

 ure made by Para and Manaos combined in 1912 of 

 95,000,000 pounds. Old Dean Swift used to remark that 

 that man was a true benefactor of the race who made two 

 blades of grass grow where only one had grown before. 

 \\ bat shall we say of the men who have contributed to 

 the world's supply of rubber nearly 130,000,000 pounds 

 where there was none before, and who have got all this 

 from a despised and neglected weed ? 



RUBBER SCRAP TOO HIGH. 



•"PLME was when scrap rubber — old shoes, for example 

 — was sold to the reclaimers at two and three cents 

 a pound. It is possible that, considering the present 

 high cost of living and of labor, it could not be supplied 

 by the scrap men at that price today. The market for 

 scrap, however, depends upon the state of the crude rub- 

 ber market. High-priced crude has always meant high- 

 priced scrap. Low-priced rubber has always — that is, 

 up to the present — meant a corresponding fall in the price 

 of scrap. For a long time crude rubber has been steadily 

 falling. Nor with the great increase of plantation rubber 

 is there much likelihood of any appreciable advance. 

 Yet old shoes are held at eight cents and better. At that 

 price crude rubber, compounded, is better and cheaper, 

 and that is what the manufacturers are using. The re- 

 claimers admit that scrap is too high, that they cannot 

 quote lower prices until it drops — and still it holds up. 

 It is hard luck for the big collectors, who stand to lose, 

 but it is folly to try to smash the law of supply and de- 

 mand, and it is that law that they are up against. 



As throwing an interesting light on the relative move- 

 ments of Para and scrap prices, and particularly as show- 

 ing that while the price of Para has greatly declined in 

 the last four years, shoe scrap prices have remained prac- 

 tically the same, a table is given below showing a com- 



