December 1, 1913.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



123 



THE RUBBER MANUFACTURER'S TRANSPORTA- 

 TION BURDEN. 



IN the winter of 1834, President Andrew Jackson, being in Bos- 

 ■^ ton, visited a rubber goods factory at Roxbury, where he was 

 presented with a suit of rubber clothing, which he donned and 

 wore throughout the day, which was rainy. South American 

 rubber shoes had been on the American market since 1823, and 

 sold at retail at from $3 to $5 per pair. Domestic rubber shoes 

 had been on the market five years. President Jackson in speak- 

 ing about rubber shoes and rubber clothing tliat day, said that 

 "the use thereof could be greatly extended in the remote west 

 and south but for the high cost of carriage, which was a great 

 tax against manufacturers and consumers." 



At that time, the population of the nation was 13,000,000; the 

 centre of population was nine miles southwest of Baltimore; the 

 railroad mileage was 238. Seven-tenths of the population lived 

 along or within fifty miles of navigable waters. Manufacturing 

 was being developed only at ports or along or near navigable 

 rivers, so that products could be forwarded by sail or steam 

 packets. In the early days of the rubber working industry in 

 eastern New England, nearly all the shipments of finished goods 

 for New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, Charleston, 

 Savannah, Mobile and New Orleans went by packet sloops or 

 schooners. Few of the schooners were over 200 tons burthen. 

 Freight charges were very low as most of the packets were owned 

 by the masters and mates and their neighbors, and it was before 

 the days of plastering ships and railroads with a dozen kinds of 

 interest-bearing securities. Even on rubber goods shipped from 

 New England to New Orleans by sail packet, and thence to 

 points on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers the rate was not, in 

 years when competition was active in western freighting, as much 

 as it is today by the pound or reckoned upon a basis of cubical 

 content. But it was held then, as it is held today, that the cost 

 of transportation is an enormous tax against producers and 

 Consumers. 



The transportation tax, as it exists today under the nation-wide 

 community of interest relations which exist between nearly all 

 our railroads and coastwise, lake and river steamships, is seen 

 every day in Xew England, the Middle and Western States, 

 where many animal-hauled vehicles are used to carry inward and 

 outward freight from five to twenty-five miles, because neither the 

 railroads nor the steamboats, that are within a few yards of the 

 highways, will give as low rates as the manufacturers can haul 

 short way freight for, under the same methods in use by the 

 people of Asia six thousand years ago. In parts of New Jersey, 

 where the making of rubber products is a great industry, one can 

 see horse vehicles owned by such concerns moving outward and 

 inward freight to many points, where from the wagons may be 

 seen the tracks of two to four trunk line railroads, and one to two 

 canals. The railroads long ago got control of the canals, and 

 closed one and ruined the other. As for way freight, they will 

 not take it, except at extortionate prices, yet in that State, as in 

 the other Middle States and in New England, hundreds of 

 thousands of empty freight cars a year are moved past rubber 

 goods and all other kinds of manufacturing plants. 



It is a remarkable fact that the rubber goods factories of the 

 nation are "bottled up" — as the railroad men's expression is — by 

 the community of interest transportation lines, land and water — 

 to the extent of 97 per cent, of their total number. That is to 

 say, these plants and their warehouses in large cities, and the 

 warehouses of the great distributors of rubber goods are at 

 points where, in railroad phrase, "the freight charges are all that 

 the traffic will bear." 



Today the centre of the population of the nation is in Indiana, 

 but a few miles distance from Chicago. This physical fact 

 exhibits what a tremendous tax is transportation against the 

 rubber working trades everywhere, but especially so in the Cen- 



tral West and in the Pacific Coast states. During six months of 

 the year, there are daily on the tracks of trunk lines between the 

 east and west, and especially between Chicago and St. Louis and 

 far western points, at least eight hundred miles of empty cars, 

 returning after having discharged food products, timber and min- 

 erals in the east. One would think that the operators of those 

 lines would see the wisdom of filling those cars with manufac- 

 tures carried at a low and yet profitable rate that would enor- 

 mously stimulate the development of the far west. Of course 

 the cost of hauling a million empty freight cars the average dis- 

 tance of 2,000 miles a year is charged off to the food products, 

 mineral and lumber industries, and makes a part of the large 

 increase in the cost of food to the consumers; and has thereby 

 so reduced the spending power of millions that the consumption 

 of dry and rubber goods and many other articles is less per unit 

 of population than it was when competition existed in the trans- 

 portation industries. 



Tliat "kissing goes by favor" among many of the communards 

 of interest, when it comes to getting low rates for concerns in the 

 manufacturing and exporting lines which they control, was lately 

 exposed by a bright young man who was trained in the freight 

 department of a great railroad, and who recently married a 

 daughter of the chief executive of a rubber working corporation. 

 This young man went into business with his father-in-law, and 

 soon found, that in popular phrase, the concern and its customers 

 were being "soaked" by the trunk line roads in a community of 

 interest. He proved his statement by his first day's work in re- 

 routing for Denver, whereby he saved the consignees $35.47 a 

 car load from the regular scale they had paid. In another in- 

 stance, he re-routed from a New England point to a city in cen- 

 tral New York, cars on which the saving over the direct run 

 charge came to $10.26 a car ; the goods went by way of Canada, 

 and by devious ways in the west, and then down to the point of 

 destination. 



A few days ago, a great local house in army and naval engi- 

 neering supplies booked a cablegram order from the Russian 

 government for certain kinds of mechanical rubber goods. The 

 ocean freight under which the goods were shipped — 3,250 miles to 

 a German port — came to a little less per 100 pounds than the 

 freight on the same goods from a point just about 50 miles 

 distant from New York. 



The operation of motor trucks by many makers and distribu- 

 tors of rubber wares in the Eastern, Middle and Central Western 

 states is being rapidly developed for zones of 25 miles radius— or 

 thereabouts. Three and five-ton trucks are used ; the velocities, 

 under the best conditions, are from ten to twelve miles an hour. 

 Last year, the average velocity per hour of all the steam railroad 

 freight trains moved in the nation was but seven and three-quar- 

 ter miles. In this the delays at switching and water and fuel 

 stations are included. A considerable number of rubber goods 

 manufacturers desire to use ten-ton motor cars but cannot do so 

 because of the structural weakness of most of the highway 

 bridges of the rubber working zones. The present writer has 

 just gone over this ten-ton motor truck matter with the execu- 

 tive officers of a great rubber working corporation in New Jersey. 

 He found by engineering tests, that ten-ton trucks could not be 

 used at many places in that State, because of the extreme weak- 

 ness of highway and canal bridges. In fact, five tons is a tre- 

 mendous strain upon the best of the highway bridges in that 

 State, and few of the Canal bridges are safe when three-ton 

 motor trucks cross them. By making detours, a considerable 

 number of motor trucks owned by rubber working concerns are 

 being operated between New Jersey plants and New York City 

 and vicinity and between those manufactories and Philadelphia 

 and vicinity. 



The railroad communards of interest, through means long used 

 to bring legislators to their way of thinking, are hindering or 

 stopping the improvement of highways and the strengthening of 



