530 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[July 1, 1914. 



disp<..=^t >» il. Then, too, it is more flexible, i..u-ki lo work 

 and far more durable. 



Artificial leathers are likely to find it diflicult to com- 

 pete with the rubber product that will come in with low- 

 priced rubber. Indeed, all of the rubber counterfeits made 

 of cellulose, celluloid or casein, whether soft or hard, are 

 likely to find that the original will lie preferred just as soon 

 as it is the cheapest. 



RfliKER SOUND DKSTKOYERS. 



India rubber as a deterrent to noise has gone far. It will 

 go farther. The rubber-shod taxicab has stilled the echoing 

 klipperty-klip of the flat-footed cab horse. It should be used 

 to silence the clash and clatter of the modern city electric 

 car and the jar and clamor of elevated and subway trains. In 

 a score of industries it is needed — as cushions under modern 

 printing presses, laundry machines and other city nuisances. 



Would it not be possible also to still the shrill clatter of 

 the thousands of shuttles in great weaving plants by the use 

 of rubber? 



The boiler maker certainly needs some sort of rubber 

 silencer for his work, and the pneumatic riveter will not be 

 perfect until rubber cushions absorb the far reaching sound 

 of its blows. 



When this is accomplished and the day of deliverance 

 comes, every bell in Christendom should send out its peal 

 of praise — with soft rubber tongues. 



Rl-RRKR Gl.UE .\ND MUCILAGE. 

 Into the broad field of glues, mucilages and other adhesives 

 will a great variety of new rubber cements force their way. 

 The only deterrent will be the high cost of solvent. But with 

 low-priced Hei'ea rubber and the consequent fall in the price 

 of rubber scrap, that will be melted or distilled, and new 

 stickers and valuable by-products will be obtained that will 

 find wide markets. Certainly a rubber glue that would be 

 self-vulcanizing and that would not soften and let go in damp 

 weather would be a boon. 



1XDI.\ RUBBER RO.\DS. 

 Roadways of rubber are ideal, theoretically, but the as- 



phalts under modern manipulation are likely to be always 

 cheaper and just as effective. Rubber sidewalks (once a non- 

 slippery compound is evolved) made of scrap arc likely one 

 day to run for miles in the modern city. 



1XDI.\ RUBBER PAINTS. 

 These have in the past been widely advertised and sold, 

 but they were oil or asphaltum at heart, not rubber. Scrap 

 rubber is likely to furnish actual rubber paints and real rub- 

 ber roofing. It will mean experiment and adjustment and a 

 new series of drj'ers, but that should not baffle the chemist 

 in this day of rubber expansion. 



RUBBER CAR SPRINGS. 

 -As the price of rubber in the past increased certain prod- 

 ucts disappeared — the rubber car spring for example. As an 

 assistant for the excellent steel springs of today, with a 

 new and lower scale of prices it will come back, not only in 

 railway carriages, but in manifold places where cost has pre- 

 vented its use. Wherever there is a shock there will be put 

 a ruliber spring; wherever a rattle, an anti-rattler. 



INI)I.\ RUBBER PAPER. 

 Goodyear had a book with pages of rubber and fibre. Then 

 rubber became costly and it was forgotten. For certain mois- 

 ture proof papers rubber is certainly better than oil. In wall 

 papers of the Lincrusta Walton type it is more than a pos- 

 sibility. Bible papers made of pure gum would be wonderfully 

 suited to certain modern creeds. 



RUBBER CROCKERY. 



It is with much doubt that I make this suggestion — that 

 of white rubber dishes for the great restaurants, or bath 

 tubs of hard rubber for the home. Perhaps it is as well not 

 to encroach upon the pottery industry until rubber becomes 

 as cheap as Kaolin. 



The list grows long, and this is but a beginning: there are 

 scores of industries yet to be viewed, and above all the back 

 bone of all prosperity — the farmer — has been neglected. 

 Perhaps — and this is but a vague suggestion — if he raised 

 his milk-fed chickens on rubber latex, egg shells would cease 

 to be fragile. 



The Crude Rubber Export Taxes of the World. 



IN the January issue of The Indi.\ Rubber World there was 

 a table covering ten pages giving the rubber tariffs on man- 

 ufactured goods of eighteen foreign countries, each of which 

 imported American rubber goods in excess of an annual value 

 of $100,000. It was the first time any such comprehensive tabu- 

 lation had ever been attempted, and it created considerable 

 comment and has proved of great value to American manufac- 

 turers, who can tell by reference to this table just what obstacles 

 they have to contend with in introducing their goods into 

 foreign markets. 



We present in this issue a table showing the export duties 

 levied on crude rubber in all the countries of the world from 

 which any shipments of rubber are made. This tabulation is 

 divided into four general groups — Central -America. South 

 America, Africa and the East — and includes seven countries in 

 Central America; six in South America; twenty-si.x countries, 

 colonies and provinces in Africa, and twenty-two countries, de- 

 pendencies and islands in the East and Far East. This is the 

 first time that a comprehensive survey of crude rubber export 

 tariffs has ever been made, and while this may not prove of the 

 same value to American manufacturers as the table of import 

 tariffs which appeared in January, it will certainly be of 

 great interest to all men associated with the rubber industry, 

 as showing the burden with which rubber starts for its 



market from the various ports from wliicli it is shipped. 



An impressive feature of this tabulation is the unevenness of 

 this system of ta.xation, a number of countries exporting their 

 rubber entirely free of tax, others paying so slight a duty that 

 it is almost negligible, while in other cases, as in exports from 

 Para, for instance, the burden is really onerous. Comparing 

 the exports of rubber from Para, on which the tax. all told, 

 including federal, state and local levies, amounts to over 40 per 

 cent., with the free condition of rubber leaving the Straits Settle- 

 ments and Ceylon and the very light burden laid upon it in 

 other eastern points, it becomes obvious why the country of the 

 Amazon finds it so difficult to compete with the plantation rub- 

 ber of the East. But the various Brazilian authorities are al- 

 ready taking steps materially to decrease the present export 

 burden on the rubber of the Amazon. 



As the monetary denominations and the system of weights 

 used in the various countries mentioned in the table are nearly 

 all different from those used in this country, .American equiv- 

 alents are given in every case ; and where the duty is a specific 

 one it is given first in the currency and in the weights prevailing 

 in the respective countries, and then in a parallel column the 

 equivalents in American currency and avoirdupois weight are 

 given. Where the duty is ad valorem, of course a parallel 

 column of equivalents is not necessary. 



