154 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



llECEMBEK 1, 1920 



nioiiiziiig industry, and if such work be extended by other 

 manufacturers, we will soon have less labor unrest and 

 healthier, happier, and more efficient workers. 



COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY 



IN' the opinion of the unpractical sentimentalist, the 

 steel strike, which collapsed a few months ago, was 

 waged wholly in the cause of hours, wages and the 

 control of jobs. To the experienced industrial man- 

 ager it was simply one of a series of disturbances de- 

 liberately planned to wrest the control of industry 

 from its owners and to place it under the dotnination 

 of the most radical element of organized labor. 



This is the view of Charles Piez, president of the 

 Link-Belt Company, of Chicago, who has had excep- 

 tional opportunity to study situations of this kind. In 

 a cnrrent magazine article he declares that the real 

 purpose of the strike was best reflected in the char- 

 acter of the two men who assumed leadership. One 

 was an avowed syndicalist who continually denounced 

 the wage system as "a brazen, gigantic robbery" ; and 

 the other was an adroit labor politician, without know- 

 ledge of the problems of industry, and who fought all 

 w'orkmen's compensation legislation and the fairest 

 measures of compromise. 



Mr. Piez scores one big point with which all fair- 

 minded people are in accord, and that is, if labor in- 

 sists upon collective bargaining it must also be made 

 to realize that the people will just as strictly insist 

 upon collective responsibility on the part of labor. 



HIGH WAGE PROPAGANDA 



APPREHENSIVE of a possible revision in the present 

 high wage scale in the mills making cotton and 

 other fabrics, leaders among the United Textile 

 Workers of America have been urging the establish- 

 ment of a million-dollar fund for combating any at- 

 tempt to lower wages in the textile industry in the 

 United States and Canada. It is not stated just how 

 such a "war chest" would be disbursed, but a fair in- 

 ference would seem to be that it would be used large- 

 ly to promote and maintain strikes. The leaders do 

 not seem to worry over the fact that, although they 

 personally may be spared hardship, tens of thousands 

 of operatives and their dependents may suflfer severe- 

 ly if a strike be called. Employers cannot do the iin- 

 possible. In the face of an insistent public demand 

 for lower prices and often keen competition they can- 

 not guarantee that the war-time wage scale will be 

 maintained, much less promise a considerable and im- 

 mediate reduction in working time. 



In the event of labor assuming an unreasonable at- 

 titude, the mill owners might adopt the one recourse 

 left to them, to close down until the strikers on 

 sober, second thought came to realize that there are 

 two sides to the employment question, and that no 



manufacturer can operate a mill under intolerable 

 and unprofitable conditions. If great factories are to 

 be idle for a long period, no million dollar defense 

 fund would adequately reimburse the workers for 

 their loss, much less compensate a big community dis- 

 organized by such industrial paralysis. 



THE BRITISH RUBBER INDUSTRY 



THE wi.SDOM of raising an ample amount of raw ma- 

 terial within a nation's Iwundaries or possessions 

 and maintaining even an overabundant reserve as a pre- 

 caution against possibly adverse conditions is strikingly 

 illustrated in an article by B. D. Porritt in the British 

 Journal of the Society of Chemical Industries, on "The 

 Rubber Industry and the War." 



He shows that out of the world's supply of 120,000 tons 

 of crude rubber in 1914, 71,000 tons were produced with- 

 in the empire, although the annual consumption then by 

 British rubber manufacturers was but 18,000 tons. So, 

 too, he states that even though the British manufacturers 

 were put at a great disadvantage during the war by being 

 obliged to use their factories almost entirely for making 

 military and naval supplies, they readily shared their 

 stock of raw rubber with American competitors who 

 enjoyed considerable and profitable commerce at home 

 and with Allied and neutral countries. Peculiarly inter- 

 esting is the author's recital of the novel, numerous, and 

 ingenious uses to which British manufacturers applied 

 rubber for war needs, how they overcame the shortage in 

 chemical supplies, and how the industry gave itself whole- 

 heartedly to the Allied cause and proved a powerful fac- 

 tor in winning the war. 



Touching upon "The Position and Prospects of the 

 Rubber Industry" in Great Britain, in the same journal, 

 W. A. Williams takes a very optimistic view. While con- 

 ceding some actual and possible drawbacks to which the 

 industry is or may be subjected, such as the higlier cost 

 of labor, the insufficient rail transportation, the- none too 

 plentiful supplies of chemicals, the restricted cultivation 

 of Egyptian cotton, and the rising tide of tire produc- 

 tion in the United States, for protection against which 

 government aid may be sought, the writer is confident 

 that the British rubber industry will nevertheless hold its 

 own. Favorable factors are : great supplies of raw ma- 

 terial, radically improved methods in quantity and 

 quality output, and constant modernization of plants. 



An apt phrase often does more to nrpRESs than 

 reams of argument and exposition. "Growing pains" 

 was what J. Newton Gunn termed the .spasms of fear 

 induced by the recent slackening in the tire business. 

 Not only apt but prophetically true. 



California experts after exhaustive tests give 

 rubber jar rings a clean bill of health as regards poison 

 olives. The poison did not come from the rubber but 

 was due to faulty treatment of the fruit before canning. 



