Febru.isy 1, 1921 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



313 



YX'k 



W-Pc^ 



Reg. United States Pat. Off. Reg. United Kingdom. 



Published on the 1st of each month by 



THE INDIA RUBBER PUBLISHING CO. 



No. 25 West 45th Street, New York. 



Telephone — Bryant 2576. 

 CABLE ADDRESS: IRWORLD. NEW YORK. 



HENRY C. PEARSON, F.R.G.S., Editor 



Vol. 63 



FEBRUARY I, 1921 



No. 5 



SuBsciiPTioH: $3.00 per year, $1.75 for six months, postpaid, for the 

 United States and dependencies and Mexico. To the Dominion 

 of Canada and all other countries, $3.50 (or equivalent funds) 

 per year, postpaid. 



Advertising: Rates will be made known on application. 



Reuittamcks: Should always be made by bank draft. Post Office or 

 Express money order on New York, payable to The India Rubber 

 FuELisHiNG Company. Reraitunces for foreign subscriptions should 

 be sent by International Postal Order* payable as above. 



Discontinuances: Yearly orders for subscriptions and advertising are 

 regarded as permanent, and after the first twelve months they will 

 be discontinued only at the request of the subscriber or advertiser. 

 Bills are rendered promptly at the beginning of each period, and 

 thereby our patrons have due notice of continuance. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS ON LAST PAGE OF READING 



THE AMERICAN "RUBBER TRUST" 



BK.\ziLiAN DEPUTIES, three in number, before the House 

 sitting in Rio Janeiro stated that the American "Rub- 

 ber Trust" had deliberately forced the price of rubber 

 down to its present level. Further, to quote one excited 

 speaker, "The rubber planter, losing interest, is abandon- 

 ing plantations which the Americans are acquiring at 

 infinitesimal prices, becoming lords of our soil." 



This is so interesting that we would fain ask for in- 

 formation. First, what is the American Rubber Trust? 

 We know of no rubber company among the dozen big 

 and three hundred smaller that can in any way be called 

 a trust. Certainly each buys rubber separately and com- 

 ])etitively. Second, what Americans are buying sering^aes? 

 (There are no Brazilian rubber plantations.) Frankly, 

 Amazonian rubber lands are not investments that appeal 

 to capitalists or to rubber men at present. The statement 

 that they are being bought up, therefore, is hardly 

 credible. 



The trouble is that the Brazilian rubber producer is 

 in a bad wav. It is not his fault, nor is it the fault of the 



American rubber manufacturers. It is simply because 

 rubber planters in the Far East can produce rubber 

 cheaper than can the Brazilian seringueiro. Moreover, 

 ihey have produced it in such quantity that the market 

 became glutted and prices accordingly dropped. It is too 

 bad, and all friends of Brazil arc sorry. It is only fair, 

 however, to point out that it is the law of supply and 

 demand that is doing the grinding, and no trust, Ameri- 

 can or other. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF CABLE SYSTEMS 



WHILE the United States easily leads the world in 

 automobile tire making, and while there is no 

 reason to doubt that it will long retain its primacy in 

 that great division of the rubber industry, it is still a 

 negligible factor in the production of another and im- 

 portant divisional product, namely, ocean cables. Of the 

 532 submarine cables privately owned, covering over 262,- 

 000 miles, and 2,628 government-owned lines, with a 

 length of 56,000 miles, nearly 50 per cent are owned or 

 controlled by British interests. This fact alone largely ex- 

 plains the great success of British foreign trade, for there 

 is hardly a port in the world that a British ship enters 

 but in which it can find a British cable office. The United 

 Kingdom is a great financial power largely because, 

 through its vast network of cables, British traders can 

 easily keep ahead of rivals in the great commercial 

 struggle with other nations. 



It is obvious, therefore, that if the United States is to 

 maintain a commanding position in international com- 

 merce it, too, must have an adequate and independent 

 cable system of its own. Indeed, some such interoceanic 

 links must be provided to render truly effective the na- 

 tion's great plans for a merchant marine contemplating 

 an outlay of even thousands of millions. Else American 

 foreign trade must be conducted largely over systems 

 owned by powerful commercial rivals, and American 

 traders suffer a serious handicap. Even such non- 

 American systems are already congested with trade and 

 news communications, so that an American cable sys- 

 tem would really serve a pressing international need, as 

 it should also prove a profitable investment. Atlantic 

 cables now carry about four times the traffic they did in 

 1913. while Pacific cable traffic has increased nearly nine 

 times in the same period, making the situation there 

 actually acute. True, there has been some talk of re- 

 lief, but the laying of another Pacific cable is still "in 

 the air," although the cost of such an immensely helpful 

 medium of communication would probably be no more 

 than that of the two $40,000,000 battle cruisers which 

 the United States and Japan are said to be preparing 

 to build. 



The core of the cable used today consists of strands 

 of copper wire covered with gutta percha. Attempts have 

 been made to substitute rubber for gutta percha, but for 



