October I, 1911.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



The India-Rubber Trade in Great Britain. 



By Our Regular Correspondent. 



WITH regard to the movement on foot to admit rubber man- 

 ufacturers and merchants to the Exchange under their own 

 organization, and to list crude rubber, I may say that in my 

 opinion this should tend towards the betterment of the trade gen- 

 erally, provided that any substantial rubber manufacturer can 

 become a member ; and this more par- 

 ticularly as rubber is used by the 



THE NEW YORK 

 PRODUCE EXCHANGE. 



speculator for his own private gains. 

 It should give manufacturers a better chance of arranging 

 qualities, terms and conditions, so as to suit the trade generally. 

 Such terms, conditions, etc., when formally decided upon 

 should be printed for circulation in the trade, to be available 

 for buyers on application. At present the brokers appear 

 to make their own terms, which are often arbitrary and to 

 the detriment of the trade who are the actual consumers. 

 It is quite time the trade throughout the world made a de- 

 cided stand against accepting terms and conditions in the 

 making of which they were not consulted. Another essential 

 point is that all rubbers should be marketed under a definite 

 name. Rubber obtained by chemical processes from plants con- 

 taining it, should be listed as extracted rubber and not mas- 

 querade as washed rubber. A proper grading of rubber should 

 be decided on and the question of drafts, shrinkage and stand- 

 ard qualities could be better arranged by manufacturers than 

 by financial houses which frequently lack the necessary expert 

 knowledge. At present a manufacturer plans say a contract for 

 several tons of rubber, delivery over various months, and he 

 will probably find that his washing tables of the various deliv- 

 eries show a variation of 10 per cent, to 15 per cent. There 

 should be a fixed marginal allowance for shrinkage ; and who 

 could better decide this than the manufacturers? I much doubt 

 if there is any other commercial commodity in which the buyer 

 takes so much risk as he does with rubber. The New York 

 Produce Exchange suggestion is the first move in the right 

 direction, and if it is taken up as it deserves to be, no doubt 

 other large centres will follow suit. This would in my opinion 

 lead to more consistent markets, well known conditions and 

 terms, and keep the trade in constant touch with the actual 

 markets to the undoubted benefit of manufacturers. In conclu- 

 sion I may say that arbitration would be of benefit to the trade, 

 so long as the trade is well represented on any arbitration board. 

 For a small place this is now quite an important centre of 

 the trade, containing as it does the large works of the Leyland 



and Birmingham Rubber Company, 

 LEYLAND. Limited ; the newly erected works of 



Wood-Milne, Limited, formerly White- 

 head & Roberts ; the works of J. E. Baxter & Company, for- 

 merly the Dialene Company ; the large new factory of Ley- 

 land Motors, Limited, and the rubber machinery works of 

 Iddon Brothers, Limited. All these works are situated quite close 

 to one another, and it is not surprising that the population of 

 the village has increased, owing to the demand for labor. The 

 Leyland Motors are busy, and have recently received an im- 

 portant order from a government department for their ve- 

 Tiicles. An interesting feature about the Wood-Milne rubber 

 "washing plant is the installation of a complete purification plant 

 of the Mather & Piatt type, by which the washing water is 

 freed from both its dissolved and suspended impurities and used 

 over and over again. The water supply, both for the washing 

 .and the condensing plants, is drawn from a small brook run- 

 ning through the premises; there being other users of the water 

 lower down stream who would object to any defilement of the 



THE STRIKE 

 FEVER. 



water by trade effluents. .\n alumina and iron precipitant is 

 used to remove the soluble impurities in the wash water, and as 

 such impurities are nitrogenous, it is no surprise to hear that 

 the sludge after being filter-pressed commands a sale in the dis- 

 trict as a fertilizer. I don't know whether any other rubber 

 works have a smiilar purification plant, but they are certainly 

 not common, and their adoption I suppose is entirely a mat- 

 ter of exigency, owing to prevailing conditions of water sup- 

 ply; as I hardly suppose that the first cost and upkeep of the 

 apparatus would be met by the sale of the recovered impurities. 

 The reduction of the dividend of the Leyland and Birmingham 

 Rubber Company, Limited, from 7Yi to 5 per cent, caused 

 some surprise and has led to some fall in the quotation for the 

 shares. 



The series of strikes which culminated in the great (though 

 fortunately only short-lived) railway strike in mid-August, has 

 of course interfered seriously with trade 

 in the industrial centres. Shortage of 

 rubber and lack of coal led to more 

 than cue important rubber factory being shut down, and of 

 course the closing down of cotton mills and other concerns 

 led to a falling off in demand for certain classes of rubber 

 goods. At the time of writing I hear of threatened trouble on 

 a large scale with the india-rubber workers, whose union is 

 now taking a more important position than was the case only a 

 year ago. There has been a lock-out at Messrs. W. T. Glover 

 & Company's cable works at Manchester, and a strike satisfactor- 

 ily settled at the works of the New Liverpool Rubber Company, 

 Limited. 



The railway strike led to a great demand for town taxicabs, 

 long distances being covered at somewhat extortionate rates. 

 Doubtless tires suffered severely on the hard roads ; indeed for 

 some months now, owing to the results of the dry season, motor 

 tire wear has been excessive. Besides the demand for taxicabs, 

 motor vehicles were in great request by newspaper offices and 

 various tradesmen, the newspaper people being about the only 

 ones who were unable to put the cost on to the selling price of 

 their goods. 



A PATENT has been obtained by C. J. Beaver and E. A. Clare- 

 mont for strengthening rubber sheet cord and strip by a me- 

 chanical process and they describe a 

 special machine for the process. The 

 patentees are both connected with the 

 cable works of W. T. Glover & Company, Limited, Manchester. 

 They point out that ordinary rubber sheet and strip is mechanic- 

 ally weak and tears easily on being stretched. They further 

 state that it is common practice to modify or eradicate this 

 weakness by various processes, such as vulcanizing, exposure to 

 atmospheric influences, alternately heating and cooling, etc. 

 The inventors propose to discard the older processes and to pro- 

 duce the desired effect by alternately stretching the rubber 

 quickly and then allowing it to contract by releasing. This is 

 to be done very quickly so that the tendency to tear has not 

 time to come into operation. Of course it has long been a 

 desideratum with the makers of cut or spread pure rubber sheet, 

 to so harden it that it will stand considerable pulling without 

 tearing, and in this respect there is considerable diflference in the 

 quality of the strip supplied for electrical purposes by diflferent 

 firms. The exact means by which the hardening is carried out, 

 is to a large extent one of the few trade secrets preserved in the 

 industry. Last year I noticed an advertisement in a daily paper 

 published in a rubber manufacturing center, for details of such 



STRENGTHENING 

 RUBBER SHEET. 



