August 1, 1912.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



519 



volved, that may be laid down as a general rule of guid- 

 ance. If the article manufactured by the old company 

 has never been advertised, or only to a limited extent, its 

 brand can obviously be changed without a serious loss 

 of prestige. Or where it is so inexpensive that people, 

 as a rule, will not trouble themselves to ask for a particu- 

 lar brand, being satisfied to get whatever the salesman 

 may oflfer, there again the change of name is not a seri- 

 ous matter. For instance, in the case of small druggists' 

 sundries, like hot-water bottles, syringes, small rubber 

 mats, a change of name would not appreciably lessen the 

 sale, as these articles being comparatively inexpensive, 

 few people are much concerned as to the particular brand 

 they get. The same is true of light rubber footwear. The 

 average man buys a pair of rubber shoes when a storm 

 is imminent, takes what the salesman put on his feet, 

 grumbles at the price and on general principles criticises 

 the quality, but never looks at the brand and would get 

 no enlightenment from it if he did. 



But when you leave the realm of small and inexpen- 

 sive rubber articles, the situation is changed. The fac- 

 tory superintendent who has found that a certain belting 

 or packing gives him excellent results, naturally wants to 

 continue the use of the same brand. In footwear, the fish- 

 erman who has got a great deal of service out of a certain 

 pair of rubber boots, is likely, not only to ask for that 

 brand, but to extol it among his neighbors. The same is 

 true, though possibly to a less extent, of miners, lumber- 

 men and farmers. They buy their boots and heavy shoes 

 by brand. 



The value of a well-known trade-mark is even greater in 

 the production of tires, for there is an item of material ex- 

 pense ; and the motorist who has accomplished five or six 

 thousand miles without a mishap on a certain brand of 

 tires is naturally very favorably disposed towards that 

 particular manufacturer and all his works. It needs no ar- 

 gument to show that in these articles, where brand stands 

 for reputation and good-will, there is inevitably a serious 

 loss where the brand is changed. 



Most large combinations have solved this question by 

 allowing" the old brands to continue for a certain length 

 of time, perhaps two or three years, while gradually in- 

 troducing the new general brand ; in many cases allowing 

 that and the individual name to appear side by side un- 

 til the trade had become accustomed to associating the 

 two together, when the individual brand was dropped, 

 the new blanket brand being the only one retained. This 

 enables the company to concentrate its merchandising 

 energy on a single name, a condition that has many ob- 

 vious advantages. 



Where the original companies, in addition to their com- 

 pany names, also have special names for certain of their 

 product, these special names can, of course, be retained 

 after the brand of the individual company has been 

 merged in that of the general company. For instance, 

 when the United States Tire Co. drops the name Morgan 

 & Wright, it will undoubtedly retain the name "Nobby 

 Tread" to designate a certain type of tire made by the 

 Morgan & Wright Company, and which to a great many 

 consumers, at least, is the significant identifying mark 

 rather than the name of the manufacturer. 



SYNTHETIC RUBBER ON ITS WAY. 



IT is doubtful if Professor Perkin had any idea when 

 •*■ he delivered his address on synthetic rubber, June 

 17, before the London Section of the Society of Chem- 

 ical Industry, how much of an audience he really had. 

 He probably thought that it comprised merely the 

 learned members of the chemical fraternity who sat 

 before him. He has discovered since that it included 

 everybody interested in rubber in the four quarters of 

 the globe. The attention that this address has re- 

 ceived and the discussion it has e.xcited, not only in 

 rubber circles but in the press generally, show that 

 the attitude of the rubber world towards synthetic 

 rubber is one of alert expectancy — it obviously be- 

 lieves that synthetic rubber is on its way. 



It was some 30 years ago that an eminent English 

 chemist. Sir ^^'illiam Tilden, discovered that isoprene 

 could be produced from turpentine, and that rubber 

 could be produced from isoprene — but the process of 

 making rubber in this way was extremely expensive. 

 Hundreds, or more accurately thousands, of chemists 

 during the intervening 30 years have sought the dis- 

 covery of a process by which isoprene could be cheaply 

 produced, and then inexpensively converted into rub- 

 ber. During the last three years a group of German 

 chemists and another group of English chemists have 

 been working laboriously on this problem — each fear- 

 ing that the other would solve it first. In England 

 Professor W. H. Perkin, of the University of Man- 

 chester, Dr. F. E. Matthews, and Sir William Ramsay, 

 assisted by Professor Fernbach, of the Pasteur In- 

 stitute of Paris, have been working together most in- 

 dustriously to produce a low-cost rubber. The re- 

 sults of these efforts are embodied in Professor Per- 

 kin's paper, which is treated in more detail elsewhere 

 in this issue. In a word, they consist of the conversion 

 of starch, as found in various cheap materials — pota- 



