480 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[May 1, 1920. 



pounds in the same time, or if the mixer liaiullt-s two 

 mills, twice as much. 



Along the line of time saving is the vacuum dryer for 

 washed rubber. Three hours does what air drying took 

 three months to accomplish. (Some of the ultra con- 

 servative let Para rubber hang a year to dry and "age".) 



These are but two of hundreds of instances applicable 

 to all hnes of rubber manufacture. Nor has this sort 

 of progress reached its limit. Particularly in tire manu- 

 facture scores of special machines are created every 

 month. Verily the debt of the rubber trade to the in- 

 ventor and mechanical engineer is a big one. 



LOOKING AHEAD IN CRUDE RUBBER. 



ONE of the most far-sighted of the big rubber manu- 

 facturers predicts a shortage in crude rubber by 

 1924. He bases it upon the present production of 

 rubber plus the increase figured on past experience. 

 Against this he puts the constantly increasing use of 

 rubber, chiefly in automobile and truck tires. This 

 should not give pause in tire manufacture but should 

 lead to provision for more crude rubber. Indeed it 

 probably will result in greater planting areas in the Far 

 East and possibly in the Philippines. 



Again comes up the thought of rubber within our 

 own borders. The work that is being done in the 

 guayule propagation is of this sort and deserves and 

 will probably win success. There should be, however, 

 constant work upon other producers, if possible of native 

 origin. The fact that wild Chrysotlmmnus naiiseosus, 

 which is so abundant in the mountain regions of West- 

 ern North America, showed 6.57 per cent of rubber argues 

 at least 10 per cent under selection and cultivation. If 

 only rubber enterprise, backed by rubber money, would 

 take up this very promising lead it would be most grati- 

 fying and probably successful. 



THE FACTORY TRAINING SCHOOL. 



A STRIKING OBJECT LESSON to industry is the training 

 school for executives and salesmen maintained by 

 the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. For 

 years it has been conducting such an educational insti- 

 tution on a constantly broadening scale and with marked 

 benefit to the men and advantage to the company. The 

 students for the courses are selected from among tech- 

 nical graduates of leading schools and colleges, about 

 450 being enrolled for the 1920 classes. After a year of 

 intensive instruction the students are given positions in 

 various departments. They come from all parts of the 

 world and many return home as foreign representatives 

 of the concern. 



Not the least important part of the system is the train- 

 ing of the machinists' apprentices, the course being avail- 

 able for any boy of sixteen who has had a fair schooling. 

 The key-note of the system is "broad training and edu- 

 cation and later specialization." The company spares no 



expense in providing competent instructors, class-rooms 

 equipped with the most perfect material and the highest 

 grade machinery, and in striving to make the courses 

 interesting and thoroughgoing. The boy who completes 

 the four-year term is assured a permanent position and 

 is able to operate any machine in the works, an accom- 

 plishment hitherto possessed by scarcely two per cent of 

 the mechanics of the country. 



RUBBER PATENT LEATHER WANTED. 



AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS of glazed kid or patent 

 leather extensively used for fine shoes are worried 

 over the action of India in levying a 15 per cent tax 

 on all raw skins exported to countries outside the British 

 Empire. They claim that it sounds the death knell of the 

 glazed kid industry in the United States, and the trans- 

 fer of the manufacture to the Canadian shops. These 

 have the advantage of a 10 per cent rebate of the tax, as 

 the Dominion is part of the British Empire, and can 

 therefore undersell the United States product. As the 

 Indian tax amounts to $3 a pound, and as American 

 manufacturers import from India 42 per cent of the raw 

 skins used, a sure result will be higher prices for shoes 

 and leather goods. Apparently the sole recourse would 

 be to supplant glazed kid as far as possible with some 

 rubber-coated fabric made to resemble the expensive 

 leather article. Rubber will be equal to the occasion if 

 called upon, nor will it be the first time that it has stepped 

 into the breach, and with an adequate substitute either 

 saved a threatened industry or at least averted a certain 

 loss in trade. 



No PHANTOM OF HOPE, NOT EVEN THE SECRET OF 



perpetual motion or the transmutation of base metals into 

 gold, has been pursued more eagerly than the solution 

 of the problem of the non-pneumatic resilient wheel. 

 Among the hundreds of American tire patents issued 

 yearly is always a fair sprinkling of patents for rubber 

 tire substitutes, generally in the form of metal springs to 

 be set around the wheel hub, in the spokes, or in the 

 rim. Ingenious many of them really are, but few give 

 even the smallest promise of standing the rigid tests of 

 practicability. Still the search for the substitute will go 

 on. The failure of one inventor seems but to act as a 

 spur to others in seeking the incalculably rich prize that 

 surely would be bestowed on him who really provides 

 for vehicles a wheel as buoyant as the present air-inflated 

 type, but more enduring and economical. Nevertheless, 

 an intimate study of all the devices thus far produced 

 afTords little on which to base the belief that the rubber 

 tube filled with compressed air and its protecting casing 

 will be deposed from the eminent place they occupy in the 

 vehicle world. 



Dentists claim that the little rolls of cotton 

 dam are driving rubber dam out of the market. Just 

 one d thing after another. 



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