THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[June 1. 1920. 



is also doing its bit in using the "bully tree" in re- 

 foresting in the West Indies and in its African pos- 

 sessions. 



The Mimiisops balala. while it does not produce a 

 gutta equal to that from the Palaquium, has an ad- 

 vantage in that the wood is of great value for build- 

 ing purposes. 



Now if chicle could have its turn and become a 

 plantation product the Sapotads would be receiving at 

 least a fair chance. 



AIR FORDS NOT AS YET. 



THE CREATION by One of the big rubber companies of 

 a pony blimp or "flyabout" has been hailed by 

 some of the semi-wise as the beginning of an era when 

 air travel will challenge earth travel. They assume to 

 see a development akin to that of the Ford car in the 

 motor world. It would of course be wonderful were 

 it within the realm of reality but alas it is not, nor will 

 it be in this generation. England experienced the same 

 visions and dismissed them. 



A recent report on this subject from abroad places 

 the minimum price of the small blimp at fifty thou- 

 sand dollars. As against the five hundred charged for 

 the first Fords the difference is appalling. Indeed, 

 in spite of the wealth the laborers are piling up day 

 by day, and their courage in spending, few will feel 

 able to purchase "flyabouts." 



ACCIDENTS IN FACTORIES. 



THE URGENT NEED of a more aggressive "Safety 

 First" campaign by American industrial leaders 

 was strikingly emphasized in reports submitted at the 

 first annual Massachusetts Accident Prevention Con- 

 gress. One of the speakers, C. W. Price, general man- 

 ager of the National Safety Council, Chicago, and who 

 was connected with the National Harvester Co., said 

 that of the 2,000,000 American boys who in nineteen 

 months went overseas in the Great War 47,949 were 

 killed or died from wounds received in battle. Yet, he 

 said, in the same period "126,000 men, women, and chil- 

 dren were killed, 35,000 in industry, and 91,000 outside 

 industry, 25,000 of the latter being children. In other 

 words, during those nineteen months our boys were 

 fighting on the other side of the water, there were 220 

 people killed in this country every twenty-four hours ; 

 and it would take a ditch forty-eight miles long and as 

 wide as the ordinary sidewalk to hold the bodies of those 

 126.000 men, women, and children." 



Such sacrifice of human life in the pursuits of peace, 

 and depletion of labor that was never more urgently 

 needed, were to a great extent avoidable, said Mr. Price, 

 who quoted figures to prove that of 22,000 serious acci- 

 dents reported by industry in 1919, fully 16,500 were 

 preventable. He said that in 1,000 industries reporting, 

 reductions of from 50 to 75 per cent in deaths had been 



effected by joint cooperation of employers and employes, 

 about one-third of the good work being accomplished 

 by means of mechanical devices and the remainder by 

 enlisting the active aid of shop foremen. 



That effective safety work not only spared manufac- 

 turers large losses in death and accident claims, but 

 actually helped in dividends was another contention of 

 the speaker. Enlightened employers have found that 

 the safety movement wins workers and gives a dignified 

 standing to business life, as well as being a sound, profit- 

 able business proposition. While he was pleased to note 

 much progress, the speaker lamented the fact that a re- 

 cent survey showed that scarcely one concern in ten de- 

 velops a proper cooperative spirit among its employes, 

 whereby they can feel that their employers take a real, 

 personal interest in their welfare and will second every 

 effort they make to safeguard human life and limb. 



STANDARDIZATION AND GOLF BALLS. 



A LEATHER BALL stuffcd with feathers, at one time 

 led all others in the game of golf. Had this ball 

 been standardized, in other words, if no golf matches 

 could be played except with the feather-filled ball, it 

 would doubtless still be used. x'\nd — the solid gutta and 

 the Haskell would never have been known. 



The corollary is that to standardize the present 

 rubber-cored ball is to kill its successor, a lively durable 

 ball that will sell at 20 cents instead of a dollar. 



Tii.\T THE United States is now at the peak of its 

 crude oil production is an accepted fact. Despite the 

 energetic efforts being made to augment production and 

 to discover new sources, the result does not warrant the 

 belief that it can long offset the constant growth in de- 

 mand for oil and its products. This means that solvent 

 naphtha, of which the rubber industrv' is a large con- 

 sumer, will be produced in steadily diminishing quanti- 

 ties unless some new source of supply is discovered. 



Staid Britishers may not much longer refer 

 reproachfully to the "gum-chewing Yankees," for, judg- 

 ing by the trade statistics, their own fellow-countrymen 

 are fast becoming Americanized in at least this one re- 

 spect. Chicle, once used in England as an adulterant of 

 .giUta percha, is now consumed there to almost as large an 

 extent in the form of chewing gum. The change has come 

 about almost wholly through the Great War. Munition 

 factory workers especially cultivated a taste for the 

 American product, and its popularity spread rapidly 

 among the soldiers, giving comfort to the men on 

 long marches or in the front trenches in France and 

 Flanders where smoking was forbidden. During the 

 last year of the war, 1918, England bought $1,119,898 

 of the total of $1,695,903 exported by the United States. 

 The amount fell to $771,144 in 1919, but 1920 is expected 

 to show a large increase in sales of American chewing 

 gum in the United Kingdom. 



