NoVEMJiER I, 1907.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



33 



^^ 



Published on the Ist of each Month by 



THE 



INDIA RUBBER PUBLISHING GO., 



No. 35 WEST 21st STREET. NEW YORK. 

 CARLE ADDRESS: IRWORLD, NEW YORK. 



HENRY C PEARSON, 

 EDITOB, 



HAWTHORNE HILL, 

 ASSOCIATE. 



Vol. 37. 



NOVEMBER I. 1907. 



No. 2. 



Sdbscriptions : $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) 

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Advbetisino : Rates will be made known on application. 



Remittances : Should always be made by bank draft, Postofflce or BjI- 

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 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 ad- 

 vertiser. Bills are rendered promptly at the beginning of each 

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COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY 



THE INDIA RUBBER PUBLISHINO CO. 



Entered at New York postoffice as mall matter of the second class. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS ON LAST PAGE READING MATTER. 

 STANDARDIZATION OF TIRES. 



NOWADAYS, when a great "department store" un- 

 dertakes to supply practically every want of the buy- 

 ing public, the full page advertisements of these es- 

 tablishments are among the most interesting features of 

 the newspapers, such is the variety of the wares described 

 day after day, and the skill employed in wording the an- 

 nouncements. Not the least notable feature of such ad- 

 vertisements is that they are honest, so that they become 

 an important record of development of current taste and 

 manners. All of which has been suggested to the writer 

 of these lines by glancing at random over one of these 

 advertisements, in which the word 'tires" happens to 

 appear prominently. 



In the case in point the merchant announces "We 



handle only first quality tires, including such standard 



grades as" — and then follows a list in which appear im- 



partiallv the names of certain American and European 



makes that would be acknowledged in any automobiling 



club in Christendom to be "good tires." No "freaks" in 



this list, no cheap goods, no unknown brands. Our 



object in referring to this particular advertisement — after 



f^ stating that it is in no sense exceptional in New York 



S store announcements — is to note that it indicates the 



'^ standardization of the automobile tire. As everybody 



,. . knows, the leading tire patents in America are expiring, 



as they have expired already in Britain, while France 



never granted any patents covering some important types 



of tires. What concerns "the man in the street" is 

 whether a certain tire is a good one, and not who made 

 it. The fact that it is offered by a reputable house is 

 his principal guarantee as to quality, though if he has a 

 preference for a particular brand of note, the up-to-date 

 department store will supply it. 



Whoever buys a pair of shoes to-day depends upon his 

 own judgment as to the quality, or upon the reputation 

 of the house from which he buys, far more than upon the 

 maker's brand. Shoes are shoes, and one shoe as good 

 as another — that is, in a reputable shop. The same thing 

 is becoming true of the automobile tire, and because the 

 leading makers of the tires have been honest in their 

 work ; each has attempted to do his best work, and each 

 has succeeded equally well with his competitors, so that 

 even the novice may feel that he will not go far wrong 

 if he goes to a well established dealer to buy tires, though 

 it be to a department store. But as we have said, if he 

 wants a particular English or German or American or 

 French tire, the store in question will sell it to him, as an- 

 nounced in the same advertisement with automobiles com- 

 plete or babv rattles or luncheon baskets or grand pianos 

 or lead pencils. 



The tire makers have done marvelously well on the 

 whole, and the best evidence is that their products no 

 longer require a maker's guarantee to sell them. 



OVERPRODUCTION OF RUBBER. 



S 



A QUESTION which is much discussed among rubber 

 planters in British Asia, and even more among the 

 thousands of British investors in plantation com- 

 panies, is whether there is danger of overproduction. This 

 is a very practical question, and deserving of all the atten- 

 tion that it has received, because the world is not yet rich 

 enough to spend millions of money in promoting any en- 

 terprise without assurances that it will not be thrown 



away. 



There may be some encouragement in the fact that his- 

 tory has recorded so few examples of "overproduction." 

 Every grower of wheat or cotton or cucumbers, for ex- 

 ample, may not always find a profitable or even a ready 

 sale for his crops, but it can hardly be said that, on the 

 whole, overproduction of any of these commodities has 

 ever occurred. It is true that when the cultivation of 

 quinine bark was once begun, so many persons engaged 

 in it on a large scale that the rate of profit declined to an 

 extent that caused some of the planters to retire from the 

 field. Yet probably more quinine is produced now than 

 any time in the past, and it is reasonable to suppose that 

 it pays the producers, or they would stop gathering the 

 stufT. Similarly, it was a common thing a few years ago, 

 in the United States, to hear that cotton was no longer 

 a paying crop, but the production has increased steadily 

 in amount, and in years of largest production prices have 

 ranged higher than in former times, and the cotton plant- 

 ers are becoming a wealthy class. 



tiOTA 



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