JuxE 1, 1917.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



509 



tails of the loan and securing subscriptions. In some cases 

 the firm negotiates the number of bonds required and gives 

 each person the privilege of paying in ten monthly instalments 

 of $10 each, interest on the necessary money being covered in 

 part by the interest^borne by the bond. This encourages savings 

 for the future .and stimulates individual thrift. 



The Hood Rubber Co., Watertown, Massachusetts, is doing still 

 better, and has taken active leadership in encouraging other 

 similar firms to take up the matter. At the request of Alfred L. 

 -viken, governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 

 Frederic C. Hood is representing the rubber industry on a 

 committee composed of representative New England manufac- 

 turers which is promoting the sale of Liberty Loan bonds as a 

 public duty. Mr. Hood has worked out a plan of campaign for 

 his own factor\' with printed subscription forms, advertising mat- 

 ter descriptive of the bond issue and the desirability of participat- 

 ing, and a plan enabling every employe to invest on easy payments. 

 Under this plan the company negotiates the total number of 

 bonds required and operatives pay $2 down and $2 a week for 24 

 weeks for each $50 bond, the firm assuming the interest on the 

 necessary money and the investor having the entire interest ac- 



cruing on the bond. Financial experts have addressed the Hood 

 operatives on the importance and benefits of investing weekly 

 savings in this manner. 



About 275 letters have been sent to rubber and allied firms in 

 the first Federal district of New England, enclosing samples of 

 the printed matter and urging them to adopt the same or a 

 similar plan, organizing the sale under the direction of one man 

 in each factory, who will devote his time to this work until the 

 closing date, June IS. Each firm will, of course, deal directly 

 with the Federal Reserve Bank, the only interest of the Hood 

 Rubber Co. being patriotic cooperation with the government and 

 a desire to tabulate the results accomplished. Many favorable 

 replies are being received and the project promises to be suc- 

 cessful. 



A list passed around the general ofiices of The B. F. Goodrich 

 Co., Akron, Ohio, received over 100 signatures of persons obli- 

 gating themselves to buy Liberty bonds, and since then many 

 employes in all departments have added their names to the list. 

 The Fisk Rubber Co. has notified all employes who wish to pur- 

 chase these bonds, that it will loan 80 per cent of such sub- 

 scriptions, allowing payment to be made at 2 per cent per week. 



Two Years in England in War Time. 



By Arthur E. Friswell. 



WHEN war broke out I was living in Bermuda, taking a 

 semi-rest from over 20 years of strenuous work in rub- 

 ber manufacturing. Only a 'semi-rest because amongst 

 other light occupations I was the agent for David Moseley & 

 Sons, Limited, of Manchester, England, over whose tire de- 

 partment at their factory in Manchester I had been manager 

 some years previously. The war stopped practically everything 

 in Bermuda except the climate, which, I am informed, still con- 

 tinues "almost ideal. and undisturbed. Wishing to re-engage in 

 rubber work after my rest, and thinking that there would be 

 plenty of openings in England, I went there. Theoretically, 

 there should have been any amount of scope. Actually, there 

 was. and is not. Almost every rubber factory came under gov- 

 ernment control early in the war, the government taking the 

 bulk of the output for military and naval needs. It was useless 

 for tnanufacturing firms to pay traveling expenses to secure 

 orders which they could not execute, yet most firms have valued 

 representatives whom they do not wish to lose, and they have 

 been given temporary office, staiT or departmental positions for 

 the duration of the war ; hence a surplus of staff. Many of the 

 actual operatives, the actual producers, enlisted ; many rushed 

 into better paid government munition work. Hence a shortage 

 of labor and an altogether anomalous condition of affairs. 

 Firms which had started to build, were compelled to leave 

 foundations and walls as they were, for want of builders and 

 of building materials. Meanwhile. x\merican manufacturers with 

 well-stocked warehouses in Great Britain reaped a temporary 

 harvest, as they were permitted to secure and execute orders 

 denied to the British manufacturer. Government work pays 

 well. and. while it lasts, the British manufacturer has no cause 

 for grumbling ; but, it cannot last indefinitely, and British firms 

 soon realized the danger of their home market slipping away 

 from them. Restrictions of importations, particularly of motor- 

 cars and their accessories, quickly hit the foreign competitor. 

 It is safe to say that the war has opened the eyes of British 

 manufacturers tn the weaknesses of their one-sided free trade 

 theory more than the previous 20 years or so of tariff reform 

 propaganda, and more than another 20 years of such propa- 

 ganda by itself would have done. 



The Imperial Conference recently held in London between 

 members of the British Cabinet and British Colonial Premiers 



is hailed as welding the hitlierto loose links of Empire, yet only 

 a few years prior to the war, when such a conference was sug- 

 gested, Winston Churchill, speaking for the government as a 

 responsible cabinet minister, said that "The door was locked, 

 bolted and barred" against what was regarded by the govern- 

 ment as a purely fantastic suggestion. So has the sledge-hammer 

 fact of war changed opinions and theories. When the Chamber 

 of Commerce of Manchester, the very home of free trade, passed 

 a resolution by an overwhelming majority throwing free trade 

 overboard, that policy of buy cheap, regardless of real cost, went 

 into the limbo of things lost. 



This is not an academic discussion. It directly affects Ameri- 

 can manufacturers who desire to secure or retain a share in 

 the markets of Great Britain, and I am firmly convinced that 

 they can do so hereafter only by actually manufacturing in 

 Great Britain. This I think they can do successfully. With 

 their alert methods, their greater willingness to change and im- 

 prove processes, their more generous conception of wage paying 

 and their more elastic idea of interchange of ideas than the 

 very good, but very conservative Britisher holds. Great Britain 

 should be a very profitable field for the American manufacturer, 

 and the British manufacturer would not resent such competition 

 waged on his own ground, employing British labor and paying 

 British taxes fairly and squarely with himself. All this is, of 

 course, for the war after the war. 



For some months I represented an English rubber firm in 

 their Sheffield branch, and a few months ago cutlery manufac- 

 turers there were almost begging for what they term razor scales, 

 which are the coverings for razor handles and for knife and 

 fork handles, these coverings being made of ebonite, or hard 

 rubber. The supply was then extremely limited, the demand 

 practically unlimited. Materials previously used for the purpose 

 — bone, ivory, fiber, etc. — were almost unobtainable. I cannot 

 say to what extent the recent restrictions of cargoes might af- 

 fect the export from this country, but I know that such ebonite 

 articles were (and probably still are) urgently wanted. Some 

 of the largest makers of cutlery were eager to place contracts 

 for three years to cope with government orders alone. 



Pending consultations with some of the leading rubber firms 

 in Great Britain, I engaged in war work in various parts of the 

 country, and came into direct contact witli the quiet, but very 



