630 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



lArcusT 1. 1917. 



cars, or two and one-half times the present total. As- 

 suming an average life of five years per machine, a:i 

 annual replacement of 2,000,000 cars, our present pro"- 

 duction, will be necessary to maintain 10,000,000 in op- 

 eration. 



Translating this prediction into tires, 10,000,000 cars 

 will average five tires annually, or 50.000,000 in all. The 

 2,000.000 cars constructed every year will require 8,- 

 000.000 tires for original equipment, and as each owner 

 soon buys a spare for quick change on the road 2,000,000 

 more may be added, making a colossal grand total of 

 60,000,000 tires and a business amounting to $1,250,000,- 

 000 annually. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF COST ACCOUNTING. 



THE value of the Federal Trade Commission's com- 

 prehensive campaign of education in cost ac- 

 counting can hardly be overestimated. If the expert 

 information, constructive suggestions and profifered 

 cooperation be heeded, the results promise to be 

 epoch-making in the upbuilding of American industry 

 on a more stable basis than hitherto. 



Business success at all times depends upon a com- 

 plete and accurate knowledge of the cost of produc- 

 tion and of selling. This is more emphatically true 

 to-day than ever before because of keen competition 

 in our home markets, due to ever-rising prices, and 

 the certainty of even keener competition in the mar- 

 kets of the world after the war. We want a rightful 

 share of the world's trade, particularly that of the 

 western hemisphere ; but it must be secured at a 

 profit if it is to be worth the getting, and the manufac- 

 turer who does not know- his true costs may price his 

 goods foolishly and impair the business of his sound 

 competitcy-s while he ruins his own. The cost of sell- 

 ing, no less important than that of production, is too 

 often almost entirely lost sight of. Every manufac- 

 turer must expect to face the low prices due to effi- 

 ciency, but even the most efficient concern is not al- 

 ways able to meet cut-throat prices based on 

 ignorance. 



It is a fact that hundreds of industries are at the 

 present time without adequate information regarding 

 their own affairs, indicating that a large number of 

 executives, however intimate their technical knowl- 

 edge of manufacturing processes, do not have an 

 intelligent grasp of general business methods. The 

 Federal Trade Commission recognizes that the only 

 basis for any industry is a solid foundation of 

 fact, and that the installation of adequate cost ac- 

 counting systems will not only insure fairer competi- 

 tion and better prices based on efficiency, but will re- 

 move many of the difficulties arising between com- 

 petitors in business as well as between the govern- 

 ment and business. To this end, the initiative has 

 been taken to cooperate with trade associations en- 

 deavoring to work out uniform and adequate cost 



accounting systems for their entire industry. It is 

 n(Jt the intention to urge any particular method. 

 Each industry must work out its own plans- but the 

 Commission stands ready to act in an advisory 

 capacity and to approve as the standard system for 

 any particular industry that method of accounting 

 which is found to be adequate and uniformly satis- 

 factory to those concerned. In lending hearty sup- 

 port to this progressive movement the rubber trade 

 will be doing itself and the nation a service. 



TRAINING YOUNG MEN FOR EXPORT TRADE. 



PERHAPS the greatest need in building up a suc- 

 cessful foreign trade in rubber goods, or manu- 

 factured articles of any sort, is a staff of representa- 

 tives who speak the language of the nation to which 

 they are to go ; who understand the details of the 

 business they are to represent ; and who have had a 

 sound training in economics, finance and commerce, 

 with minds trained to grasp situations quickly and 

 schooled in what might be termed the diplomacy of 

 Inisiness. Young and aggressive, though tactful 

 men, are needed ; men who will not require so much 

 direction upon assuming their posts as to make them 

 cost more than they are worth. 



To meet this need quickly and well, progressive 

 rubber manufacturers may well take a leaf from the 

 book of the National City Bank of New York. In 

 order to provide men for its many foreign branches, 

 this great institution has worked out a plan of co- 

 operation with universities and colleges whereby 

 promising juniors and seniors are taken into the bank 

 during their summer vacations and upon their gradua- 

 tion are. placed in a preparatory training class. Dur- 

 ing these periods of training every effort is made to 

 teach them not only the fundamentals of the busi- 

 ness they are to represent, but those tilings which are 

 so essential to foreign work, such as national charac- 

 teristics and customs, methods of doing business and 

 practical business conversation in the required 

 foreign tongue. 



England and Germany have long been pursuing 

 similar methods in the promotion of foreign trade, 

 and such a course on the part of American industrial 

 as well as banking firms will do much to obtain and 

 secure our logical share of the world's commerce 

 after the war. 



If the results of Germany's U-Boat activities 

 are measured by arrivals of crude rublier from Eng- 

 land, the campaign is a failure. 



For the first six months of 1916. approximately 11,- 

 000 tons of crude rubber was imported to the United 

 States from London, Liverpool and Hull. For the first 

 six months of 1917, there were 24,000 tons, or more 

 than double that amount, from the same ports, and that 

 despite the German submarines. 



