160 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[December 1, 1918. 



to-day as at first ; it is certainly not oxidized like certain other 

 brands of extracted rubbers on offer at that date. The guayule 

 sample was well-rubbed with sulphur on account of its tacki- 

 ness, the resin content being about twelve per cent. I do not 

 know whether sulphur is going to be generally used, but it 

 has obvious disadvantages. Perhaps the tackiness will be re- 

 moved in the future so as to render any such addition un- 

 necessary. 



I asked a rubber manufacturer the other day as to his opinion 

 of guayule. He said it was a long time since he had heard the 

 name, but when it was introduced to the English trade he made 

 numerous trials with it. The results, he said, were carefully 

 recorded in note-books which could be referred to if occasion 

 arose. What had been particularly against it was the variation 

 in the quality lost in washing. He had bought it, he said, at 

 prices varying from 36 to 84 cents per pound and there was an 

 impression in the trade that the sellers were getting what they 

 could in an endeavor to induce the manufacturers to arrive at its 

 real, relative commercial value. 



PERSONAL AND TRADE NOTES. 

 At Dublin, on September 17, Dr. Dunlop, the inventor of the 

 pneumatic tire, was summoned for using a motor car contrary 

 to the regulations. The doctor, who is 79 years of age, pleaded 

 necessity and was fined the mitigated penalty of $2.40, the magis- 

 trate characterizing him as a public benefactor. 



Dr. E. M. Muspratt, owing to advancing age, has resigned the 

 chairmanship of British Insulated and Helsby Cable Co., Limited, 

 and is succeeded in that position by James Taylor. Dr. Muspratt 

 will still retain a seat on the board, to which Alexander Roger, 

 of London, has been added. Dr. Muspratt was primarily a chem- 

 ical manufacturer, and a director of the United Alkali Co., of 

 which concern his son, Max Muspratt, is now chairman, while 

 James Taylor has been head of the Helsby Cable Works for many 

 years. 



R. T. Byrne, who presided at the annual meeting of the En.g- 

 land & Birmingham Rubber Co., in September, announces that 

 the company has now acquired all of the shares of the Mitcham 

 Rubber Co., near London, and that in order to finance its various 

 extensions it has decided to issue the balance of £50,000 prefer- 

 ance shares, only il8,500 having so far been issued. 



E. Mather, who has been for the last two or three years presi- 

 dent of the Amalgamated Society of- Lidia Rubber Cable and 

 Asbestos Workers, has resigned this position on appointment as 

 manager of Messrs. Mandleberg's new proofing works, Man- 

 chester. 



With regard to my recent reference to the changes at the Rev- 

 olite Co.'s works, Manchester, I may add that Mr. Reed has now- 

 given up the management which he assumed temporarily, the 

 post now being held by Mr. Crozier, managing director. 



Lord Colwyn, chairman of Charles Macintosh & Co., Limited, is 

 one of a committee of three peers appointed to inquire into the 

 formation and financial arrangements of the British Cellulose 

 and Chemical Manufacturing Co. Severe strictures have been 

 made in responsible quarters about this large new concern, which 

 was primarily established about three years ago for the manu- 

 facture of airplane dope from cellulose acetate, a body which has 

 been made for some years by the Dreyfus process. 



MISCELLANEOUS FOREIGN NOTES. 

 TRAVELERS' TREATY SOON GOES INTO EFFECT. 



THE treaty designed lo protect llie rights and o.ordinale the 

 activities of commercial travelers in all the countries of the 

 Western Hemisphere, has been ratified by a sufiicient number 

 of countries to go into effect. Tliis will be a most important 

 step forward to promote the trade of the United States in 

 Central and South America. 



The new treaty will consolidate all the many annoying pro- 

 vincial and local taxes, licenses, and charges placed on commer- 

 cial travelers into a single, uniform Federal tax. This will 

 enable the trade representative to go anywhere in the country 

 to which he is sent and solicit business in person or by cor- 

 respondence for the period of one year. 



The samples carried by the traveler are privileged to entry 

 at the ports of each country without being subject to duties 

 where they have no commercial value and may be exported 

 within a period of six months, the commercial traveler furnish- 

 ing a bond for strict compliance with the law. 



AMERICAN ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT FOR SWITZERLAND. 



"La Revue de Lausanne" states that the United States has 

 offered to make a loan of 750,000,000 francs to Switzerland in 

 order to electrify the railways. Switzerland thus would become 

 independent of German coal. 



Under the title "Berlin Days," Neville Taylor Gherardi writes 

 interestingly in "The Saturday Evening Post" regarding experi- 

 ences in both Germany and Austria during the time her husband 

 was naval attache at Berlin. Her observations in an Austrian 

 hospital disclose one of the many uses of rubber goods in con- 

 nection with the war, about which little has been written. The 

 narrative reads : 



Nowadays in Europe one talks quite naturally about the little 

 animals that walk on the men in the trenches. I saw in the 

 hospital in Vienna how they kept them out. All patients are re- 

 ceived in a big iron building, where all their garments 

 moved and the patients scrubbed with 

 wounded are put 



HOT-WATER BOTTLES FOR MUFF HAND-WARMERS IN CHINA. 

 The deluge of orders from China for rubber hot-water bottles 

 has at last been explained. All China is not suffering from in- 

 digestion nor an epidemic of Spanish influenza, but it seems that 

 instead of carrying the old-fashioned charcoal hand-warmers in 

 their muffs, the Chinese girls are using rubber hot-water bottles 

 and this custom has become a style or fad. Hot-water bottles 

 are the more popular in that thus used in a muff held close to 

 the person they impart considerable heat to the body while warm- 

 ing the hands. 



ifectants, the badly 

 stretched rubber instead of into tubs to dis- 

 infect them, then wrapped in sheets and taken into the hospital. 

 The clothes are then passed through a high-temperature room, 

 which kills all life in them, after which they are repaired, cleaned 

 and ready for the man again when he is well. There are build- 

 ings large enough to disinfect a whole train at one time after it 

 gets back from the Russian front. 



That was before the present shortage of rubber within the 

 Central Empires became acute. Henceforth this humane treat- 

 ment will in many instances have to be effected by less con- 

 venient means, and the ever-increasing shortage of rubber sur- 

 gical goods can but result in a considerably increased mortality 

 in enemy hospitals. 



NIPPLES FOR FEEDING BOTTLES. 



As has been stated in a previous issue of The lNni.\ Rubber 

 World, feeding bottle nipples are extremely difficult to obtain in 

 Germany. Reworked rubber is now usually employed in making 

 them and a firm at Munich uses a rubber substitute called Sterilin, 

 which is claimed to be free from smell and stickiness, .•\pparent- 

 ly the rubber substitute usually produced by the industrious Ger- 

 man chemist is not quite the perfect article it claims to be. 



TIRES FROM TOADSTOOLS. 

 The scarcity of cork in Germany led to an investigation of 

 possible substitutes that is reported to have resulted in the 

 invention by Wohlfart and Sachovitz of a process by which 

 toadstools are converted into an elastic substance, suitable for 

 making stoppers for bottles, rings for preserve jars and in mak- 

 ing automobile tires, etc. 



