218 CAOUTCHOUC AND GUTTA-PERCHA. 
important invention has opened to the plant-juice almost all branches of 
human industry. The importation of that gum and the amount of goods 
manufactured from it are increasing with astonishing rapidity. Most of the 
factories are in the States of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, and Gonneeticut. Thousands of people find there employment and 
gain. The work is chiefly done by boys and girls, but adult men, and even 
artists, are variously employed. One of the most important articles ig springs 
for railroad cars, the patented monopoly for which, in the Union, belongs to the 
“New England Car Spring Company,” which yearly works up about 400,000 
pounds of the raw material. For some other articles its consumption is equally 
immense. Thus several million pairs of India-rubber shoes are yearly manufac- 
tured in the United States, the “ Hayward Company” producing daily several 
thousand pairs. Some of the finest shoes, such as would preserve their gloss 
after the longest sea-voyage, are manufactured by “Hartshorn & Co.,” in 
Providence. 
And yet the working up of this peculiar product of natures still in its infancy ; 
every day discloses new ways of using it. Already attempts are being 
made to coat the submarine telegraph wires with India-rubber, and. this sub- 
stance is also to be used for nautical charts, instead of paper. As it can be 
rolled into sheets of the greatest thinness, it seems to be destined to replace 
paper in various respects. Maps, globes, &c., are already prepared from it. An 
extraneous circumstance will promote this development. It is already regarded 
as a fact that the consumption of paper is now out of proportion to the produc- 
tion of the raw material necessary for it, to wit, rags. All efforts to check the © 
increase of this disproportion, through the use of other raw materials, have as 
yet produced but an incomplete—by no means effective—result. This is par- 
ticularly noticeable in the North American Union, which, as of so many other 
things, can boast of a grand journalistic and other literary productiveness, and 
vainly looks for raw materials in the European market for its immense paper con- 
sumption. The remedy will not be long sought for; the indications are already 
given. Bleached gutta-percha, especially, is better adapted for lithographic 
printing than the finest Chinese paper; it yields really admirable copies. By 
wetting it with a solution of gutta-percha in sulphuretted carbon, printing paper 
can most easily be transformed into writing paper. , 
A peculiar branch of this new industry is the now immense production of 
toys for children. However sad a part the German may play in his own house, 
and however grievous the offence this subjects him to on the, part of proud na- 
tions, the honor of being the teacher of mankind remains to him intact. Ger- 
man scientific industry labors for the benefit of the whole universe. Thus 
Nuremburg can boast of having been for centuries the privileged teacher of the 
children of all nations and races ; its toys contributing to develop the first ideas 
in the children’s world. But this privilege is now contested by the industry 
of the United States. Instead of the harmless dogs and cats imported from 
Nuremberg, babies receive there as toys India-rubber eagles, horses, lions, and 
leopards, destined to rouse their power of observation. The importation of 
German toys has suffered by it, but the industrial products of Nuremberg, or 
what goes by that name, will not easily yield the ground. At the Paris ex- 
hibition we saw a host of those North American toys, but these were deficient 
in neatness and taste; they entirely lacked the gracefulness of the Nuremburg, 
* and especially of the Wurtembergian manufactures, which at the Munich Exhibi- 
tion so vividly brought back to our mind all the charms of our half-forgotten 
childhood. Already at the London Exhibition the new American articles of 
India-rubber manufacture became objects of general attention. Charles Goodyear, 
of New Haven, Connecticut, and Charles Mackintosh & Co., the two principal 
representatives of the cauotchoue industry in America and England, were the 
