360 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 194 5 



3. The speed with which the synthetic rubber industry has been 

 developed ranks among the major miracles of our war effort, but there 

 are some flies in that ointment, too. The principal one is that no one 

 has so far been able to compound a true synthetic rubber, and the 

 substances which are being: used to substitute for the natural product 

 lack some of its virtues. Normally about 72 percent of the rubber used 

 in this country goes into tires, and the synthetics are not as good as 

 natural rubber for that purpose. Mixing the two helps a lot, and even 

 German tires captured today assay a goodly percentage of natural 

 rubber. 



On the other hand, synthetic rubber is better for some purpose than 

 the natural product, so there will always doubtless be a market for a 

 certain quantity of it regardless of the availability of crude. Specific 

 cost figures have not yet been released, but its proponents freely 

 predict that it will eventually get onto a competitive basis with 

 plantation crude. Then, too, the chemists are working desperately 

 to improve their product and there is always the chance that they 

 may develop a synthetic equal in all respects to natural rubber. The 

 fact that the Germans have not done so in 30-odd years of experi- 

 mentation is by no means proof positive of its impossibility. There 

 is a lot of money and human ambition tied up in this huge, if still 

 embryo, industry, and you can wager that a tremendous struggle will 

 be made to avoid having to junk it after the war. 



4. When the war is over, one school of thought will be certain that 

 we must never again become dependent upon a rubber supply thou- 

 sands of miles over the sea. But another will be equally insistent that 

 we must buy rubber from the East in order to sell goods there. Which 

 will be the stronger no one now knows. British thought on the subject 

 seems to foresee a compromise whereunder both ends will be served. 

 We would buy some rubber from the plantations but also maintain 

 sufficient domestic production to provide for a quick expansion to 

 self-sufficiency if necessary. 



WHAT PRICE GUAYULE? 



So what price guayule? Standing between a 750-million-dollar 

 synthetic colossus on the one hand and a million-ton-per-annum hevea 

 giant on the other, it is apt to be trampled under foot unnof iced. And 

 yet, there is an excellent chance that it may be one of those rare stones 

 capable of killing several economic birds at one fling. There is no 

 doubt about the quality of the product, and in conjunction with our 

 best synthetics it could serve all our rubber needs. We would have 

 a source of rubber, to quote the Baruch report, "which could not be 

 lost to us short of conquest of American territory." We would have 



