GROWING RUBBER IN CALIFORNIA — PERRY 361 



a new, tough, drought-resistant crop for a section of the country which 

 can very handily use just such a new cash crop in normal times. We 

 would have a new industry for the employment of American labor and 

 capital. 



Maybe none of those considerations will be strong enough to pre- 

 vail against the natural urge of a ration-weary nation to cut all specu- 

 lation and head for the shortest road back to normal stock piles. 

 Whatever else is done, though, it would seem to be the part of common 

 sense at least to continue a strong program of guayule research, and 

 on a sufficient scale to test its possibilities under conditions of com- 

 mercial production. There is still a vast deal to be learned about 

 guayule, in fact we are only at the threshold of the subject, liubber is 

 one of our really dangerous national deiiciencies and we ought not to 

 overlook any bets where it is concerned. 



POSTSCRIPT 



A great deal of water has gone over the guayule dam during the 

 relatively brief time since the foregoing was published, in May 1944. 

 Another high peak and another very low valley have been added to 

 the already extremely eccentric chart of the Emergency Eubber Proj- 

 ect's history. 



Early in 1945 the natural-rubber situation became so acute that a 

 committee from the rubber industry surveyed the guayule fields and 

 recommended the immediate harvest and milling of the entire crop, 

 regardless of its immaturity. Four new mills were to be built by the 

 Government and operated under contract by the Firestone Tire & 

 Rubber Co. 



Preliminary work on the new program was well under way when the 

 Japanese war ended. On the theory that natural rubber from the 

 Orient would shortly start flowing to America again, and considering 

 the admittedly uneconomical nature of the proposed expansion, work 

 on it was stopped. For the time being the project reverted to its orig- 

 inal plan to continue with an orderly harvesting of the crop, but in 

 the general clean-up of outmoded war projects it was decided to wind 

 up its affairs and clear the remaining 27,000 acres of land for return 

 to the owners. 



Thus is spotlighted the national security values of guayule. While 

 it happened that events broke in such a manner as to make it seem 

 desirable to not harvest some 85 percent of the guayule crop, if the 

 war had continued even a little longer there is no doubt at all that 

 the rubber in it would have been worth almost its weight in gold. 



Another event of great potential significance to guayule culture was 

 the introduction in Congress of what is known as the Poage bill. In 



