362 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 194 5 



1944 a House Committee headed by Representative Poage of Texas 

 made a study of the project and guayule growing in general. The re- 

 sult was introduction of legislation designed to promote guayule grow- 

 ing and processing by private enterprise. The bill, which passed the 

 House but at this writing (December 1945) is still pending in the 

 Senate, provides for a support price of 28 cents per pound for do- 

 mestically produced guayule rubber for a period of 10 years. The 

 benefits are restricted to a total of 400,000 acres during the period, and 

 to 100 acres per grower per year. It also provides for continuing re- 

 search in connection with guayule and other rubber-bearing plants. 



While guayule development seems to be stalemated in this country, 

 for the time being at least, the project gave impetus to its development 

 elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. The Continental-Mexican 

 Rubber Co., oldest and largest of the wild-guayule operators in Mexico 

 has launched a large guayule-culture program, using initially 

 50,000,000 plants supplied by the Emergency Rubber Project. A 

 smaller cultural project in Mexico was started by the General Tire & 

 Rubber Co., which built a mill there during the war. Argentina 

 bought 5 tons of guayule seed from this Government, and is negotiat- 

 ing for the purchase of seeding and transplanting equipment. 



So our humble desert shrub, after thirty-odd years of rather dif- 

 fident knocking, seems at last to have gotten its foot into the door of 

 the Western Hemisphere's rubber business. Whether or not it will be 

 able to stay remains to be seen, but at least its chances have been vastly 

 improved by the intensive research to which it has been subjected 

 during the life of the war-born Government project. 



