106 



[August, 1912. 



prices would have to be paid for direct 

 manufacture. 



THE POINT 

 which it is necessary to make is. that 

 any calculation of the cost of a given 

 product by means of laboratory experi- 

 ments is necessarily very conjectural. 

 In tlii-i case it is more than usually 

 so. Professor Pei kin admitted that 

 the tv hole question was in an experi- 

 mental stage, and apparently assuming 

 that the discovery of Professor Fern- 

 bach would reduce the price of Butyl 

 alrohol from £130 to £30 per ton, he 

 did not go further than to suggest that 

 "there was a probability" that syn- 

 thetic rubber could be produced at 

 2s. 6d per lb. and "a possibility " of 

 production at a cost of Is. per lb. Sir 

 William Ramsay, though very opti- 

 mistic, intimated that at least two years 

 of experimental work is ahead before a 



MANUFACTURING PLANT 



can be commenced. And the company 

 which, it is stated, is being formed will 

 apparently occupy itself not primarily 

 in the production of rubber but in test- 

 ing commercially the first stage of the 

 process, namely the production of cheap 

 butyl-alcohol and acetone— the latter 

 being a valuale ingredient in the manu- 

 facture of smokeless powder. If and when 

 that problem is successfully solved, the 

 question of the commercial production 

 of synthetic rubber will begin to come 

 within the range of practical politics, 

 provided that the chemical processes 

 do not prove too expensive ; and pos- 

 sibly by that time we may have some 

 evidence as to 



WHETHER THE ARTIFICIAL IS EQUAL TO 

 THE NATURAL PRODUCT. 



Natural rubber differs enormously in 

 value, and quite possibly the artificial 

 product might not find a market at 2s. 

 or 3s. below the price of hard Pava. 

 This, of course, can only be ascertained 

 in course of time, and the fact which 

 Rubber shareholders should bear in mind 

 is that the lecture of Professor Perkin 

 on " the production and polymerisa- 

 tion of isoprene and its homologues " 



did not carry us further than a sugges- 

 tion that a way had been found by which 



IT MIGHT, SOME YEARS HENCE, 

 be possible to manufacture chemical rub- 

 ber at a comparatively low figure. 



It may be useful in this connection 

 to recall the history of the production 

 of nitrate from the air, which was once 

 a similar periodical bogey to holders of 

 Nitrate shares. In the course of years 

 the mechanical difficulties were in that 

 case actually solved (after a good deal 

 of money had been lost in the process), 

 and nitrate of lime, produced by elec- 

 tricity from the air, is now being manu- 

 factured and sold in considerable quan- 

 tities. It has, however, had no effect 

 whatever upon the price of nitrate 

 of soda, and the market entirely dis- 

 regards the development of the industry 

 which was once its bugbear. In the 

 same way, it; is probable that twelve 

 months hence the present 



SCARE WITH REGARD TO SYNTHETIC 

 RUBBER 



will be forgotten and it is long odds 

 against any sufficient quantity of such 

 material being produced as to affect 

 prices for many years to come. In the 

 meantime holders of Rubber shares should 

 disregard the alarmist statements which 

 have been circulated, the more so as 

 they do not appear to be altogether dis- 

 interested. Advance prospectuses of a 

 venture called the 

 SYNTHETIC PRODUCTS MANUFACTURING 

 COMPANY 



are now being privately circulated, the 

 capital being a modest half-million, while 

 Sir William Ramsay heads the list of 

 Directors. This, perhaps, accounts for the 

 publicity which has been given the scien- 

 tific discoveries said to have been made, 

 but, at the same time synthetic rubber is, 

 in the preliminary document, merely 

 held out as a dream of the future, the 

 estimates of profits being based on the 

 manufacture and sale of acetone and 

 fusel oil distilled from starch. That 

 being the case, it would have been, per- 

 haps, as well if rubber had been kept 

 rather more in the background than it 

 has been. 



