India Rubber World Classic Reprint

Excerpt from India Rubber World It has been the pleasant task of The India Rubber World, month after month, to record all these and many other elements of growth and progress in the trade. It is still remembered in the office that when the publication of the paper was first proposed, there were friends of the Editor who fell it to be a mistake, because they thought he could never find matter enough in relation to rubber to fill its pages. On the other hand, it has been a constant problem how to get within the limits of the paper as full a review as was desirable of the growth of the trade. It may interest some readers to have the fact recalled that when the first India Rubber World was printed, raw rubber was "high," having just advanced above 60 cents a pound for fine Para. A price so low as 60 cents has never again been recorded in our pages. The New Study of Rubber No fact in connection with rubber culture is more fruitful of promise than the disposition of students of the scientific production of rubber, in Ceylon and elsewhere, to learn the various uses to which rubber is put, and the different processes of manufacture, with a view to best adapting the raw material to its final disposal. This seems perfectly logical, and yet it is not so very many years since even manufacturers regarded rubber as rubber, just as lead is simply lead. But the requirements of the rubber factory are numerous and widely different, and the most successful management is that which best selects the grade or quality of rubber suited to each particular use. If this is true, it is none the less desirable that the producers of rubber should have an intelligent idea of what is requisite in high class material, to guide them in supplying the wants of the factory. If a difference in methods of the coagulation or drying of rubber, or its packing for shipment, or conditions of storage, renders certain lots of rubber better or worse than certain others, it is not intelligent plantation management to ignore the various details involved. Hence we were pleased recently when Mr. Burgess, a government expert in rubber in the Malay States, while on a visit to Europe, devoted so much of his time to discussing with the manufacturers of rubber goods the qualities which they desired in their raw material for this, that, and the other purpose. And Mr. Herbert Wright, whose book on "Para Rubber" is reviewed elsewhere in this issue, devotes serious attention to similar questions. If rubber is required for waterproofing or insulation or motor tires or solution - what can the plantation manager do to give the manufacturer the raw material best suited to his needs? But this study must not be left to the rubber producer alone. It is equally encouraging to note the increasing tendency among experts in rubber factories to study their raw materials, not merely from the time of their arrival in the stock room, but from the moment of the extraction of latex from the rubber tree. There was a time, of course, when the rubber manufacturer or his superintendent could not go further hack than to the stock room in dealing with the nature of different rubber sorts. But now that so much rubber is being produced under conditions which permit of careful scientific observation, we may look forward to the time when the rubber manufacturer will insist upon a definite treatment of the latex which enters into the rubber which he is to use, just as certain consumers of rubber goods now order upon specifications, rigid compliance with which they insist upon. We have in mind at least one successful manufacturer, on a large scale, who has given careful study to many details in connection with the preparation of crude rubber who feels that he has derived great benefit therefrom, and his example is worthy of a wide following. We do not doubt that a great advance in the rubber industry would follow the organization of a Rubber Co.