The daily Alaskan., 1917-02-06
STORY OF RUBBER,
The Romance of This Now Highly
 Prized Material.
WAS OF LITTLE USE AT FIRST.

Not Until the Muloanizina Proosss Was
 Invented Did Its Vast Possibilities
 Become Apparent--HOw thesAmazon Monopoly Was BEoICon.
 The average man believes that rub Der is rubber, just as silver Is silver and ivory Is ivory; but, as matter of &ct, the different kinds of rubber run into the hundreds. If you were to take up one of the commercial dailies which devote their columns to the news of the different industries you would find prices quoted on thirty or forty differ ent sorts of rubber. Some are called after their geographical location, some take their name from the method of preparation, and others have names de- scriptive of their form.
 Originally all rubber came from the valley of the Amazon. When 1t was first discovered no one knows. At any rate, when the first white men, follow ing along after Columbus, visited South America they found the Indians play ing with balls made from the exuda- tion of the bark of a certain tree, and these balls differed from any the Europeans had ever seen, for they bounded and rebounded and were full of life. But that was not the only use the Indians put this milk of the tree to. They smeared 1t on their blankets to make them waterproof.
 Still, POO years and more went by, and, while many wise men believed this elastic, cohesive, impermeable sub stance ought to be full of usefulness, nobody found any way to use 1t to any advantage-it was 80 brittle in cold weather and so disposed to get soft in hot weather. But in the -fullness of time a Connecticut Yankee started to puzzle 1t out. It took him the better part of ten years, but he did 1t, and in 1889 gave the world his Vulcanization process, which isiin use today.
 Up to that time rubber was so cheap that ships from South America some times used 1t as ballast, taking their chances of selling it for what they could get in some American port. With the discovery of the vulcanizing process rubber took on a new hue and a new value, and the tropics were searched for 1t everywhere. 1t was found in the vines of Africa, and gutta percha, a sort of first cousin to rubber, was found in Borneo, and some years ago a large volume. of rubber was found in the guayule shrubs of Mex leo.
 As rubber grew in value the chem ists fell to work and devised ways of recovering 1t from Oldashoes and hose and other articles Into which 1t en- tered, and thus reclaimed rubber" soon came to equal the new rubber in volume, and all these varieties found some legitimate use. Gutta percha makes unapproachable insulation for ocean cables. Balata, which comes from the Guianas, Is famous for belt ing, and even reclaimed rubber" taken from junk heaps, serves perfect ly well for flooring and mats and other articles where resiliency is not needed.
 For many years the best rubber was that which came from the banks of the Amazon. The people of that country enjoyed practical monopoly and de- termined to keep it. Not rubber seed would they let get out of the country, under heavy penalties. But from time immemorial the fear of punishment has given way before the lure Of shin ing gold, and in 1876, by means of gen. erous presents here and there, ven turesome Englishman sailed out of the Amazon with 10000 rubber seeds, and that was the start of the great rubber plantations of Ceylon and the Malay peninsula.
 The beginning was slow. It was twenty-nine years after these seeds left the Amazon before the first plantation rubber was ready for the market, and then the total was only 145 tons. That was In 1905. But since then the pro uuCLlOu Ol DluuldlAOAA 0bDNA Ai@AS 6AS"A enormously, until now it is about 1OO,- 900 tons.
 Various rubbers can be used for vari- ous purposes. For some purposes lifeless rubber will answer well enough, while for other purposes the only rub Der that will adequately serve is the one that has life and resilency and toughness. There are numberless rub Der articles of commerce where resili- ency and wear combined are necessary and where cheaper grades or too large a proportion of reclaimed rubber" Is the poorest sort of economy.-Hartford Times.
 Suspicious.
 "There's a man outside who wants