The daily monitor leader. [volume] (Mount Clemens, Mich.) 1942-19??, 1942-12-22


who view the postwar pros
pect with the old cowhand's
pessimism.
BY ARTHUR KUDNER
Look about you. The unlock
ing of the world imagination is
under way.
All the fruits of science are
Just beginning to ripen. In terms
of factories, machines, transport
tation, almost anything mater
ial you can name, we n e
means and opportunities in such
measure and variety as the past
could scarcely have dared ina
CINE.
Under the pressures OF the
war there are developing in this
country the makings of an era
of prosperity and expansion so
widespread and dazzling as TO
make anything in our earlier
experience seem puny potatoes
indeed.
Let us examine a very few OF
the things that foreshadow what
may be. The normal monthly
output of new locomotive horse
power in peacetime in this coun-
try is about 100000. In another
year we should be producing in
mir horsepoWer per month some
thing like 20,O00,000. After the
war, this immense bank of en-
CINE power will have to be dis
persed. Progress in manufacture
will force it. The dispersal Will
be made at absurdly low cost. At
the close of the last war saw
OX-5 engines costing thousands
of dollars to build sell at $50.
POWER SPEEDS TRADE
The dispersal of tn S vast
amount of air horsepower will
work a revolution in business.
transportation, and communica-
ton. Spell out its implications
for yours as you prefer,
whether in terms of tree-ripened
oranges picked tonight in Cali
fornia, which will be on the New
York market at eight o'clock to-
morrow morning or Of transcon-
tinental thinking, accelerating
from, so to speak, eight days
from coast to coast, to eight
hours. The whole velocity OF
trade, travel, living, will speed
UP proportionately, and market
wise this can be made to mean
at least the equivalent of dou-
bling the population. The rail-
roads and airlincs alike know
all this we'll, and already are
studying their potentials.
The new industries that are
incubating now are almost UNI
countable and unimaginable in
their eventual effect. think 1t
entirely possible that in five
years a rubber tree will be as
foolish economically as a wild
strawberry.
When you can determine at
the outset the characteristics IN
a raw material that will exactly
fit it to its ultimate function,
why should you putter around
with the milk of a rubber tree?
A tire tread needs different
material from q garden hose, an
oil pipe from a shoe sole, an air
plane connection to serve 30
below zero from a kitchen floor
covering. Why handicap your
self by s.arting with the same
mater al for all these different
Applicant rs and services?
ACCIDENTAL ASSETS
Progress on synthetic rubbers
will in the next few years an
swer that one with what is
known in the popular idiom as
the bird especially when the
accidental discoveries bound to
come out of present activity
have made their contribution.
Even Charles Goodyear had to
thank an accident for the vul-
canization of rubber, and we
haven't begun yet to be able to
audit our accidents on the as
set side in the matter of syn
thetics.
Even so, we are much farther
ahead on artificial rubbers than
most people think, except in
point of physical capacity. Any
one of perhaps a dozen synthet-
les today will beat the result
we got out Of natural rubber
in tires thirty years ago at a
comparable stage of the art, and
in 1898 Goodyear built synthetic
tires with longer tread wear
than could be had then from the
best of natural rubber.
A few weeks ago l talked OF
this with the erstwhile manager
NJ one of the leading rubber
plantations of the Far East.
Somewhat to my surprise he
agreed.
81 have been doing some fig
uring." he said, land on the
basis of what we know even
now can produce more rubber
with $50 men in a factory than
can produce with 10000 men
on q plantation. Or, to put II
another way, can get more