The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-12-21
BY ARTHUR KUDNER

All the fruits of science are Just beginning to ripen. Tn terms Of factories, machines, transportation, almost anything material you can name, we have means and oppor- tlrnities in such measure and var iety as the past could scarcely have dared imagine,
 Und.r the pressures of the war there are developing in this coln- try the makings of an era of pros- rarity and expansion so widespread and dazzling as to make anything in oil- earlier experience seem puny potatoes indeed.
 Let us examine very few of the things that foreshadow what may be The normal monthly out put of new locomotive horse powe. in peacetime in this coun- try is about 10000. In another year We should te producing in air horsepower per month some thing like 2O0Oo,0O0. After the war. this immense bank Of engine power will have to be dispersed. Progress in manufacture will fore. 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 S90.
 POWER SPEEDS TRADE
 The dispersal of this vast amount Of air horsepower will work a rev. olutlon in business, transportation, and communication. Spell out its implications for yourself as you pre- fer, whether in terms of tr-e-rip- ened oranges picked tonight in Cal iforr Ia, which will be on the New Yorh market at eight o'clock tomor- row norning or of transcontinental shipping generally, or more im- portant, transcontinental thinking. accelerating from, so 10 srcak. eight days from coast to coast, to eight hous The whole velocity of trade travel. living. will speed up propor tione tely, and marketwise this can he n ade to mean at least the equiv al-nr Of doubling tEc population. The railroads and arlines al e know all this well. and already are studying their potentials. .
 The new industries that are in- cubating now are almost uncount- acle and unimaginable in their eventual effect. I think it ent!l tly possible that in five years rubber tree will be as foolish economically as wild strawberry.
 Wien you can determine at the outset the characteristics in raw material that will exactly fit it to its ultimate function, why should you butter around with the milk of a rubber tree? A tire tread needs different material from a garden hose, an oil p.pe from a shoe sole, an airplane ccnnec ion to 9.rve at 30 below zero from a kitchen flcor covering. Why handi- cap yourself by starting with the tame ma .erial for all these differ ent applications and services?
 ACCIDENTAL ASSETS
 Progress on synthetic rubbers will in the next few years answer that orc with what is known in faAC POpu4dA idlOAh dS llIc DLiN- especially when the accidental discoveries bound to come out oi present activity have made their contribution. Even Charles Good year had to thank an accident for the vulcaniZation of rub-Lr, and we haven't begun yet to be able 70 audit our accidents on the as- set side in the matter of syn :heticS.
 Even so, we are much farther ahead on artificial rubbers thar most people think, except in point of physical capacity. Any one oi perhaps a dozen synthetics today will beat the result we got out ol natural rubber in tires thirty years ago and at a comparable stage of the art, and in 1888 Goodyear bull synthetic tires with longe- treaC wear than could t'e had then iron she best of pa,ural rubber.
 A few weeks ago I talked oi .his with the erstwhile manager of one of the leading rubber plan tations of the Far East. Some what to my surprise he agr,ed T have been doing some figur- ing he said, and on the basi of what We know even now I car produce more rubber with 35l men in a factory than I can pro duce win 10000 men on a planta- ton. Or, to put 1t another way. can get more rubber from 40 acres of factory space than can gel from 50,000 acres of plantation"
 On the new industries side. we are just about to enter the plas- tics and light metals age. Oui capacity in aluminium is on the way up from 800 million pounds year to somewhere near scheduled billion pounds year and in its raw state aluminium is twice as plentiful as iron. Our magnesium output increase is also up by 1000 per cent or more.
 LIGHT METALS ABUNDANT
 What this can mean as a con- tributor {. a nc" economy ol plenty can be visualized from the fact that magnesium is available by oceanfuls; 1t is many times more abundant than such old and useful stand-bys as zinc, lead copper. and nickel combined.
 It is no visionary to say that be- fore we are through. this shift to light metals may b. as consequen- tial as the shift from the bronze age % the iron age. Think back to a time much later than that, and recall how steel ushercd in an era of unprecedented progress and wealth that changed the face oi she earth and cefashioned the so- cial and political ideologies of man. kind. And already steels day is passing the meridian. Around the eorner is coming new and fabu-