Imperial Valley press., 1942-07-17
CAPITAL TALKS
by
Peter
Edison

Subject of How 10 Bullu boiiiiAe
in Washington. The phrase
building bonfire of course relers
to the business of waking up lot oil
these supposedly dumb and SLOW
moving bureaucrats they have run
ming this war down in the capital
now. Before you make up your
mind on that point, however, wait
till you get to the end of the story.
The laboratory demonstration Tor
this sample bonfire-making expert
ment will be the recent case OF the
Houdry Process Corporation which,
out of clear sky just a few days
ago. by apparently spontaneous
combustion, exploded in maSnl1l-
cent full-paee ads captioned;
The American Public Has a
Right to Know THE TRUTH
ABOUT SYNTHETIC RUBBER.
In excellent industrial advertising
taste. the ad stated that the Houdry
Process Corporation had system
for producing butadiene in plants
that could be built in less time. at
less cost and using less critical
materials than any process now De
ing considered by the government
in its synthetic rubber program.
Thead help hope of tires or recapS
even for civilians.
On the same day the ad appear
er. Eugene J. Houdry, president
of the corporation and inventor
of the catalytic process that bears
his name, held press conference
i'm Washington. 1t was well at
tended. and as the wire services,
the specials and the radio all
went to town on Mr.. Houdry's
statements, it created quite bon
fire. Even the labor press en-
dorsed it with big stories on the
general theme of "Why doesn't
somebody do something about
this?"
Now Mr.. Houdry is no phony. he
is a French-born American cltl-
zen. president of the De Gaulle-
backing France Forever Society, lie
has been written up in Fortune
and his catalytic process is used by
half a dozen or more big oil com
panies in the manufacture OF 1OC
octane aviation gasoline. But al
Mr.. Houdry's press conference, ne
made charges that although some
of these leading oil companies =
notably Sun. Socony-Vacuum ano
Standard of California-had thor
ouehlv investigated and approved
his process at the Marcus HOOK
Pa. pilot plant, the government
Rubber Reserve Company, II
charge of the synthetic rubber pro-
gram, had merely sent one engineer
up for couple of hours superficial
investigation, then written Mr.
Houdry saying that although they
were not rejecting his process they
did not believe it sufficiently de-
veloped. The inferences were clearly
that the government people were a
bunch of dopes who didn't know a
good thing when they saw 1t.
PRESS AGENT FEEDS FIRE
When Mr.. Houdry was asked fof
a COPY Of the letter from Rubber
Reserve. he consulted with his pub
lie relations counsel and decided
that the letter, if given out, should
come from RR. incidentally. III
building a bonfire in Washington
rule No. l seems to be to hire a
press agent to fan the flames anol
throw on paper in the form OF
handouts. The Houdry pubic re-
lations man was Frank Waltman
formerly chief publicity man Tor the
Republican partyD
All the foregoing was right out
i'm the open, but there are several
angles of the story that have to
be dug for. In the first place, two
of the oil companies which Mr..
Houdry said had approved his
process for making butadiene, sun
Oil and SocOny- Vacuum, each
owns nearly a third interest in
the Houdry Process corporation.
:
isa vice president of both sun
and Houdry. Sun Oil thus far
has no part of the governments
butadiene program, in which
Standard of New Jersey is OF
course dominant from the oil
standpoint.
It is therefore natural and not
in the least dishonorable that the
gentlemen of Sun, Socony- Vacuum
and Houdry might have figured that
if this synthetic rubber industry is
going to amount to something, they
would be wanting a piece of it, The
motives could be entirely patriotic
as Mr.. Houdry said they were, but
they could also be strictly business
Hence the bonfire.
ONE-SIDED BLAZE