The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-06-08

COuun1GCSe II d b
made this group of tough farm bloc
senator's, including McNary, Wheel
err, Norris, Smith and Thomas Of
Oklahoma, all the more determined
to find outlets for surplus farm
crops.
Behind the scenes, this is battle
of giants. These senators, and
other congressman as WE'LL are be-
ginning to get mad. AS prelimin-'
airy to one of the subcommittee re-
cent hearings, they voiced their ire
over what they felt was a rum
around being given them by WPB.
Their constituents have difficulty in
getting contracts or attention. The
industrial areas are getting rich OF
war production, while the farmers
can't. And so on.
This should be the chance for ag-
ricultural chemistry to win a per-
manent place in the industrial
scheme, to work off these huge crop
SURPRISES, to get away from doing
out all these millions Of dollars for
farm subsidies and farm benefits.
Agricultural chemistry should com.
pete equally with the mineral chem
icals industries like petroleum pro-
ducts and coal by-products.
DOWN ON
THE FARM
The farm bloc senators would like
ideally, to see a lot of smaller alco-
hol distilleries right in the farm
belt. The alcohol in turn would be
made into butadiene, which would
be made into synthetic rubber.
The WPB argument is that this
would take to much critical mater
ial, 1900 tons of steel and 10 tons
of copper, for instance, to make a
still that would turn out 2.5 million
gallons of alcohol a year. So the
WPB program calls for the use OF
existing industrial alcohol plants,
plus production from whiskey dis
tilleries converted to making alco-
hol. This plan will use 1856 million
bushels of grain - corn and rye,
mostly, but some wheat. That's a
Sizeable program, but still not
enough to satisfy the farm bloc.
What they complain about partic-
ularly is the slowness with which
the synthetic rubber program is get
ting under way. The committee is
collecting evidence on progress of
some of these plants. Typical is the
case of the Shell Union Oil Com
pany, which on February 20 got a
letter of intent from the govern
ment's Rubber Reserve Company to
build two plants to produce $4,000
tons of butadiene a year, This was
rescinded by Rubber Reserve on
March IL and provision made for
one plant of $4,000 tons capacity.
To date, no construction has been
started, no materials arranged for,
no prorities scheduled, and the
company estimates that 1t will be
performing miracles If the plant
is built in from II to l6 months.
Other examples show similar slow
motion.
One practical difficulty, of course,
Is that all this synthetic rubber pro-
gram is still largely in the labora-
tory stage.
QUESTION
OF COST
There is also the matter of cost.
Synthetic rubber made from petro-
leum products is cheaper than that
made from grain alcohol. To be
commercially successful, processes
must be perfected so that 10 to IA
pounds Of rubber can be obtained
from one bushel of grain. Best yield
SO far has been eight pounds per
bushel, which is a rev materials cost
Of 1875 cents pound as against a
necessary Z or 8 cents.
Advocates of rubber-from- grain
point out that this process is prac-
tical in Germany, and is the only
process used there today to pro-
duce synthetic rubber. Perhaps
this is because Germany can't
spare oil as a raw material for
rubber, but anyway, the Germans,
and the Poles before them, have
made rubber from grain and from
potato starch.