FROM THE LIBRARY OF
STEPHEN PARKS

WAR

SEPT. 3rd, 1939.

WHILE this, our Jubilee Souvenir, was in
the press our nation and empire has been
compelled, not only for our obligations,
but for our faith in all that is good and true, our
love of freedom and our hatred of tyranny, to
declare war on a ruthless autocracy—drunk with
a love of power—the present crazed government
of the great, but misled, German people.

We British, French and Polish are dedicated to
the unselfish task of winning a better, freer, and
richer life for ourselves, our children, humanity,
all the world, and for the future. So in self sacrifice
shall we labour, to Victory and Peace.

RELIANCE RUBBER COMPANY, LIMITED,
Chelsea, London, S.W.10.

"PLASTIC GOLD" Inset.

FROM THE LIBRARY OF

## WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING AGAINST

*The cicalian Pharissism of the German idea.*

"A nation crazed with revenge and ambition keeps on thanking God for His mercy by platoons, the God which most of them open or secretly ignore. They call Heaven to witness the immorality of France, whilst themselves, waging the most savage of all modern wars, with inhuman cruelty and ruthless hate.

Till FORTUNATELY RIVM., 1870.

THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHERS AND WARRIORS SAID:

There must be every imaginable preparation for war. To gain advantage by surprise and to wage war with a by violence that knows no bounds — Claustris.

We are the Salt of the Earth and the Chosen People of God, and our mission is to lack our way through to victory and to give to other nations only such liberties and possessions as we think right for them to enjoy.—Lassou.

It is not work I recommend to you, but conflict. It is not peace I recommend to you, but victory. A good war is a good war.

There is no place in the world for small nations. The weak are the natural prey of the strong.—Predic. the Great.

Conquered peoples have no rights; only to be governed by force.—Tratitschke.

We must throw overboard all the stock, commonplaces about the responsibility of the aggressor. As soon as there is a ten to one chance in favour of war we must forestall our opponent, commence hostilities without more ado and mercifully crush all resistance.—v. Molle.

Above all, infidels on the inhabitants of invaded towns the maximum of suffering. "Leave them nothing but their eyes to weep with,"—Brenner.

No quarter must be given, no prisoner taken. Act like the Hun of Attila, and then thousand years ago.—Wilhelm the Last.

AND FREDERICK HARRIS WROTE IN 1863:

"The interests and honour of England, as a great European Power, were involved in the restoration of Poland. A great occasion existed to obtain that end by joint action with European States—it arms must not be used, then by arms. As France stood by her position and history in the front of this question, the policy of England should be zealous and cordial co-operation with France. The States of Europe should be drawn into a common policy."

## WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?
BRITAIN'S AIMS

WAR blurs many things, including, too often, its own objectives. Before we lose our clear vision in the dust and heat of the struggle let us record indelibly, yet again, the goal for which we strive. We seek no dynastic ends. We desire no territorial changes, no gold, no new supplies of raw materials. We wish to win for this great Country and Empire neither the laurels not the spoils of war—the sound of whose very name is hateful to us. Our quarrel is not even with the German people, but with a regime, the like of which, we trust, this world will never see again. We are fighting for something commonplace, yet fundamental, and beyond human valuation, whose price is eternal vigilance—liberty, good faith between men and nations, justice to strong and weak, the pledged word, and the common decrecies of life. These shall not perish from the earth.—The Financial News.

Britain's war policy as laid down by the Cabinet has three objects:

1. To right the wrong done to Poland;

2. To refuse any negotiations with Germany until the last German soldier has left Polish territory; and

3. To ensure that any such enormities as the attacks on Czecho-Slovakia and Poland are not permitted to recur at regular intervals against the remaining independent States in Europe.

FOREWORD

Since the days when Amazonian natives produced rubber by smoking the juice of a tree over their hut fires, the world has been transformed by this new industry. Though the valuable properties of rubber were known to primitive man, civilisation has used it for scarcely more than a century. We can think of no more suitable way of celebrating our Golden Jubilee than by retelling in an interesting way the story of rubber, of the genesis of the trade and the blessings it has brought in these later years. There is a romantic story in all industry if we care to look for it, but in none more than the story of rubber. Rubber is reputed to be the fifth necessity of civilisation. It is a substitute for many things but there is no general substitute for it. It is a very precious commodity, the chief of all plastics. It is indeed "Plastic Gold" in its value to mankind.

Reliance Rubber Company, Ltd.

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## Gold rush

A black-skinned native sat quietly in his hut in the depths of the Amazon Forest, making himself a pair of shoes to protect his feet from the vicious thorns and razor-edged grasses that overgrew the forest paths.

Patiently he constructed a model of his foot from clay taken by the river. He fashioned it carefully, moulding the heel, the instep, and the curve of the toes. Then he smeared over the clay mould drop by drop the milky fluid he had in a little gourd, and rotated it over a smoky fire. As the liquid flowed over the model it became sluggish, then tacky, until finally it congealed into a sticky, elastic solid. Over it the native rubbed dust from the floor of his hut to cover the stickiness, then he removed the mud mould and put the shoe on his foot.

That is a fanciful sketch of the first practical use of rubber. It was the prelude to the development of two mighty continents, to the greediest rush for wealth the world has ever seen, and to one of the greatest blessings that have been conferred on the human race by industry and science working in co-operation.

When Christopher Columbus made his second journey to South America he found the natives—he called them Indians because he thought he had reached India by sailing westwards round the world—playing with large black balls of resilient “gum,” which was the dried juice of a tree. He

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took the story back to Europe, where the sportsmen of the day were
using blown-up skins as balls, but nothing was then done to investigate
the curious properties of this gum which would make solid balls bounce
as if they were alive.

Other travellers brought home tales of the uses to which this curious tree sap were put, but 250 years passed before Europe woke up to the fact that here was a new raw material worth attention. The first samples were brought over by a Frenchman, Charles Marie de la Condamine, the romantic name of a great personality. A scholar who was a social climber, a soldier who was a scientist, an explorer who was a poet, he had the vision to see that the substance ought to be examined and used. He not only wrote about it, but he brought crude rubber and a variety of manufactured articles, including balls, shoes, arrow quivers, bowls and pouches to show what had been done.

Europe woke up with a start. Joseph, King of Portugal, sent several
pairs of boots to be coated with rubber and thus be waterproofed, and
in 1759 the Government of Para sent him a coat similarly treated. A
small trade sprang up in rubber bottles of Indian manufacture. The
substance was sold in London in half-inch squares at a guinea each for
erasing pencil lines—hence the term India-rubber for eraser, coined by
the British chemist, Priestley, who discovered oxygen, naming it
“free air.” For some years trade was difficult, however, because
Portugal prevented intercourse by other countries with her South
American colony until Napoleon’s attack sent the King and his
Government to South America. Every country had previously tried
to develop the rubber trade, with small success, but in that year, 1808,
conditions changed and the country was thrown open to trade.

In 1820 the first pair of rubber shoes arrived in the United States.
They were gilded and had long, pointed toes. Three years later 500
pairs, less elaborate, were imported, and sold at high prices. Here was

a new and profitable trade. Within 30 years the annual imports of
rubber shoes had risen to nearly half a million pairs of crude, mostly
unwearable shoes.

Curiously, long after the demand for rubber shoes had ceased and
rubber was in demand as a raw material of industry, the natives con-
tinued to dry and cure it in the form of shoes, which they thought were
in demand as manufactured articles, whereas it was the raw rubber of
which they were made that was in demand.

Meantime, raw rubber had also been exported from the Amazon, and
industrial chemists had evolved scientific processes much more efficient
than the primitive methods of "smoke curing" used by the Indians.
Demand for rubber multiplied daily; soon boom conditions prevailed.
The Amazon flowed with gold, from plastic gold. It started as a mere
trickle and then became a mighty flood.

In its early days the raw rubber trade was no place for a man with
scruples. Its early history is a horrible tale of atrocity and slavery, a
story written in agony and blood. Slaves were compelled to collect the
latex, were flogged almost to death if they were only half a pound short
of their quota. They died like flies of disease, neglect, whipping and
worse abuse. The drive for more and more slaves was intensified by a
policy of ruthless coercion.

When rubber trees were discovered in Africa this fearful gold rush was
repeated in other territories. It was the freedom-loving British who
humanised the trade in their possessions. In the mad stampede for
wealth, men sacrificed not merely their own bodies as they did in the
gold rushes, but flung thousands of beaten and tortured slaves into
the scales.

So the boom rose to hysterical heights. Villages of 300 people at the
mouth of the Amazon became towns with half a million men and women
seething in a devil's cauldron. Not even the travellers' tales of the Orient

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can vie with the history of proflicacy and vice of these rubber towns,
where men and women ran wild on avarice, intoxicated with a fearful
drink called *chicha*, which was prepared by boiling and fermenting maize
after it had been thoroughly masticated in the human mouth

The stock and share markets of the world reflected this crazy gold
hunger. Bubbles burst almost every day, and greedy-eyed investors
were left penniless. Prices rose and fell, the prey of manipulators who
had no mercy.

It never seemed to occur to the authorities in whose lands this madness
raged, much less to individuals, that sooner or later civilisation would
demand a reckoning, that false values would transvaluate to reality, and
create an ordered industry.

Naturally, attempts were made to establish the rubber growing
industry in other parts of the world. Actually there are several kinds
of tree which produce caoutchouc, as raw rubber was originally called
in France, but none so well as the Amazon variety, Hevea Braziliensis.
So seeds were taken and planted in India, Ceylon, and the Far East.
These efforts failed, however, until the late Sir Henry Wickham brought
off a resourceful and courageous coup.

Mr. Wickham (as he then was) had been commissioned to obtain a
consignment of seeds and bring them to England. By chance, a cargo
vessel arrived at the Amazon, unloaded her cargo and was without
freight for the return journey. On his own responsibility Mr. Wickham
chartered her. Then with a party of Indians he went into the forest and
collected 70,000 seeds which he loaded into the ship. Fearing that the
Brazilian authorities would prohibit the export of the seeds to develop
competitive plantations, he pretended his cargo was of botanical speci-
mens for the Queen of Great Britain that must be despatched quickly.
He thus got back to England, where hothouses at Kew were quickly
cleared of orchids, and the seeds planted. More than 2,800 seeds

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germinated. Some of them were sent to Ceylon, thence to the garden
of the British Residency in Perak in Malaya. From there seeds were
distributed all over the Malay Peninsula, and the rubber growing industry
as we know it to-day was founded.

The Malayan plantations now cover more than three and a quarter
million acres, and account for about half of the world's total production.
The Netherlands Indies produce about another quarter. The total pro-
duction is within sight of a million tons. The price (in London) had
fallen from over six shillings per pound when this century opened to
round about eightpence-halfpenny per pound to-day. It has risen to
twelve shillings and fourpence and fallen as low as one penny three
farthings per pound.

After a hysterical start, the rubber growing industry of the world is
to-day well organised, properly controlled, and decently run with but few
hangovers from the murky past.

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Golden hours

The Indian natives of the Amazon had pressed rubber into their service for the golden hours of leisure as well as using it for the more practical purposes of making shoes, bottles and other useful articles. It is said that when Columbus landed, he found natives playing with a huge black rubber ball which "tho' heavy would fly and bound better than those fill'd with Wind in Spain." This story of the fifteenth century "Drakes" is probably apocryphal, for the natives are hardly likely to have been so indifferent to the landing of strange white men.

There is, however, indisputable evidence of a ball game played in Mexico by the Aztecs with balls which "beeing stricken upon the ground but softly" would rebound "incredibly into the ayer." The game was called "Tlachtli" and was played with a solid ball of virgin rubber, made by pouring the latex as obtained from the tree over the growing ball of rubber in the smoke of a nut fire. The ball weighed slightly more than 12 lbs., and the players were not permitted to touch it with their hands, but had to lift it into the air with the foot and play it from the hip. It was played in a large stone court, at the ends of which were carved stone goals as illustrated on page 12. Many players competed for possession of the ball, and for the opportunity to secure a single goal against the opposition of all other players. It was a dangerous

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and exciting game, and is not often seen nowadays, although it is still
played in remote parts of Mexico in exactly the same way as it came
down to the Indians, in straight descent from their proud Aztec ancestors.
It is said that the West Coast Indians still play much the same game,
but with a simple home made equipment.

But why attempt to describe this game in the halting language of the
twentieth century when a Spanish chronicler had written more than four
centuries before this delightful eye-witness commentary: —

"The king took much Delight in seeing the sport at Ball, which the Spaniards have since prohibited, because of the Mischief that often hapned at it; and was called by them Tlachthli, being like our Tennis. The Ball was made of the Gum of a Tree that grows in hot Countries, which having Holes made in it distils great white Drops, that soon harden, and being work'd and moulded together turn as black as Pitch. The Balls made thereof tho' hard and heavy to the Hand, did bound and fly as well as our Footballs, there being no need to blow them, nor did they use Chaces but vy'd to drive the adverse Party, that is to hit the wall the others were to make good, or to strike it over. They struck it with any Part of their Body, as it hapned, or they could most conveniently: and sometimes he lost that touch'd it with any other Part but his Buttock; or Hip, which was look'd upon among them as the greatest Dexterity; and to this Effect that the Ball might rebound the better, they fastned a Piece of stiff Leather on their Buttocks. They might strike it every time it rebounded, which it would do several times one after another, in so much that it look'd as if it had been alive. They play'd in Parties, so many on a Side, for a Load of Mantles, or what the Gamesters could afford at so many Scores. They also play'd for Gold, and Featherwork and some-times play'd themselves away. . . . The Place where they play'd was a ground Room, long, narrow and high, but wider above than below, and higher on the Sides than at the Ends, and they kept it very well plaister'd

and smooth, both the Walls and Floor. On the Side Walls they fix'd certain Stones like those of a Mill with a Hole quite through the Middle, just as big as the Ball, and he that could strike it through there won the Game, and in Token of its being an extraordinary Success, which rarely hapned, he had thereby a Right to the Cloaks of all the Lookers on, by antient Custom, and Law amongst Gamesters; and it was very pleasant to see, that as soon as ever the Ball was in the Hole, the Standers-by took to their Heels, running away with all their Might to save their Cloaks, laughing and rejoycing, others scouring after them to secure their Cloaks for the Winner; who was oblig'd to offer some Sacrifice to the Idol of the Tennis-court, and the Stone through whose Hole the Ball had pass'd. . . .

Yet even the natives did not take rubber as a matter of course. That they held it in high esteem is shown by the fact that close to one of the playing fields geologists have found a temple of the Rain god where sacred offerings of rubber balls had been sunk in the holy well. A few years ago a child's rubber play-ball was found in a grave in Peru, estimated to be over 300 years old. It is now exhibited in the Rubber Section of the Science Museum.

Now rubber play-balls of all kinds hold the field. Footballs, tennis balls, squash, polo, basket and golf balls, toy balls, sponge rubber balls, air balloons and gristly tough floating balls for dogs with strong jaws.

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Gold from trees

All over the world there are trees,
bushes and shrubs which produce a juice from which rubber can be
made. A characteristic common to all these plants is that when they
are cut they exude a milky juice—you can see the same kind of thing in
the stem of a dandelion, milkweed and the like. The juice from which
rubber is produced is called latex, and it comes from a shallow layer of
skin just beneath the bark. It is the quality of this latex which
determines its value to the rubber producer, for though many trees
produce a gum, only a few of them are suitable for the production of
commercially useful rubber. Other trees produce gutta-percha, balata,
gums and resins in the same kind of way as the Hevea tree produces latex.

Rubber latex is an extremely dispersed emulsion of rubber globules, in a medium, which consists of an aqueous serum containing sugars, a lipase, fatty acids, mineral salts and resins. Latex as a suspensoid system looks like cow's milk and has many points of similarity in spite of the fact that about a third of it is solid matter compared with only ten per cent of solid matter in milk. When latex is acidified the globules of rubber coagulate and become a doughy mass which, when dried, is raw or crude rubber.

Practically all the rubber used in commerce is obtained from the Hevea
tree, which produces the latex richest in rubber content. The Hevea tree

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is native to the Amazon Basin, but because prices of rubber export thence were high, successful efforts were made to establish it in the East in places where there was sufficient rainfall and humidity for its full development.

As a result, the Malay Peninsula is full of rubber plantations artificially established, and often worked in conjunction with what are now called "catch crops." In fact, some of the early planters in Ceylon put in the trees primarily to provide shade for their young tea plants. The Hevea tree often grows to a height of over a hundred feet, with a smooth trunk like a beech tree, often growing under good conditions to almost twelve feet in circumference.

The tree has two peculiarities. One is that the flowers are green, and the other is that when the seed balls are ripe they explode violently and eject the seeds to more than sixty feet, so that they fall beyond the shade of the tree. Such tricks of nature for the preservation of the species make one wonder whether rubber latex was not designed by her to seal for healing the wounds to which forest trees are liable.

Trees are ready for tapping when about five years old, but a better quality latex is produced if the tree is allowed to remain virgin for a longer period. Actually tapping calls for a high degree of skill, as the cambium layers containing the latex are no thicker than a sheet of paper. The art of tapping is to penetrate through the cellular structure, but if the cut is too deep it damages the tree, and if it is not deep enough the flow of latex is small.

The average yield of a plantation tree is five pounds of dry rubber per year, though occasionally it rises to as much as thirty pounds. You can, if you wish, work out for yourself how many trees there are growing to produce the 850,000 to 1,000,000 tons of rubber produced each year.

In the olden days the natives used to light a fire of nuts, which threw out a black oily smoke. Around it they built a wall of earth so that

the smoke went straight upwards. Over the fire they supported a piece of wood which was turned round and round, with the latex dripping on to it. The hot smoke dried and "cured" the latex and produced a tough black rubber—a combination of rubber, carbon and cresote. The resultant rubber was, in the early days, known as fine hard Para.

To-day, latex is placed in pans or in tanks, and acetic or formic acid or some other chemical added which does to the latex what rennet does to milk, separating the casein from the whey. It throws out the rubber as a curd or coagulum. The coagulum is then put through a series of rollers which squeeze out the liquid content and so turn it into sheets, which are dried and packed for export. Some plantations have smoke houses in which the sheet rubber is cured, to prevent mould, toughen and in other ways improve its quality.

In the preparation of crepe rubber the latex is coagulated in a vessel of the required shape with the addition of bleaching chemicals and rolled in machines with corrugated rollers running at different speeds. This is the kind of rubber used for the soles of shoes and for the manufacture of white, transparent and brightly coloured rubberware.

Sometimes the latex is shipped in its liquid state. For this an anti-coagulant is added—ammonia or other akalis—and in some cases it is concentrated like condensed milk, and then shipped in large tanks or even in special tank steamers.

A new manufacturing technique is rapidly growing up by the use of rubber latex for the production of proofed, dipped and moulded rubber goods. A great British rubber chemist and physicist, Dr. Schidrowitz, pioneered in this section of the industry by vulcanising rubber in liquid latex form, the dried product being vulcanised rubber of great durability.

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Golden alchemy

A hundred years ago as has been told, rubber was used in its raw state. It got very soft in warm weather and very hard in cold weather, so obviously its use was limited. Macintosh used it for making waterproof garments by coating cloth with it, and later by putting two pieces together so that the sticky sides were face to face. This fabric, however, hardened like a rock in winter and almost ran in summer, and people began to get tired of it.

In 1839 Charles Goodyear in America discovered, after years of
heartbreaking and costly experiment, that by mixing sulphur with rubber
and heating it, it became firm and strong and retained its elasticity. He
called the process "vulcanisation" after Vulcan, the planetary god of fire.

About the same time Thomas Hancock in London obtained the same
result by a slightly different process, but both used sulphur for vulcanisa-
tion, and thus in the two countries the modern manufacture of rubber
goods began. Hancock started a factory in Goswell Road, London.
He invented most of the rubber machinery, which, with improvements,
is still in use, and he made the first rubber hose-pipe, cushions, life
preservers, and many other articles. Goodyear, like most valiant
pioneers, fought a hard fight for succeeding generations and gained little
from it. Hancock was able and lucky as well. Both men deserve our
respect and appreciation.

The biggest general rubber factory in this country now is that of the

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North British Rubber Company Ltd. in Edinburgh; the biggest tyre factory is the Dunlop plant at Birmingham. The biggest factories in the world, however, are in America at Akron, Ohio, where the huge Goodrich, Goodyear, Miller, Firestone, and other plants are established. Other large American plants are New Jersey and New England, and some are now on the Pacific Coast.

Tyres and inner tubes take about 80 per cent. of all the rubber produced in the world. Before the motor car became common the world used only about 60,000 tons of rubber a year, but 1,136,000 tons were shipped in 1937. The figure fell to 890,000 in 1938, but is rising again in 1939.

When the crude rubber reaches the factory it is milled between hollow water-cooled steel rollers, great heat being generated in the breaking down process.

One roller revolves faster than the other and so grinds or mills the rubber that it becomes soft and plastic. Sulphur and other chemicals called accelerators (which later in the manufacturing stage speed up the vulcanisation process), together with softeners, anti-agers, and the like, are added, and the kneading continues until all the materials are fully compounded into a stiff doughy mass.

According to the use to which rubber is to be put in manufacture, it has to be mixed with other materials, and it should be remembered that the mixing of what are commonly called "fillers" is not always adulteration. Manufactured rubber is called upon to withstand all kinds of different conditions; some products are required for high pressure steam; others to resist oil, grease and solvents like naphtha or petrol; others are required for stretching and elasticity, abrasion resistance, or for compression and resilience; some have to be very soft, with only 2 per cent. or less of sulphur, some very tough, and some hard as ebonite, the best grades of which are nothing but rubber with

about 33 per cent. of sulphur vulcanised to a suitable degree of hardness.

Different chemicals and fillers have very surprising effects on the rubber, and some have very definite qualities. As an example, years ago motor tyres were always white, being compounded with zinc oxide; now they are largely black, it having been found that the use of carbon black which is a chemical friend of rubber with much the same molecular structure, gave better wear and resistance to abrasion.

It should be appreciated that pure rubber is not always the best rubber. If we made garden hose with the same kind of rubber which is used in feeding bottle teats it would not last for long or be of much value. Absolutely pure rubber would be useless for steam joints, door mats or hot water bottles.

Almost everything possible has been used as filling at one time or another. It would be realised that fibrous fillers such as jute, hemp, hair, asbestos, cotton, etc., can be used for purposes such as shoe soles, flooring, etc., but that they would be useless where elasticity is required.

After the rubber has been processed by calendering (or mangling) and shaping, spreading or extruding, it is ready for vulcanisation. This important process is, to put it simply, cooking the prepared rubber under suitable conditions. This is sometimes applied to the calendered sheet, sometimes to articles moulded from sheets, and to shaped blanks. Some goods, like soles and heels and rubber sheet, are vulcanised in large hydraulically operated presses, and goods made up from sheet rubber, as some kinds of hand-made goods, such as cushions, are vulcanised in steam.

Some goods are cured instead of being vulcanised by being dipped in a solution of sulphur chloride. This is the "Parkes process," an early British invention. This method is used for some feeding bottle teats, gloves, toy balloons and waterproofed fabrics.

Some rubber articles are made up directly from unvulcanised sheet;

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others from the plastic rubber as it comes from the calendering rollers. In this stage it is like dough; it can be moulded, rolled into tubes, cemented up into shapes, or forced through nozzles in the form of rod, tube or almost any desired design.

Fabrics coated or impregnated with rubber are used for many purposes, the principal being the manufacture of car tyres, hose and water-proof cloth. Cord fabric for tyres is made by "frictioning." The fabric is passed between rollers moving at different speeds while rubber is applied; the rollers force the rubber into the cloth, so that every thread is sheathed in rubber, though sometimes the cord is dipped in prepared liquid latex and so thoroughly impregnated.

The method of producing waterproof cloth is to press a thin rubber dough on to the cloth by a knife edge on a machine. The cloth then passes over heat which dries out the solvent. A number of coats is applied and the cloth is then vulcanised. Sometimes two sticky proofed cloths are pressed together by rollers, the rubber proofing being between the two.

Rubber hose is made by extrusion, that is, forcing rubber through a nozzle to form a seamless tube. When garden hose is made, layers of cotton are wound, or braided, over a rubber tube. A layer of rubber is then added over the cotton either in strip form or by extrusion.

Seamless hot water bottles owe their long life to the care with which they are made. Into an accurately made steel mould, which is beautifully finished and costs from £50 to over £100, are laid prepared sheets of unvulcanised rubber. The mould is composed of a lower part, a core and an upper part, and the rubber is carefully assembled round the core in both parts. The mould is then closed and put into a vulcanising press. A hydraulic ram presses the rubber into shape. Under a pressure of 100 tons at 306 deg. F. the rubber first flows to the exact shape of the mould and is then vulcanised. The mould also carries any

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pattern or wording in reverse, which is transferred to the rubber the right way round.

The part where the stopper screws into the neck is fixed in and the neck is cemented and bound, then taped and covered. After this it is tested under pressure, then washed, polished and packed ready for sale.

The making of tennis balls is an extremely interesting process. They are built up of segments of specially prepared rubber, which are cemented together, and in the original way with a small disc of pure rubber on the inside. Into the ball is placed a little water or a chemical that generates gas. While the ball is vulcanising the gas or steam from the water blows it up until it fills the mould. When the ball is cool a hollow needle may be pushed into it at the point where the disc is sticking to the inside surface. Compressed air is pumped in, and when the needle is withdrawn the disc seals the hole it made. The flannel cover is then cemented or sewn on. Modern methods have improved on this original process.

Very little rubber is used in the unvulcanised state, but because unvulcanised rubber is sticky at low temperature, it is used for adhesive purposes with suitable additions. The sticky tape that is used to seal tins of prepared food, surgeons' adhesive tape and electrical adhesive tape are coated with rubber in suitable combination of waxes, resins and gums.

The other extreme of manufactured rubber is vulcanite, which is rubber vulcanised with the addition of suitable chemicals until it is hard. It is used extensively for false teeth, for pipe stems, for insulating plates in electrical apparatus and for battery containers.

As has been mentioned, the newest development of rubber manufacture is the use of latex, or the milk of the tree, without coagulating it. Ever since rubber was discovered manufacturers flirted with the idea of manufacturing direct from the rubber milk.

The latex is treated until it becomes a thick solution of rubber and

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compounding chemicals which looks very much like cream. Toy balloons, gloves, teats, some kinds of bathing caps, finger-stalls, and many other surgical rubber lines are made by dipping a mould, which is made of polished wood, porcelain, glass or aluminium, into this emulsion. When the moulds have been dipped part of the rubber is allowed to drip off, and at a suitable moment the mould is reversed so that the last drop flows back and gives a product of uniform thickness.

Many of these goods are made in automatic dipping machines, in which there are many moulds, and the solution tank is raised by means of a hydraulic ram.

With toy balloons the bright colours are added to the rubber before the solution is made. Two or three coats are sufficient, and at the end of the dipping process the neck is "rolled" by little revolving brushes, and finally, when the balloons are cured, they are stripped off the moulds by larger revolving brushes, so that they are not touched by hand in the process of manufacture.

Balloons are made in surprising numbers. One factory has an output of over 2,000,000 per week as a side-line.

Maybe the rubber factory of the future will be as white and quiet as a modern dairy, with gleaming churns of rubber milk and none of the screechy, stentorian machinery which to-day generally compounds the world-wide synthesis which is rubber.

This imaginative word picture from an American book on rubber by Howard and Ralph Wolf indicates dramatically the extraordinarily catholic appetite of the rubber industry :-

"The outcry is heard in the pine forests of the south, the oil fields of the southwest, the copra sheds of the Pacific isles, the asbestos mines of Quebec, the clay pits of Georgia and the Carolinas, the stock yards of Chicago. Picks swing in the zinc mines of New Jersey, Kansas and Oklahoma; the lead mines of the Ozark hills; the talc mines of the

Green mountains of New England; the barytes beds of Missouri. Gleaming in sooty benediction, hundreds of thousands of tiny flames burn in sheet iron sheds in the gas fields of Texas, producing carbon black. A naked African clamber up a palm to fling down the oily nuts; in Texas, an enema of hot water is injected into the bowels of the earth and molten sulphur gushes forth; in India, millions of lac insects go about their business of encasing twigs in a shiny sheathing; all this being done at the command of rubber. Blessed with an extremely catholic appetite, rubber relishes such things as asphalt from Trinidad's sticky lake, tar from the coke ovens of Ohio River steel towns; hard-wood pitch from the northern forests; pitch and pine tar and resin from the southern woods.

"A blubber-loving Eskimo might well look with jealous eye upon rubber's daily menu, which includes such delectable items as grease from sheep's wool; paraffin, vaseline and lubricating oil from the oil fields; waxes from every source-mineral, such as ozokerite from Utah and Colorado-vegetable, such as carnauba, laboriously obtained by rubbing the leaves of a Brazilian palm-animal, such as spermaceti from the sperm oil in cachalot's head cavity-and insect, such as beeswax; greasy lauric and oleic acids; oil from castor bean and cottonseed and coconut; stearic acid made from beef tallow; and brown grease made from, pardon us, garbage. These are but a few of the things consumed by the rubber industry. We might also mention fossil flour which is the ground skeletons of microscopic prehistoric animals, mica, ground quartz, whiting, sawdust, charcoal, potato starch, wheat flour, and zinc stearate, the fluffy powder that is dusted on baby when he commits a social error. The complete list runs into several hundred items.

"Your rubber heel might well have been turned out of a pottery-it's half clay. The sole on the same shoe is more than half tooth powder-magnesium carbonate-with a good shot of shellac in addition.

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At least a fourth of the tyre on your auto is just plain, old fashioned soot, the kind that smudges your white collar and begrimes Junior's nose. The red rubber tube inside that tyre owes its colour to that great everyday necessity of feminine life—rouge. There's enough chalk—calcium carbonate the rubber man calls it—in the rolls of the wringer on your washing machine and in the hose out in the garden to supply scribbled words for every wall in your end of town. You need not go into a saloon to walk on sawdust if you have rubber tiling on your floor. The baking powder that raised the breakfast biscuits did the same thing for your bath sponge. The lime with which suburban lawns are coated every spring is a not uncommon ingredient of rubber goods. . . .

"Of all the many pigments, few are added to the compounds for the sole purpose of cheapening them. If tyres, for instance, were to be made of pure rubber with only enough sulphur for vulcanisation and nothing else, they would run no more than a few hundred miles. And numbers of the things which the compounder mixes into his rubber batch are more expensive than the rubber itself.

So the modern man pursues the dreams of the medieval alchemist towards the production of plastic gold.

The history of the rubber industry is bound up with the story of a few courageous men. Though it owes much to the chemist, both practical and research, it was founded by business men with perhaps little technical knowledge, but great adaptability, and much of the spirit of adventure. It was a small and select craft before the advent of the motor car, or even the Great War period. Indeed, there was very little known about the chemical properties of rubber until quite recent years. The pioneers had to experiment as they went about selling their product. Not for them were the luxuries of present days with fully equipped experimental laboratories and a staff of highly skilled white coated research workers and analysts.

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These earnest men working in the true spirit of discovery knew hardly more than that rubber belonged to the great chemical family of hydrocarbons. But that was like telling a Yarmouth fisherman that there are fish in the sea and all he has to do is to find where they are. Early developments were a matter of trial and error, of burning enthusiasm that even oft-repeated disappointments could not quench, of unsparing labour, of the courage to face financial disaster as the trade wallowed from each succeeding wave and trough of prosperity and crisis.

Though throughout all the years of progress the executive heads of rubber manufacturing businesses have had to keep in close touch with technical developments as well as organise their factories and create their sales, the industry has been well served by its associations. The chief of these are The Research Association of British Rubber Manufacturers, specialising on rubber technique; The Rubber Growers Association, catering for the interests of the raw material growers; and The Institution of the Rubber Industry founded by the pioneer ideas and work of Fordyce Jones—covering all sides of the industry and working to promote its general interests, together with the Rubber Trade Association and other sectional departments.

Though much has been done in the past century to adapt rubber to the service of mankind, the history of the industry is still being written. Discoveries are made with dramatic suddenness; almost overnight there may be a successful experiment which opens up a whole new field for endeavour. That is the fascination of the rubber trade, the lure that keeps its workers ever on their toes. Full of anxiety though he may be, aye, and of heartache too, sometimes, the man who has once experienced the excitement of an industry so alert, so vital, so unknown and challenging can never leave it for the humdrum security of routine in a settled and unchanging trade.

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Golden aurora

Rubber, as has been told, comes from the tree as a creamy liquid. When it is cured and vulcanised it is a muddy brown colour—a far cry from the wonderfully brilliant colours that are seen in the shops, reds, greens, blues and yellows that cover the whole chromatic range. That brilliant crimson hot water bottle would look a very dull fellow in its natural drab hue. The housewife would certainly decline to wear a rubber apron unless it were attractively tinted, and women would rather get their hair wet than wear bathing caps as dull as ditch water.

It was a practical manufacturer who discovered the way to make rubber bright and colourful, who opened up so many uses for this wonderful material. Up to the year before the Great War the rubber industry was entirely dependent for colour on mineral pigments, such as iron oxide, vermilion and crimson antimony for reds, ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, and other mineral pigments, but the colours were generally dull. During the war, when importation of the few suitable rubber dyes from Germany ceased, some development was made in Britain, but it was not until after 1918 that chemists were free to devote themselves to the arts of peace that real progress in the development of organic dyestuffs suitable for rubberware was made.

The fundamental problem of colouring rubber is that the dyestuff used must resist the action of sulphur and the heat of vulcanisation.

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It must also stand the attacks of organic accelerators, often very active, anti-ageing chemicals and fillers added to rubber during its processing. Most of the early pigments and dyestuffs broke down during vulcanisation or else faded or bled out afterwards. It was owing to the use of certain chemicals classed as accelerators which cut down the time of vulcanisation from nearly an hour to only a few minutes that bright colours could be satisfactorily produced. Two of them have the jaw splitting names of hexamethylene-tetramine and tetra-methyl-thiuram-di-sulphide, which, being non-staining, do not affect the brilliance of the colours. The first practical one was the late Dr. Peachey's "Accelerene" which owing to its green staining effects had little real value for bright colour effects. But by reducing the period of time in which the colouring matter was attacked by heat, and also by enabling less sulphur to be used, dyestuff colours were retained in the finished articles.

For white goods, zinc oxide, lithophone, titanium-di-oxide and zinc sulphide are used. Organic dyestuffs have now been developed to a high standard, enabling any shade of colour to be produced, most of which will not fade in ordinary use. The organic dyes used in heat cured rubber were first obtained from two German sources. Heat vulcanised coloured rubberware using these dyes was originally made by the Reliance Rubber Co., Ltd., in 1914, after months of experiment, but they were dull productions compared with the beautiful, clear and bright colours of to-day.

To-day the public is as much concerned with the design of the article it buys as with the quality of the rubber of which it is made. In fact, the technician is rather taken for granted by the woman who buys a hot water bottle, but she is considerably interested in not only the colour but also in the design of the article she buys.

Fortunately some of the leading manufacturers have always appreciated this point, so that engineering improvements in pattern have brought to a fruitful conclusion the work of the chemist.

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Not all decoration, however, is intended merely to please the eye. Those mouldings you see on a hot water bottle, sometimes in smart parallel lines, sometimes in an attractive crazy pattern, pictures, or conventional designs, are partially designed to permit the circulation of air along channels in the rubber so that the heat shall be radiated in the most efficient way and burning the hands and feet avoided.

So when you fill up your hot water bottle, or see a pretty bathing cap, recall the adventures through which that tree milk from far-off Malay has undergone so that you shall not only be kept warm in bed or with a dry head in the water, but so that your eye should also be charmed by lovely shapes and glowing colours that not even the rainbow or the flashing aurora borealis can dim.

The manufacture of beautiful rubberware is really a fine art in the production of which all share. Even the well paid pressman who moulds a rubber article takes a year to train and is no mere manipulator of levers. When he is learning he is frequently told "You can make any old kind of rubber with any old thing, but it takes your brains as well as your labour to manufacture it to 'Reliance' standards."

It may possibly be a monotonous job to feed a machine making such a product as tin tacks, but there is no lack of variety in rubber manufacture with its high degree of variability. Perhaps this is why rubber workers love their job. It is something to live up to.

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## Synthetic gold

As soon as rubber growers began to collect large fortunes from the sale of crude rubber chemists and physicists began to anticipate the wealth that would accrue if they could but duplicate nature.

The task, they thought, should not be too difficult. They had discovered that rubber is one of the many hydro-carbons, that is, combinations of hydrogen and carbon. In laboratories all over the world studied experiment was carried out, and as the price of rubber went up the anticipated reward of specialised research became even more desirable. Even when prices slumped there was always the certainty that they would rise again. Many chemists and physicists thought they had found the touchstone, but it continued to elude them.

The persistent chasing, however, was gradually narrowing the gap which separated them from achievement. Some searchers triumphantly produced material which they said was rubber, but always it lacked some essential quality. Many compounded oil, resin, wax and gum mixtures appeared. "Factice," or sulphur compounded vegetable oil, had its day as a filler and softener, and many mysteries were offered until the analyst unmasked them. Then there were the usual flock of imposters who went around selling the imitation gold brick. Many well-known men, clever as they were reputed to be, fell for some of these frauds.

In 1910, the Kaiser was presented with a pair of tyres made from an

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early synthetic rubber, but a fall in prices checked the development of the process. During the Great War, however, German chemists did produce considerable quantities of synthetic rubber, for the nation at war was in desperate need of it. A German submarine took a cargo of synthetic dyestuffs to U.S.A. in the early days of the war and brought back real rubber.

Germany now has large factories for the manufacturing of "Buna," which is the name given to their artificial rubber. It is said that this synthetic rubber costs over 3s. 6d. a pound to-day to produce, against the selling price of plantation rubber at time of writing at about 8jd. a pound. It is not nearly so elastic as natural rubber, but resists the action of oil and grease, and has other technical usages, and thus has considerable commercial advantages in certain directions.

These merits are shared by the American synthetics "Thiokol" and "Neoprene." They are used extensively for washers, packings, hose, etc., for they will withstand the action of petrol, and other hydro-carbons and oils, in a way that ordinary rubber will not.

The lack of elasticity in some artificial rubbers makes them unsuitable for many purposes, but when mixed with ordinary smoked sheet rubber a very fine product is obtained, more wear-resisting than the motor car tyre made from ordinary plantation rubber.

If, driving up to a petrol pump to have your tank refilled, you wonder how it is that petrol can be pumped through a rubber hose, which being rubber does not swell in a rubber solvent, and why it is that engine mountings and some other rubber accessories in your motor car do not perish in oily conditions, you will realise that the rubber from which these things are made has never known the rubber tree. They are mostly made of artificial rubbers which, while more expensive than natural rubber, are the only known materials suitable for these purposes.

The basis of the artificial rubber is our old friend carbide, which we

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used to use in bicycle and motor car lamps. The acetylene gas produced when water is added to calcium carbide is combined to produce the solid material called "butadien." This is next combined with an oil obtained from a resin, producing a milky fluid. This in turn goes into a series of large retorts and emerges looking exactly the same, but as a perfect emulsion is actually very different. It is then very similar to rubber latex and is treated in much the same way to produce solid synthetic rubber.

It is doubtful whether artificial rubber will ever displace the natural product, but it is fairly safe to forecast that it will be used in conjunction with natural rubber to produce a range of materials which will give long life in circumstances which plantation rubber alone is unsuitable.

So synthetic Plastic Rubber Gold is produced by Golden Alchemy.

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## Hidden gold

Because rubber can be produced in so many different forms it is natural that it should be put to some unusual uses. Some of these are indeed strange, and even secret, but on occasion they have saved lives.

We are indebted to Miss E. M. Pope, B.A., B.Sc., for collating a number of examples of the unusual uses of rubber. Her work was read before the Institution of the Rubber Industry, and published in its *Transactions*. Naturally, the use of rubber in surgery stands high in the annals of science. On one occasion a Russian surgeon, Professor Smirnov, made use of a rubber heart in an operation on a sailor who had been stabbed through the heart. The natural heart was taken out, stitched up, and replaced in the circulation, and electrically driven rubber heart being substituted for it during the stitching.

This operation followed an experiment which consisted of an operation taking only five minutes, in which the natural heart of a cat was removed and replaced by an electrically driven heart in which rubber played an important part. The normal action was maintained and the cat lived for several hours.

On another occasion a rubber tube was used to connect the throat with the stomach in a woman who was suffering from a throat disease. Her

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food was eaten and swallowed in the ordinary way, the onlooker being
quite unaware that there was anything unusual in the process.

People who have lost the use of their natural larynx have been enabled
to speak by the use of an artificial larynx made of ebonite and rubber.

Science has found other uses for rubber. When the Bouzye dam
collapsed in 1895 the cause of the failure was investigated by the use
of a large rubber model of the dam and the reconstruction of the water
pressure on its various parts. The bulging of the rubber showed where
the strain occurred and enabled the engineers to check up on their
calculations.

Geologists have used rubber spheres to study the contraction of the
earth millions of years ago. They stretched the sphere and coated it with
wax or gelatine. They then allowed it to contract and compared the
resulting contraction patterns with the existing structures of the earth's
crust.

Attempts have been made to print banknotes on rubber. Nearly a
hundred years ago Goodyear tried to interest bankers in the possibility
of making rubber banknotes which would be damp-proof, durable and
sanitary. The bankers did not receive the idea with any great enthusiasm.
They said it was too durable and too expensive. Advertisers, however,
have from time to time used notes and cheques made of rubber as stunts,
but these are not encouraged by the authorities for fear that they might
accidentally be taken seriously.

Rubber is used for the deception of the public by two classes of people —bogus spiritualist mediums, and conjurers. A somewhat awe-inspiring manifestation at séances is the appearance of a head or face, apparently growing from the medium's body and said by her to belong to her control and to be formed of ectoplasm. These heads will vaguely answer questions put to them by the medium, but photographs taken during one séance demonstrated that the face showed no change of expression even

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when speaking. It has been suggested that these heads are inflated
rubber balloons carefully made and painted to represent a human face
and covered with luminous paint so that they glow in the dim light at
the séance. In the collapsed state such a balloon could easily be hidden
in the medium's clothes and could be inflated when the control was
called for.

A similar device was once found on a medium who was tested in
London. During a séance this medium produced a teleplasm hand
from her mouth, though before the test no trace had been found of any
material capable of forming the hand. The enlargement of a photograph
taken during the séance showed that the hand was a rubber glove
attached to a length of thin material, which was later found to be butter-
muslin. Further investigation showed that she was one of a rare class
of people who are able at will to bring up objects from the stomach. The
medium swallowed the glove and its muslin attachment before the séance,
and was able to bring it up again and blow it out of her mouth, the end
of the muslin being retained in the mouth.

Rubber plays an essential part in many of the conjurer's tricks; black
rubber sheeting is particularly useful, and makes possible many tricks
of the "disappearing-reappearing" type. One such trick is that of the
"disappearing-reappearing lady." The back of the box in which the
lady disappears is made of black sheet rubber and a thin sheet rubber
blind can be pulled down to divide the box into back and front compart-
ments. When shut up in the box the lady presses herself against the
elastic back and pulls down the blind so that when the box is opened
she seems to have disappeared. The box is then closed again, when she
lets up the blind and seats herself in her original position, giving the
impression when the box is opened of having mysteriously reappeared.

Many much more simple magic tricks also depend on rubber. When
the conjurer appears to poke his finger through a hat borrowed from

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one of the audience he actually sticks on to the outside of the hat, with
comjer's wax or with a pin, a pink rubber half-finger which seems
to be part of his own hand when he extends his fingers into the hat.

Rubber suction discs are used in many palming tricks, being held on
a finger with a loop of catgut and used for holding small objects such
as eggs and billiard balls. The appearance of a large number of articles
such as snakes, eggs, or bananas from a hat or from an assistant's mouth
is accomplished by means of a hollow rubber forms shaped like these
objects and pierced with holes at both ends so that on releasing the forms
from under a spring in the hat or under the assistant's tongue they
quickly regain their shape. Compressed air is brought up through a
hollow table leg and used to inflate rubber balloons made in various
shapes in more ambitious "hat-tricks."

Among curious miscellaneous uses of rubber may be counted fish-bait,
and some ingenious ideas relating to golf balls, clothes, umbrellas, alarm
clocks, and shrouds. Rubber bait is durable and easy to handle and to
secure, and is said to deceive the fish in a satisfactory manner. Two
baits which were devised some 46 years ago took the form of a soft
rubber frog and a green natural-looking rubber grass-hopper. A sponge
rubber fish, several inches long and impregnated with fish oil, was at
one time manufactured by an American firm for use as bait.

The problem of finding a lost golf ball has attracted some attention,
chiefly in America. Experiments have been made with luminous balls
for playing at night. Another idea is to soak the ball before use in a
volatile liquid which has an odour attractive to white butterflies, which
the inventor noticed were very numerous on the golf course.

According to a story in the *India Rubber World*, of U.S.A., a very
ingenious idea with regard to rubber clothing was worked out by a young
man in Indianapolis. He made a two-layered suit of rubber cloth, the
inner layer of which was a skin-tight fit; the two layers were connected

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together at the ankles, wrists, and neck, and along the leg seams.
Inflation of the garment with natural gas decreased the man's apparent
weight from 130 lb. to 191b., with results which were a surprise to the
wearer; in ordinary running his strides became 60 feet long and he
accomplished a jump of 198 feet. He ventured out several times at
night, but having been chased by a dog, and after jumping on to the
roof of a porch, pursued by the people in the house, he decided to
discontinue these dangerous jaunts.

That unpleasant necessity, the alarm-clock, was made even more
unpleasant by a German inventor. The clock released two rubber
balls which bounced on the sleeper's head. In a similar clock described
earlier than this patent, the alarm is formed by one ball which con-
tinues to bounce on the head of the sleeper until the alarm is turned off.

A suggestion which one feels could have come only from somebody
who was interested in increasing the consumption of rubber, is for the
preservation of corpses by covering them with rubber, applied in the
form of several coatings of rubber solution. The real motive was
economy, as the inventor claims that a light wooden coffin would be
sufficient for the interment of a body so protected against air and damp.

Probably the most spectacular uses of rubber are on the stage, and in
films, pageants, and exhibitions. Many sensational effects could not
possibly have been achieved without rubber, which is used in properties,
costumes, and, possibly the most striking, models of living animals.

At one time, bald men also constituted a problem for the film pro-
ducer. Shiny bald heads reflect every light on the set, but the glare can
now be diminished by painting the heads with a make-up which has a
basis of rubber. Rubber masks are used in many cases under the
ordinary face make-up in films where an actor has to play several
different parts, or must represent some unusual type.

The first film to make any extensive use of animated models was

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that of Conan Doyle's "The Lost World," in which prehistoric monsters were shown moving about and fighting. The scenes for this film were made entirely in miniature, none of the animal models used being more than one foot in length. In making the models, compounded rubber stock was first calendered upon frictioned fabric and then embossed to give the appearance of a reptile hide, the rubber being partly vulcanised during this process. The pieces of fabric were then cut out according to patterns already drafted, cemented together, and completely vulcanised; the animals were vulcanised in sections, which were then assembled on a form and supported with wires and filling where necessary before the form was removed. To represent bleeding, sacs containing red fluid were incorporated in parts of the animals' bodies. Rubber lungs, inflated by means of a rubber tube passing under the scene, were used to give realistic breathing movements.

In addition to animal models, one firm also make models of human beings, and have recently reconstructed the most famous exhibits in P. T. Barnum's circus, including Jenny Lind, Tom Thumb, the Living Skeleton, and Zip, "The Great What-Is-It"; the circus shows also a model of Barnum himself. All the exhibits mentioned are talking models, Jenny Lind being introduced by Barnum and singing one of her songs, and Tom Thumb describing his visit to Queen Victoria. Vulcanised sponge rubber has solved a difficult problem in connection with these talking figures; the models have moving jaws covered by masks of sponge rubber vulcanised on steel moulds. These rubber masks create the illusion of contracting and expanding jaw muscles, giving a realistic performance. The Rubber-skinned Man is also shown in the circus, stretching the skin of his stomach and cheeks—an obvious application of rubber.

In film studio sets the scenery is often largely of rubber. Boulders are made of sponge rubber covered with painted cloth, and trees and

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plants are formed of rubber; in one film where an actor fell into a mass of spiny cactus, these plants were made of hollow plaques to which were cemented thorns of uncured tyre tread. Rubber flowers are used in films as they are durable, and appear quite natural when photographed. Spiders' webs are novel rubber cinema properties; it takes too long to wait for cobwebs to form naturally, so they are now produced by means of a rubber solution containing zinc white, the solution being sprayed with great force against walls and windows, where it dries in perfect cobwebs.

Another problem which was solved by using rubber occurred during the making of the film "Footlight Parade." Bathing costumes were decided to be unsuitable garments for a bevy of woodland nymphs in a waterfall scene, and they finally appeared clad apparently only in their own hair, but actually wearing long rubber tresses. The rubber hair was attached to tight-fitting rubber caps and wound round the girls' bodies, being fixed to a thin mesh foundation.

Thus we see that apart from its quite ordinary uses rubber is quite literally hidden treasure in some professions.

We wish to thank the Board of Management of the Research Association of British Rubber Manufacturers for permission to publish this work of Miss Popey, who was a member of the Association.

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## Guarding the gold

This modern treasure, rubber, will reward a little care with years of faithful service.

First, it should be remembered that the chief enemies of vulcanised rubber are heat, light, grease, oils, acids and misuse. Rubber can be produced to withstand any one of these, excepting the last.

Bright light is an enemy of rubber. It causes "blooming" and oxidation. The ultra-violet rays are very destructive, and you can easily prove this by cutting a piece of rubber in half, leaving one piece in the full glare of the summer sun for a few days and keeping the other in a dark cupboard. One will soon be totally unfit for any practical use and the other will remain perfect.

Rubber should never be left in direct sunlight. It should be kept in the shadow, and in this connection it may be said that red and black rubber stands the action of heat and light much better than white, blue and some other colours. Red and yellow neutralise the effect of the violet rays and black does not absorb them.

There is a "human element" about rubberware in many ways. It has life, and it can perish, and it is necessary that it is protected from extreme conditions.

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To protect rubber from heat it should be stored low down in a cool place, not on high shelves or hung from the ceiling to which heat rises, or over a stove.

Grease, oils, acids, etc., have a destructive effect, which is easily appreciated.

When rubber goods have been in direct contact with them they should be immediately cleaned with strong soap and soda water and afterwards dusted with chalk or talcum powder. With acids, after washing, the rubber should be neutralised with the aid of ammonia or other alkali or washed in soda water, rinsed and dried.

The day has now arrived when blooming or " sulphuring-up " is looked upon as a disadvantage, but some of the old hands of the industry say that so long as rubber is " blooming " it is alive and that this is a good sign of durability.

Bloom simply means that there is an excess of uncombined sulphur in the rubber and that the material is gradually throwing it out, but there are also wax and accelerator blooms which can be scrubbed off. There is no need for bloom nowadays, for when using an accelerator the minimum quantity of sulphur for optimum cure of the rubber can be used, but when it does occur it is easily removable. The practice in the factory is to boil rubber goods in a solution of a suitable alkali for a short while, rinse and dry them. Light bloom can be removed by rubbing it over with petrol, benzine or naphtha, or washing in hot water with strong alkaline soap. Discoloured or soiled goods are best treated with strong soap, the cyclo-hexanol soap called " Sextol " being the best. It must, however, be remembered that rubber goods must never be dried by overheating them before a fire.

To enhance the appearance of soiled goods they can be rubbed over with a mixture of one part of glycerine to nine parts of methylated spirit. This gives an attractive cleansing finishing. Some goods are polished

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with a thin shellac borax water varnish, or a non-greasy furniture polish is good. Casein varnish is also used.

It must be remembered that the continued action of boiling water will kill any rubber. Even a hot-water bottle is not a " boiling " water bottle. Few articles get worse treatment than this friend, and few have so much expected of them.

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Gold bags

More fortunes have been made and lost in the rubber industry than in any other of the world's markets. The story of the finance of rubber is almost an uncontrolled phantasy.

Stimulated by high prices and the profits made by a few of the early planters, there were promoted and organised in England in a comparatively short period hundreds of plantation companies. No oil boom in the United States ever approached the British rubber plantation spree. £500,000,000 is the conservative figure given as the investment of the English people in rubber plantations in the Far East. Cost was not considered and the ever gullible public lost sight of money invested and focussed their eyes on the extravagant dividends that would be theirs in a few years.

Following the breaking out of the World War in 1914, the manufacture of unnecessary and luxury rubber products in Europe was largely discontinued, and the British Government tried—and to a very great extent succeeded—in controlling the use of crude rubber through a permit system. After a while, this control was greatly strengthened by a measure under which the manufacture of rubber goods in other countries was largely curtailed, creating a very great shortage of rubber products.

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With the war curtailment of rubber manufacture, the constantly increasing production of plantations—both honest and doubtful—crude rubber began piling up. The price dropped from 3 7/3 per pound to 2 6/—then 2 4/4—down to 1 8, 1 3, 10d., 7 1/4d., and as low as 1 1/2d. This was not enough to pay the transportation charges, tragedy was inevitable. Every bank in the great shipping ports of Para and Manaoa in South America failed, only one large exporter survived. Singapore, Colombo and all of Malaysia fared little better.

Raw rubber stocks continued to increase and it was sold by many plantations at a fraction of the actual cost of production. Then came the plantation panic and, as so often happens, enormous losses fell upon the shoulders of many who had invested their all in promoted plantations. Many London and some New York banking institutions were hard hit and failed, and the majority of importers and brokers were financially wiped off the face of the earth.

With the temporary shortage of rubber goods following the war and very cheap crude rubber, came an opportunity for promotion. Organising new rubber manufacturing companies and increasing the capacity of old ones became the new way to commercial success. Production was multiplied many times over. The result again was inevitable, but not as serious as the plantation tragedy. Many factories went out of business. Others curtailed and effected economies.

Slowly adjustment went on, and by 1929 the industry was generally stabilised.

Caused by the panic of 1929, there came another period of great curtailment in the consumption of crude rubber (1932-1935) resulting in price demoralisation of crude rubber (again as low as 2d. per pound) and finished products as well. This condition gradually righted itself, and crude sold at over 1 3 per pound during the early months of 1937. This was not to last, and with the great curtailment in business com-

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mencing in October 1937, the price of crude rubber again dropped to about 5 1/2d. per pound.

Then came another improvement and a determined effort by the International Rubber Regulations Committee, which is in reality the governments controlling the principal source of supply, to stabilise the price of crude rubber on a profitable basis—about 8 1/2d.-10d. per pound, and with a fair prospect of success.

During recent years the rubber industry in this country has faced its problems in a practical way. Not merely content to cry to the Government for assistance in controlling the price of crude rubber, manufacturers have diligently sought and found new uses for their output. For example, the advent of rubber flooring is within the memory of most of us and to-day it accounts for a tremendous amount of rubber. There is no doubt that the stormy days of the rubber industry are past, and that with good leadership it will be able to serve the world with even greater success.

The rubber manufacturer is not much interested in rubber plantation finance, his interest is best served by a steady and fair price for the raw commodity, which enables him to budget forward and establish a steady average market in the interest of the retail buyer, and volume sales. The rubber manufacturer who takes a side-line gamble on "rubber" is soon out of the business.

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## Gold diggers

Many thousands of people, perhaps millions, have tried to get rich quick from rubber, and even the name alone has a kind of magic about it. It is strange how rubber, though a comparatively small staple commodity compared to many others, always appears to attract the chief attention in the stock-markets.

Apart from the money which has been made and lost on the plantation side, there have been many ambitious to get rich quick on the manufacturing side and especially on the patented invention side.

In fact, a most interesting book could be written about this from experience of the Reliance Rubber Company, Limited, alone.

Many a patent agent could tell of the numbers of inventions which are brought to him in which rubber forms the main part and which the inventor invariably thinks will bring him a fortune in no time. On the other hand, it is surprising how few of them are worth anything at all.

Inventors don't like to be told that their wonderful ideas have already been anticipated and some are surprised to be shown in Hancock's Handbook, which was published over 100 years ago, nearly everything that is now made of rubber, in elementary form.

The numbers of bright ideas which are brought to an enterprising manufacturer every year are simply amazing, but their repetition gets monotonous.

The Reliance Company has at least ten or twelve bathing cap inventions put before it every year. The main idea is to keep the water out,

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but most of them are unsightly and useless and nearly all of them are pre-dated by a patent containing an inner sponge ridge which appeared in 1906.

Many of the ideas have no real selling value and are merely gadgets which have a great appeal to the eclectic inventive mind but no appeal at all to the public.

The discriminating manufacturer should know and has generally learnt by hard experience, what will sell and what will not, and although he is called unenterprising by the disappointed inventor, he can look back on a thousand experiments which mostly ended in a loss, together with a very few successes.

The Reliance Company has a "morgue" of steel moulds which must have cost several thousand pounds. They are now worth nothing more than the price of old metal, yet they were fashioned into expensive tools on which great hopes were based.

The invariable rule for a manufacturer now is to insist that the inventor or patentee pays for his experimental mould, and this might cost anything from £5 to £100. If he has sufficient faith to make a sample and test the market he is entitled to a profit, but few inventors are prepared to put down a penny to develop their ideas.

There is one invariable rule to find out whether a rubber novelty has any selling value. When it is put on the table, all one's friends will laud it and tell the inventor how clever he is and flatter him by asking for one.

The simple test is to offer the article at a fair price and see how many people will put their money down in fair exchange. If there are no takers there will be no buyers. There are many lines which have a great appeal to the imagination but no appeal at all to the practical housewife who spends the weekly money.

On the other hand inventions have been produced which have lain dormant for years and then usually after the patent has run out the idea

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catches on and the article sells largely. Many are ahead of their time.

The writer's first patent at the age of fifteen was a screw-on metallic gas tube connection which proved a great success and sold by millions for years until ousted by a general re-adjustment of gas service. Another volume seller was the sanitary seat buffer made with recessed screw hole in a hard rubber centre to replace the old mushroom-shaped type, which had to be dowelled into the wood. Another million seller was, and still is, the all-rubber tap "Splash-guard." Many little inventions like these have continued to make sales and profits for years.

Although there are hundreds of little gadgets like these which have made money, there are hundreds of other patented ideas which simply cannot be put over the counter at any price.

Before plastic gold diggers spend any money on an invention that on first appearance seems so gilt-edged, they should consult a reputable and experienced manufacturer and take his advice. They would generally save themselves a lot of time and money. There are also good registered patent agents whose advice, though cheap, is golden, but "gold digger" minds are not always appreciative in the false sunrise of the Vision Splendid.

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THE GOLDEN SCROLL

Being a selected record of greetings on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the Reliance Rubber Company, Ltd.

From SELFRIDGE AND CO., LTD., London, W.I.

Dear Mr. Fordyce Jones,

Please receive my own letter, accompanied no doubt by many others, congratulating
your distinguished house upon its 50 years of business.

We have known this house and have been glad to do business with it ever since our
doors were first opened.

I take pleasure in wishing for it another half-century of success and progress.

Yours very truly,
H. Gordon Selfridge.

From BENTALL'S, LTD., Kingston-on-Thames.

Dear Sirs,

It gives me very great pleasure to be writing to congratulate your firm on having reached its fiftieth year of business.

During the whole time we have known them we have experienced nothing but
helpful service.

I hope that we shall still continue to do business with you for many years to come.

L. E. Rowan Bentall,
Merchandise Director.

From THE ANCHOR CHEMICAL CO., LTD., Clayton, Manchester, 11.

Gentlemen,

We welcome the opportunity of congratulating you on attaining your Jubilee.

As suppliers of raw materials to the rubber trade, we have for a long while recognised that your firm, led by Mr. Fordyce Jones, is one of the real pioneers in the rubber industry, quick to investigate any new raw materials or methods of production, and one of the first firms in the industry to recognise the worth or otherwise of any new products or methods submitted for your consideration.

We wish you many Happy Returns of your Jubilee Year, and trust that the firm will continue to make good progress in all possible directions.

Yours faithfully,

Thos. H. Hewlet,

Chairman & Managing Director.

From HERBERT N. CASSON, Owner and Editor, "The Efficiency Magazine,"

London, W.I.

My dear Fordyce Jones,

You and I have been good friends for nearly 25 years. Every now and then we have enjoyed a bit of co-operation. I know you have helped me, and I hope I have helped you.

So, may I offer you my warmest congratulations on your company's Jubilee.

Yours as ever,

Herbert N. Casson.

From A. W. GAMAGE, LTD., Holborn, E.C.I.

Dear Sirs,

Please accept our very genuine congratulations on the attainment of your Jubilee.

As you know, we have dealt with your Company for well over twenty years and it is a pleasure to recollect that during all that time our business relationship has been so mutually satisfactory.

With best wishes. Yours truly,

Eric M. Gamage,

Managing Director.

From HERBERT STANDRING, Upper Norwood, S.E.12.

(The pioneer of Rubber Trade Journalism.)

Dear Mr. Fordyce Jones,

Heartiest congratulations on the attainment of your Jubilee and the success you have obtained in your business.

It emphasises the advantages of specialising on certain lines, as you have proved that comparatively simple lines can be improved, and their uses developed by the introduction of new designs every year.

That you may achieve further successes is my ardent wish.

Yours sincerely,

Herbert Standing.

From J. H. C. BROOKING, Sloane Avenue, S.W.3.

Dear Fordyce Jones,

I am most interested to learn that your Company has now reached its Jubilee Year, and would like to congratulate you on your success in this Happy Event.

It does not seem twenty years since I first met you in 1919, in connection with your articles in the *India Rubber Journal*, which referred to the need of a Central Institution for the Rubber Industry. This suggestion, I consider, was the prime cause of the Institution of Rubber Industry being founded, and I can remember how your enthusiasm

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attitude at its early Council Meetings had the effect of begetting the same quality among your colleagues; also the generous loan of your offices during those early days for the Secretary's accommodation.

Any manufacturing concern with you at the head of it should run into a Jubilee, and please accept my best wishes for many more years of cheerful industry among your happy band of workers, more as a friend (as I have noted) than a face-grinding boss.

Yours sincerely,
J. H. C. Brookiag.

From VAN DEN BERGHS AND JURGENS, LTD., Unilever House, E.C.4.

Dear Sirs,

We are very pleased to hear that the Reliance Rubber Company, Limited will this year be celebrating their 50th Anniversary.

For a good many years we have done business with you, and we are pleased to say that during the whole of this period our relationship has been of the pleasantest, and we have received from you every possible help and co-operation.

We hope that we shall continue to do business with you, and that you will celebrate many more "birthdays."

Yours faithfully,
J. P. Van den Bergh.
Managing Director.

From FRANCIS SHAW AND CO., LTD., Corbett Street, Manchester,

Dear Mr. Fordyce Jones,

I am delighted to know that the Reliance Rubber Company has not only reached the mature age of fifty years, but is also still only fifty years young. Congratulations are always most sincere between old friends and, as we have known your Company since its birth, you will know that every one of our Staff wishes to be included in the good wishes for the continued prosperity both of yourself and the Reliance Company, which I wish to send you in this letter.

With hearty congratulations,
R. O. Shaw,
Director.

From BRITISH RUBBER PUBLICITY ASSOCIATION, Fenchurch Street, E.C.3.

Dear Mr. Fordyce Jones,

In congratulating the Reliance Rubber Company on its 50th anniversary, I take this opportunity of acknowledging the encouragement you and your Company have given to the efforts of the Producers' organisations to extend the uses of rubber.

As one who, for many years, has been actively associated with these efforts, I can claim to be a strong advocate for the closest co-operation between Producers and Manufacturers in all steps leading to a greater absorption of rubber.

With best wishes for your Company's continued progress.

Yours very truly,
James Fairbairn,
Chairman.

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Golden memories

The Reliance Rubber Company,

Ltd., is now fifty years old and I, as Chairman and Managing Director, have been associated with it for over thirty years. I look back on years of change and development, on happy and successful times as well as some troublesome ones, but life is like that.

The Company has had its ups and downs, tribulations and great successes, but for the last ten years under its present directorate, it has forged rapidly ahead until it is now the largest producer of its special technical and surgical lines in the world. It is world renowned in certain departments and certainly makes the most beautiful rubberware without compare.

What I want to emphasise here is what my association with the Company has taught me. Business to me, is Service, with the rewards of Service. I have sometimes heard it said that "There is no friendship in business." I condemn this pessimistic creed, for I have found that Reliance, now of reverent age, has built round itself a number of real friends. Reliance delivers the goods, but its friends give it its goodwill.

When Reliance went through its bad period, as did many others in the great slump, it was assisted to regain its old position by the goodwill, not only of the largest buyers of the country, but many of the smallest

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chemists and hardwaremen as well as the demand of the public. I shall never forget their generous co-operation at this time. I shall never forget what Herbert Casson did then to help me to face up to true values, and what he had done before to help us to attain some standard of manufacturing and business efficiency.

The friendship of the employees of this Company is something very real and precious. It has been the aim of this Company to pay the maximum wage that progressive industry demands, and this has meant that there has been very little staff turnover in the business and the unity of a highly-skilled personnel. Most of the Reliance staff have grown up with the Company and are the friends of the managing staff. They know that wage rates and service conditions are not fixed by the will of capricious or selfish Directors, but by economic laws to which all are subject, and they work with the management towards an inclusive security based on co-operation.

The Company as a whole has learnt that the spirit of service is a real and true thing, that business, instead of being the soulless money-grabbing activity of which it is often accused, is truly one of great ethical value, that it calls for efficiency of mind and body and for fair dealing, and that such things reflect on all our social activities.

It is perhaps because we find the most beautiful things in life in love and friendship, that we are able to incorporate them with our business affairs. The effect on our business life in this way is to make most of us who live it, say yet humbly, "I am proud to be a member of this great rubber industry."

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1889-1959

50 years of progress

A new beauty for bedtime

LOVELY LIGHT FLOORS in art colours are the Jubilee Year
through of the Reliance Rubber Co., Ltd.
Pioneers of modelled seamless hot water bottles, Reliance
emboss their rich anniversary with new models of marvellous
beauty. Each bottle is discovered with a bird or butterfly moulded
in its relief on perfect steel engraved backgrounds. There is no
better quality and none so attractive.

1889 * RELIANCE * 1939

RELIANCE RUBBER COMPANY LIMITED
Wholesale & Exporters - London, Ltd., Chelmsford, London, S.W. to
Telephone - Flinders Street - 1939 - Telephone - "Dorset" - Petal, London.

How we advertised in 1889 | A modern advertisement in wood cuts and bold statements | "Punch" by Fran Sutton & Partners

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