United States Rubber Company

“ Wherever the hooks of an insect's feet pierce her tender skin, she pours out a milky juice to entangle its feet and body, and it is a lucky bug that succeeds in escaping before this juice hardens, and holds him a prisoner condemned to die. ”

“ It is a cheerful sight to see the workers, men and women, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, trooping out from their quarters to begin the day's work. The tapping must be done early in the day, for the latex or rubber juice stops flowing a few hours after sunrise. ”

“ It is on rubber that infants cut their teeth; after all the teeth are gone old age makes use of rubber in plates for false teeth. Ten million motorists and other millions of cyclists in the United States ride on rubber tires that are durable, noiseless and airtight. Balloons of rubber float aloft, and huge submarines plow their routes beneath the ocean's surface propelled by electricity stored in great rubber cells. Sheathed in rubber, the lightning makes a peaceful way through our homes, offices and factories, furnishing light and telephone service. ”

“ In spite of the wonders which rubber has already accomplished, and the adventures, which have colored its history, only the beginning of the romance of rubber has been told. The plantation industry is still in its infancy, and experiments are constantly being made to determine the best methods of planting, the most fruitful number of trees to the acre, the most advantageous way of tapping. In the laboratories of the great rubber manufacturers, scientists are at work improving old methods of using rubber and devising new ones. ”

“ This plantation is on the island of Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies, one of the best governed colonies in the East. On this island is an orchard of rubber trees, as beautifully laid out and as well cared for as any orchard of fruit trees in our own country. For seventy square miles, an area as large as the District of Columbia, the orderly ranks of trees fill the gently rolling landscape, every inch of which is weeded as carefully as a garden. It takes twenty thousand employees to care for the trees, which number more than 5,000,000. ”

“ When the seeds are ready to drop the outer covering of the pod bursts with a loud report, the seeds shooting in all directions.
This is Nature's clever scheme to spread the Hevea family. The tree grows wild in the hot, damp forests of the Amazon valley and in other parts of South America that have a similar climate. The ideal climate for the rubber tree is one which is uniform all the year round, from eighty-nine to ninety-four degrees at noon, and riot lower than seventy degrees at night. ”

“ An equally fascinating story might be told of its progress through the factory, how it is kneaded and rolled, mixed with chemicals, rubbed into fabrics, baked in ovens, and finally emerges as any one of the tens of thousands of articles that are made wholly or partly from rubber. ”

“ How Brazil, possessing in her vast forests millions of rubber trees of the finest quality, has been forced by unfavorable conditions to permit the Far East to sweep from her in this short time the crude rubber supremacy of the world is one of the most unusual chapters in modern industrial history. ”

“ To establish a rubber plantation requires very careful planning. The choice of a site is of first importance, for the planter must find a locality having a moist climate with an evenly distributed rain-fall where the temperature throughout the year does not fall below seventy degrees Fahrenheit, and where there is protection from the wind. There must also be, of course, access to a steady labor supply and a convenient shipping port. As the proper climate is a tropical one, there is usually dense jungle to be cleared away. ”

“ Instead of having to brave the dangerous jungles, men could plant and cultivate rubber in spots of their own choosing so long as they chose places where the climate was right."
For many years people only laughed at Wickham's great idea, but like Goodyear he had faith enough to persevere. While in Brazil he planted some rubber seeds to see what would happen. The seeds DID grow, and the book which Wickham wrote about his idea and his experiments finally came into the hands of Sir Joseph Hooker, the Director of the Botanical Gardens in Kew, near London. ”

“ Rubber manufacturing is peculiarly an American industry. South America gave us the original rubber trees, and the one man who, more than any other, was responsible for making rubber useful was the American, Charles Goodyear. To-day, two-thirds of the entire output of rubber is sold to the United States, whose manufactured rubber goods set the standard for the whole world. ”

“ You may never have stopped to think of it, but mechanical experts say that without rubber pneumatic tires, automobiles could never have become the fine, swift vehicles they are. It was a wonderful thing that when in the early part of this century the automobile industry suddenly burst forth with a demand for rubber so great that Brazil could never have hoped to supply it, there was found ready in the Far East, as a result of the planting that had been done there, a supply that took care of the sudden emergency. ”

“ From these few trees, so carefully tended in their youth, has sprung the whole rubber industry of Ceylon and the Far East. Wickham must indeed have been proud to see the plantations spreading from Ceylon to Malaya, where rubber was eagerly taken up by planters who were despairing of ever making a living out of coffee, and later to Sumatra and Java and Borneo. To-day rubber plantations cover an area of over 3,000,000 acres, with a yearly output of almost 360,000 tons, or about ten times the average yearly output of "wild rubber." ”

“ They were compelled to work far from their families and friends, and in constant danger from wild beasts, reptiles and death-bearing fevers. It is no wonder that rubber obtained in this way came to be known as "wild rubber." Moreover, transporting the crude product through the jungles was hard and expensive and the rubber obtained under these conditions was not always so clean or high in quality as might be wished.
"If rubber trees grow from the seeds which nature scatters in the jungle," said Wickham to himself, "why should they not grow from seeds put into the ground by hand?" ”

“ The unmarried men live in barracks, but the men with families have individual houses with garden plots adjoining. Big kitchens prepare and cook the food in the best native style. Schools for the children, recreation centers for old and young, and hospitals to care for the sick, are all parts of the plantation organization.
In erecting hospitals and caring for the health of its plantation workers, as in other branches of the rubber industry, America has taken the lead. ”

“ Rubber is a substance of so many important characteristics that its uses are countless. It is used for certain purposes because it stretches, for others because it is airtight and watertight, for others because it is a non-conductor of electricity, for others because it is shock-absorbing, and for others because it is adhesive. ”

“ Though the growth of the trees is very rapid, sometimes as much as twenty feet in the first year, there are five years of anxious waiting and guarding against winds and disease before they are ready to be tapped and so begin to reward the planters. At first the yield of a tree is only about one-half pound of rubber a year, and this increases so slowly that it is many years before it amounts to as much as ten pounds a year. ”

“ Soon some Americans began to import raw rubber and to manufacture rubber goods of their own, and in the old world a Scotchman named Macintosh found a way of waterproofing cloth by spreading on it a thin coating of rubber dissolved in coal naphtha. Many people still refer to raincoats as mackintoshes. Rubber clothing shared favor with rubber shoes, but its popularity was short-lived for it did not wear well and was almost as sensitive to temperature as molasses and butter. The rubber shoes and coats get hard and stiff in winter and soft and sticky in summer. ”

“ A cow must be starving that would care to flavor her luncheon with the needles that the thistle bears. The common skunk cabbage would make a tempting meal for her after a winter of dry feeding, had not Nature given it an odor that disgusts even a spring-time appetite. ”

“ Rubber air-brake hose on railroad trains makes safe the travel of a nation, air-drill hose rivets our ships, fire hose protects the properly in city and town and garden hose brings nourishment to our growing plants. Rubber clothing protects against storm and rubber footwear guards us against cold and wet. Tennis balls and golf balls and rubber-cored baseballs give healthful sport to the millions. In hospitals and medical work the uses of rubber are without number. ”

“ Although millions of rubber trees still stood untouched in the Brazilian forests, only those trees near the river banks could be tapped because of the impossibility of getting the rubber out of the dense vegetation. Life in the jungle was dangerous and lonely, and therefore rubber gatherers were not easy to find. ”

“ A little more than ten years ago American business men began to take an interest in the rubber plantations. They have shown characteristic energy in the field, and the greatest single rubber plantation in the world is owned by an American company, the United States Rubber Company. ”

“ All over the world there are plants with the same ability that the milkweed has, but it is especially true of certain trees and vines of the tropics. As soon as the little beetle begins to bore into the bark of one of these trees, there pours out a sticky, milky fluid that kills the insect at once. ”

“ Of all the applications of rubber, that of packing for the steam engine and connecting machinery appears to have been the most important, as it has been an essential condition of the development and extended use of steam as a motive power. ”

“ In tapping, a narrow strip of bark is cut away with a knife, the cut extending diagonally one-quarter of the way around the tree. At each succeeding day's tapping the tapper widens the cut by stripping off a sliver of bark one-twentieth of an inch in width. ”

“ Most interesting of all, they coated bottle-shaped moulds, and when the gum had hardened they would break the mould, shaking the pieces out of the neck, leaving an unbreakable bottle that would hold liquids. ”