Article February 26, 1903 Issue

The Rubber Industry

Elliot Weatherby

Exchange

Comparatively little use was made of rubber before Goodyear was led by his genius to the discovery of a scientific treatment of the crude product, which gave to the world a new commercially available product of extraordinary value in advancing the arts of modern civilization. Rubber has now become a vital necessity, its production assuming vast proportions, and its consumption is a dominant factor in a great number of industries.

Altogether the rubber factories of the United States use yearly over sixty million pounds of rubber, turning it out again in thousands of different useful articles, and the manufacture of all these rubber commodities has created a demand for rubber that is simply insatiable. Rubber, indeed, ranks third among American imports, being exceeded in quantity and value only by sugar and coffee. Whence comes this vast quantity of crude rubber? What are the facts relating to the world's rubber supply?

Rubber comes from South America, from the Central American States, from western Africa, India, and the Indian Archipelago. The best rubber, however, comes from the Amazonas, embracing a certain part of southern Venezuela and the borders of the Amazon in Brazil. In his book on South America, Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, the distinguished traveler who made a twenty-five-thousand-mile journey in search of industrial information, says: "Amazon rubber is the best of all rubber; it furnishes the bulk of the product." Seventy-five per cent of all the rubber produced in the world is shipped via Para and Manaos, from either one of which ships leaving for New York often carry cargoes of rubber valued at two million dollars or more. Manaos has gained its importance as a rubber port because of its nearness to that section of the Amazonas which scientists have discovered to be the world's greatest rubber country.

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