Rubber Thunder

The Rubber Exchange in Manhattan (Francis R. Henderson, President), is a quiet-looking place. The architecture is sort of Dutch, about as Dutch as the Stock Exchange is Greek: a burgomaster's mansion, not the temple of a relentless cult. The quiet winding stretches of South William Street have just enough of Amsterdam's canals to make the visiting Dutch rubber trader homesick. The dark-red bricks are so well woven together, the boxes of flowers on the window ledges are so neatly kept, the whole place is so clean--it is a bit of Holland low-country snuggling at the base of Manhattan peaks.

Last week rubber bounded--down, down. At the Rubber Exchange there was pandemonium in miniature likeness of the Stock Exchange. Rubber dropped to new low records for the history of the two-year-old exchange. Trading was in tremendous volume, pace of execution was terrific, collars wilted and voices hoarsened for the first time in the life of the New York rubber broker. Brokers sold 20,277 1/2 long tons in 8,111 contracts* for $13,500 in 4 1/2 days. A Rubber Exchange seat was sold for a new high record: $6,600. A cablegram from London was responsible for the crash. Premier Stanley Baldwin had let it be known that the Stevenson Act restricting British rubber production in Malay states, Straits Settlements and Ceylon might become inoperative at some time after May 1.

Mr. Baldwin, with characteristic inadvertence, allowed the great news to leak out in such fashion that alert U. S. correspondents and their papers were able to scoop London by almost 24 hours. This caused a loss to British rubber men which London Rubber Magnate Arthur Anthony Baumann estimated at -L-7,000,000. He added caustically, "10 Downing Street [the Prime Minister's residence] is really unfit to govern the Empire."

*The unit of trading on the Rubber Exchange.