Rubber

What Brigadier General Lincoln Clark Andrews said three years ago when he became Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition enforcement would have been pat for his new job of last week. Twelve U. S. rubber companies had formed a Rubber Institute and made General Andrews, 60, Director General.

Said he three years ago:

"My task is to bring about full cohesion and co-operation between the primary agencies of enforcement. The units of an army brigade . . . can't function as such until bound together. . . ."

Last week the same man, become a politic business man, said: "It will be my purpose and the function of the institute to provide for intelligent individual business management, operating independently, an opportunity to do business at a fair profit and on a basis of wholesome competition, and to see that the industry conducts itself entirely within the law, eliminates unfair trade practices and provides a maximum of service both to the industry and to the public."

And yet General Andrews was bold in saying anything. Others the past few years have been almost apologetic when they announced formation of new institutes.* Patent was their fear that their combinations to improve trade might be misinterpreted as combination to restrain trade.

Fortifying General Andrews' Rubber Institute is the core of U. S. rubber industry.

Of these Goodyear with assets of $179,000,000 is the largest. Goodrich makes the widest variety of rubber goods. Seiberling is the most redoubtable, starting from below zero only six years ago. Dunlop is unusual because, controlled by the British Tire & Rubber Corp. (Sir Eric Campbell Geddes is chairman) it has become important in the U. S. bicycle and motor car trade. U. S. Rubber has Malayan rubber plantations so extensive that it worries little over foreign control of rubber production. Firestone the past two years has made like enterprise in Liberia.

Fisk (from Chicopee Falls, Mass.) and Hood (from Watertown, Mass.) have impressed tire-users with their intimate advertising -- Fisk with its fetching "time- to-re-tire" child, Hood with its blue uniformed traffic arrester. Kelly-Springfield has definitely associated its tires with the most expensive makes of motor cars; deliberately it has made itself the "class" supplier. Miller has made its tire reputation equal its early reputation for druggist sundries. Less important than these are Ajax and Manhattan.

*Institutes have reached a total of 52--from tack and nail makers and dry-milk manufacturers to consulting engineers.