Synthetic and the Future

RUBBER Synthetic and the Future The Office of Rubber Director asked permission last week to cut its own throat.

It was the first wartime Government agency to put it that way. For rubber pro duction, once the No. 1 U.S. war problem, has been solved. U.S. plants now produce at a rate of 836,000 long tons of synthetic rubber a year (more than 25% above the peak prewar import of crude). ORD has no job left; what remains are manpower problems and production troubles in tire manufacturing.

In September 1942 the U.S. was nearly 100% dependent on crude rubber imports; now the U.S. needs only 14% crude rubber, and gets it from a 100,000-ton stockpile imported from Liberia, India, the Amazon and other small-producing areas.

The man who bounced the U.S. over the rubber hump is chubby, puckish-looking Bradley Dewey, 67, who announced his resignation last week on the plea that his job was done. (After a short vacation in September, he will resume the presidency of Dewey & Almy Chemical Co., Cambridge, Mass.) When he succeeded able Bill Jeffers as Rubber Boss nearly a year ago, the groundwork had been laid, but synthetic plants were making about a third of what they are now. Dewey, a hardboiled, thorough man, bulled through plant construction and speeded up the synthetic program. To help him, Rubber Boss Dewey had a good team: Plant Construction Chief William E. O'Brien and a staff of 35 crack engineers; U.S. Rubber's Lucius D. Tompkins, operations chief; Firestone's E. B. Babcock, top technician; and M.I.T.'s Professor Edwin Richard Gilliland, research director.

The success of the synthetic rubber program antiquates the prewar economics of rubber. The U.S. is now a producer as well as a consumer, need no longer pay tribute to the old British-Dutch natural rubber cartel. This week State Department officials and industry men went to the London Rubber Conference to report to British and Dutch representatives that the U.S. has more than 50 plants operating, more abuilding, and a million-pound annual production capacity. No commitments will be made at this conference, but the U.S. delegates will not have to stand out side, hats in hand.

Rubbermen do not believe that synthetic will entirely replace natural rubber--the postwar market will be big enough for both. At least two or three years, probably much longer, may be needed to get Malayan and East Indian plantations back into normal production. Then, even if crude is cheaper than synthetic--say as low as 10 1/2 a pound as against the present Buna S minimum of 14-c---competition will still be a minor point because of the potentially enormous demand.

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