Dollar Rubber

True to fears of consumers and the hopes of producers, crude rubber has reached $1.00 a pound--a rise of 400% from its price of 20c a year ago. It is estimated that, at the present rate, tire buyers will spend an extra $3,000,000 this year, because of the effectiveness of curtailment of production by the British rubber growers in the East.

The efforts of Harvey S. Firestone and others to grow rubber in Florida, Liberia and other places can have no speedy effect on the market for crude rubber. Undoubtedly present high prices will stimulate output in the Dutch East Indies, and to some extent lead to the utilization of wild rubber in Brazil, yet increased supplies from these sources are not expected to be in important amounts.

There remains the alternative of curtailed consumption, and this has been recently adopted as a definite policy by the American Rubber Association. As far as possible, the manufacture of odd-sized tires will be abolished, and the practice of ordering tires in the winter for spring delivery (known in the trade as "spring dating") will also be largely discontinued. Also, plans for utilizing reclaimed rubber have been announced, but without effect on crude rubber prices so far.

The gist of the matter is, from the British angle at least, that the great balloon tire craze inaugurated a year ago was supposed to benefit tire makers to sell more rubber. This style of tire has been largely responsible for the fact that the consumption of rubber during the first six months of this year reached a new high record, about 20% over consumption for the same period of 1924.