100 Good Years

One hundred years ago last week a persevering Yankee named Charles Goodyear brewed some crude rubber, sulfur and white lead on his kitchen stove, discovered vulcanization. That invention changed rubber from a scientist's plaything to one of mankind's most useful commodities. Today there are some 35,000 uses for rubber, 4,000,000 people are employed in the industry and its world-wide investment comes to $2,698,000,000. Greatest concentration of this great sum is found in Ohio's 122 rubber factories and last week in Akron, "rubber capital of the world," the industry celebrated its centennial by unveiling an eight-foot bronze statue of Vulcanizer Goodyear, presented to the city by Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s President Paul W. Litchfield.

Charles Goodyear never visited Akron. His invention arrived there in 1869, eleven years after his death. That year, Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich founded the city's first rubber company, choosing the town because the Ohio & Erie Canal afforded cheap transportation. Goodrich celebrated its 70th birthday last week by announcing a 1938 net of $2,240,119 after a 1937 loss of $878,580. Surpassing it in size are three younger competitors--Firestone Tire & Rubber, U. S. Rubber, Goodyear Tire & Rubber. Goodyear, now the industry's biggest (with 1938 profit of $6,012,423 on net sales of $165,000,000), was founded in Akron in 1898 by the Seiberling family, has no connection with Inventor Goodyear save its name, chosen to do him honor.

The rubber industry rises and falls with automobile sales and the price of crude rubber. Two years ago most of the companies were sagging under heavy inventories; currently, the tire inventory position is the lowest in four years and revival of the automobile industry gives rubbermen reason to anticipate an excellent year. But though tire and tube sales are the industry's mainstay, providing 65% of total volume, the most significant fact about rubber today is its technological progress. At the threshold of its second 100 years, the industry is bubbling over with new ideas, new products.

More pounds of rubber now go into automobile accessories than into tires and tubes, which remain the bulk of the rubber business only because of replacement demand. The average car requires 40 Ib. of rubber for its accessories; some cars have as many as 300 rubber parts. And these do not include a new rubber spring Goodrich is perfecting, a new rubber shock absorber of Firestone's, or the industry's current prize hope--sponge rubber cushions, which it believes will supplant horsehair, coil springs and other upholstering material not only in cars but in mattresses and furniture.

All the companies are experimenting with rubber-laminated walls for houses. A section of rubber paving in Akron's East Market Street that has lasted ten years points to a lucrative field if crude rubber prices ever fall low enough to compete with concrete. Rubber is vulnerable to oil and sun, so scientists have developed rubbery synthetics like DuPrene which are not. Such new products as Goodyear's Pliofilm and Goodrich's Koroseal are beginning to threaten Cellophane as packaging material. From rubber conveyor belts (Grand Coulee Dam has one 10,000 ft. long), the industry expects to make millions. Other developments: acid-resisting tanks, sun-resisting paint.

Last week all the top Akron rubber executives were unanimous in believing that their new products would eventually surpass tires and tubes in dollar volume.

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