The Rubber King

Our sons and our nephews will experience many new wonders and they will live in a very pleasant or unbearable world, because all the progress that follows one another tends towards more well-being, more calm, more ease or, on the contrary, do they generate more fever, more haste, more nervousness? It seems that, while inventions multiply, the human race also multiplies its reasons, its bad reasons for distancing itself from nature. Fortunately there is a reaction: the popularity of sports!

What will be the wonders of the future? It is probable that ingenious inventors will find almost infinite new uses for electricity and that electricity will cost less and less because it will be drawn from the air or the sea;

We can also foresee significant improvements in air navigation. If motoring reaches its useful peak, at least with regard to the resistance and speed of cars, it is not the same for planes and airships which have the advantage of following wide and infinite air routes. .

The T.S.F. will be everywhere, there is no doubt about it and its multiple applications will exceed our expectations. Will it be rain or shine? Will a chemical surgeon find an effective way to rejuvenate his contemporaries, if this word can be used for people who, by dint of changing their age, will no longer have one... But let us stop our divinatory speculations here to expect only one thing: the increasing use of rubber.

The rubber tree is native to the Amazon valley, but today nine-tenths of world production comes from the immense Asian plantations created on the island of Ceylon, in the Malacca peninsula, the Dutch Indies. and, very importantly, throughout French Indo-China.

It is said that the Mexicans were the first to harvest rubber. History records that the natives of Mexico were already playing a game using an elastic ball in 1500. The first Spanish explorers who witnessed this game learned from the natives that clothing made of the same material as the ball was waterproof. But the explorers who returned to Spain to report this surprising fact were not believed. Even if you tell the truth, it comes from far away!

Since then, what progress! The list of all the objects that use rubber would be long. If this plant product were taken away from us overnight, what would we do? We clearly saw, during the war, that rubber was essential to our modern civilization.

Whether it is children's games, school erasers, tires, various surgical objects, or clothing, we can easily see the importance that rubber has acquired in recent years and its ever-increasing usefulness. But, have no doubt, its use will continue to develop and there will come a day when the world consumption of rubber will be more considerable than we currently imagine.

The day rubber becomes cheaper, the roads will be “paved” with it; there have already been more than satisfactory tests. The courtyard of Euston station in London has been rubberized for thirty years. Although the cost price was very high, it remains clear that the engineers ultimately made significant savings. What paving can last so long and require so little maintenance?

The courtyard of the Savoy Hotel, in London, has also been rubberized since 1912 and I assure you that the hotel guests do not complain about it. English engineers very well foresee the relatively imminent possibility of multiplying these resistant and silent pavings. They say that by making certain mixtures we will obtain a solid, resistant, durable and pleasant composition for neighbors and even for walkers, pedestrians or others.

But it is above all from the point of view of neighbors that progress will be appreciable. This rubber paving is less noisy than any other. All those who have their sleep or their nap disturbed by the incessant noise of the street, the pounding rolling of the carts with heavy wheels, will have less reason to be upset. English doctors would like to see such paving become widespread in busy roads in city centers because, they say, the nerves of their clients would not be tested as they are currently...

You already know that lightweight shoes with rubber soles and round heel pads that are attached with a screw to the heels you want to protect are sold everywhere. These heel lifts may be very practical, but many people criticize them for being unstylish. Will we see the popularization of shoes with strong rubberized soles?

An English newspaper that I have in front of me predicts it, but for an indeterminate date. He says “it is possible to mix rubber with waste, such as sawdust, cork sawdust, cotton or leather scraps; with the solution obtained we can make soles more resistant than leather ones and costing ten times less. But, to definitively adopt this new product, you have to fight against routine, which is not always easy. »

The same newspaper gives the following information: “A new process which, until now, has not gone beyond laboratory experiments because manufacturers do not want to modify their machines, makes it possible to produce clear and transparent rubber like crystal and yet very resistant.

The applications of this new rubber can be numerous. Transparent surgical tubes will be a great advancement; children's balloons will be more poetic, we will have drinking glasses which are not made of glass and which will be unbreakable, etc., etc.

In short, rubber is set to experience ever-increasing popularity. Global production will soon fall short of requirements. I would advise you to plant rubber trees in your small garden, among your begonias and queen daisies, but they would not grow. Instead, go and try it big in the Far East; for example in the attractive and wonderful French Indochina.

PAUL-LOUIS HERVIER.