Word: rubberizing
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Nothing inspires the U.S. to deeds of technological derring-do like a national emergency. Government and industry join to beat their traditional swords into plowshares-or into synthetic rubber, aluminum, manned rockets and various products needed for survival. Many times the Government has met tremendous challenges by setting clear goals, guaranteeing markets and assigning specific projects to private companies...
...closest parallel was another raw-materials crisis almost 40 years ago, when the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia cut off 90% of the world's natural-rubber supply. The U.S., caught with its stockpiles down and accustomed to importing over half a million tons annually from Asia, was forced to create a synthetic-rubber industry almost from scratch...
After Pearl Harbor, the Government and private companies dithered for four months over how much synthetic rubber to manufacture and how to make it. Wild-eyed inventors were promoting schemes to produce it from Mexican guayule shrubs and Russian dandelions. The program started to get on track when the War Production Board decided to go basically with one type of synthetic, Buna-S, made from butadiene and styrene; Standard Oil of New Jersey held the U.S. patent rights for Buna-S. Production goals were set at 800,000 tons a year. Arthur Newhall, a former rubber-company executive, was appointed...
...first, executives of rubber companies howled in outrage, for they feared that the Government was letting Jersey Standard into their business. So Newhall spread the manufacture of butadiene and styrene among 14 oil companies, six chemical companies and one rayon firm. The raw materials were then shipped to plants operated by B.F. Goodrich, Goodyear, Firestone and U.S. Rubber, where they were mixed and turned into products. Thus, rubber companies kept control of their industry...
...biggest U.S. war-supply problem had been solved. In barely two years the country went from being nearly 100% dependent on imported natural rubber to requiring it for only 14% of its needs, an amount small enough to come from stockpiles in friendly Liberia, India and Brazil. Synthetic rubber was being produced ahead of schedule at an annual rate of 836,000 tons, more than 25% above the peak prewar imports of rubber. By war's end the Government had built and owned 51 synthetic-rubber plants at a cost of $700 million. These plants were later sold...