Word: rubbermen
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...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 10½ a pound as against the present Buna S minimum of 14?-competition will still be a minor point because of the potentially enormous demand...
...about their own country than foreign "experts" do. The U.S. Rubber Development Corp. raised the price of "Acre-fine" wild rubber from 45? to 60? a lb., handed over supervision to the Brazilian Government. Jungle-baffled Americans had got less rubber out of Amazonia than they had hoped. Native rubbermen predicted that jungle-wise Brazilians, seeing a profit in the higher price, might beat the record production of the rubber boom 32 years...
...rubber shortage was terrible (despite Mr. Jones's grandiose plans), somebody else discovered another rubber source-guayule-dandelions -unpronounceable Polish and Russian weeds and inventors-new technological discoveries. Each "discovery" had some political wheelhorse to trundle it; each one had just enough "maybe" in it to scare Government rubbermen into another paralyzed pause...
...tons of butadiene capacity; alcohol-butadiene plants need about the same amount of steel, 169 units of compressor horsepower, plus 27 tons of copper-the scarcest metal of all-v. almost no copper for oil. In the face of this ruckus, the final decision of the rubbermen is that there is no sense in building any new raw-material capacity (even if it could be built fast) as long as petroleum and alcohol between them can fill this bill...
Best sample yet of this new go-ahead attitude came last week, when the newly tough rubber authorities turned down a new butadiene process that came from no less a petroleum technologist than catalytic-cracking expert Eugene Houdry. The rubbermen were still human enough to be glad to find an excuse in Mr. Houdry's steel figures, which appeared to be as high or higher than those for most of the program already under way. Mr. Houdry was mad enough to vent his spleen all over the place. But the important point is that, even six weeks...