PRODUCTION: Synthetics for Tires

The U. S. needs a great deal of rubber—600,000 tons a year—for elastics, from fingerstalls to truck tires. Practically all (98%) of this rubber is lugged across 8,000 miles of Pacific Ocean from the Far East—British Malaya, The Netherlands East Indies, Burma, Thailand, French Indo-China. Japan, bent on wider control in East Asia, has long had its eye on these parts. And if the British fleet should be destroyed and the U. S. fleet sent into the Atlantic to guard against invasion from Europe, Japan might well be able to grab this...