Prodded by irate U. S. tiremen, the State Department last week complained about the price of rubber to the British Governmenta logical move since the British International Rubber Regulation Committee is quasi-official. Thanks to the committee's restrictive policy, rubber was above 27¢ per lb., a tenfold increase over its Depression low (TIME, March 29).
And, as usual, the chief victim of this lucrative international racket was the U. S., which grows no rubber, uses more than one-half the world's supply. Henry Ford, with his 2,500,000-acre concession in the heart of Brazil's Amazon jungles,...