Business: Rubber 1939

Twenty-two years ago, while the U. S. was trying to win World War I, the Du Ponts set a young engineer, Francis Breese Davis Jr., to building the world's No. 1 guncotton plant at Hopewell, Va. Eleven years ago the Du Ponts acquired control of the sick U. S. Rubber Co., the following year put dependable Organizer Davis in to explode a case of profit-making dynamite under it. Davis quickly found out where to plant the charge. Mass production methods had not been perfected in the $900,000,000 rubber industry. As he said afterwards, "U....

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