Business: Guayule Rubber

For many purposes rubber from the guayule shrub is better than tree rubber, announced the U. S. Bureau of Standards last week after long research with chemists of the Intercontinental Rubber Co. This company (Charles Hamilton Sabin, chairman of the Guaranty Trust Co., is also its chairman) has been cultivating this shrub (the only shrub that so far has been commercialized) in Mexico, California, South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi. Thomas Alva Edison has an experimental farm in Florida. Others work in Texas. The shrub thrives in arid regions, and can be cultivated and harvested by machines. Last year guayule shrubs yielded 5,000 tons of usable rubber. But the U. S. needed 400,000 tons. The balance came from trees abroad.

In Brazil last week newspapers, politicians, and businessmen quarreled bitterly over the 50-year concession recently granted Henry Ford to cultivate rubber trees in the Amazon basin. By his contract he is permitted to engage in domestic and foreign trade without duty.