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But not all the buna program's troubles stemmed from such high considerations. Some plain old-fashioned competitive jealousies were also involved. The refiners had borne the brunt of butadiene research, were miffed because the rubber companies got buna from butadiene on. The chemical companies, scheduled to produce styrene, alcohol and alcohol-butadiene, didn't want to share secrets with the oil companies who had the original know-how. The little rubber companies were sore because they felt the Big Four of Rubber were hogging their end of the program.
There was no one in Washington with the strength and the savvy to end this caterwauling. By the very facts of petroleum technology, when a plant produces butylene it also produces high-octane gasoline and toluene. But there was no authority in Washington who would or could talk about these three strategic materials as one integrated production and financial problem. Butylene fell to Rubber Reserve Corp.; toluene (for TNT) to Army Ordnance; aviation gasoline to the Office of the Petroleum Coordinator. Something at last began to happen about six weeks ago. Its foundation was the sober recognition on everyone's part that 1) the rubber situation was so dire as to threaten the war effort itself; 2) the raw materials situation as a whole (particularly in steel) was so dire that the rubber program had to be frozen, and on a strictly string-saving basis at that.
Under these twin compulsions—and with a new anonymous team at the throttle —Arthur Newhall's office began to make some coordinated sense; the Army got so aroused it started giving some solid orders too; Jesse Jones worried himself into setting up weekly Monday morning meetings to iron out interdepartmental messes and jealousies. And the program at last got set technologically on the sound basis that, right or wrong, nothing—absolutely nothing—would change it again, except a new discovery that involved better production with no change in existing plant-construction plans and no increase in material needs. At long last, the whole huge program got off the drawing boards.
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 ago a new process from a less eminent scientist than Eugene Houdry would have stopped the whole synthetic program in its tracks until it was investigated. Now the die is cast.
The Future is Still Clouded. Mass production of a complicated chemical product split into many component parts can produce all kinds of unexpected bugs. Though at least theoretically, raw materials and equipment are not as hideously short as rubber itself, any holdup there could wreck the program all over again.