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But rubbermen had one last ace in the hole last week to bolster their hopes for obtaining 275,000 tons of synthetic in 1943: string-saving on the part of the oil companies themselves has turned up enough existing equipment to produce perhaps 100,000 precious tons of butadiene next year without any new capacity at all.
It was high time for good news of any kind about rubber: last week word leaked out that the U.S. has already used up one-third of its 700,000-ton stockpile of natural rubber.
* Despite the fact that no less a man than Henry Wallace this week wrote a New York Times feature story chronicling his fears as a free trader about the post-war pressure that synthetic rubber would put on Congress for a protective tariff.