The Romance of Rubber | Page 3

find out, so he
nailed it on the outside of the door and went to bed. Probably he slept
but little and was up early. At any rate he found the rubber unaffected
by the cold.
Then he knew that he had made a real discovery and he named the
process "vulcanizing" after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
"Vulcanizing" means mixing pure rubber with certain chemicals and
then applying heat. On this process, which is by no means simple, the
great rubber business of the world has been established. Practically
everything made of rubber, or of which rubber is a part, has to go
through the vulcanizing process, whether it is a pair of Keds, a tire, a
fruit jar ring, or a doormat.
So many people had been deceived by previous rubber ventures that
Goodyear had great trouble in finding anyone with enough faith to
invest money in his discovery. It was some time before he was able to
take out the first of the more than sixty patents which he was granted
during his lifetime for applying his process to various uses. Under these
patents he licensed several factories to use the process in the
manufacture of rubber goods, but required them to stamp all goods with
the words "Goodyear patent." Scores of companies have since used the
name Goodyear, but the only factories that he licensed which are now
in existence are parts of the United States Rubber Company.
Goodyear often had to defend his patents in court. In the most famous
of these suits, he was defended by Daniel Webster and opposed by
Rufus Choate, so that we see interwoven in the story of rubber the
names of two of the greatest statesmen this country has produced.

CHAPTER 3
THE HEVEA TREE
For the very first of the rubber story we may thank a little wood- boring

beetle, and the way nature has of helping her children to protect
themselves.
The thistle of the meadow is as safe from hungry cattle as though
fenced in by barbed wire. A cow must be starving that would care to
flavor her luncheon with the needles that the thistle bears. The common
skunk cabbage would make a tempting meal for her after a winter of
dry feeding, had not Nature given it an odor that disgusts even a
spring-time appetite. The milkweed welcomes the bees and flies that
help to distribute her pollen where she wants it spread, but she has her
own way of punishing the useless thieves that trespass up her stalk.
Wherever the hooks of an insect's feet pierce her tender skin, she pours
out a milky juice to entangle its feet and body, and it is a lucky bug that
succeeds in escaping before this juice hardens, and holds him a prisoner
condemned to die.
All over the world there are plants with the same ability that the
milkweed has, but it is especially true of certain trees and vines of the
tropics. As soon as the little beetle begins to bore into the bark of one
of these trees, there pours out a sticky, milky fluid that kills the insect
at once. If this were all, the wound would remain open, ready for the
next robber who came along. In order that the break may be healed, a
cement is necessary, but not a hard, unyielding one, for that would
crumble away with the motion of the tree in the wind.
So with Mother Nature's perfection in doing things, the very plant juice
that has done duty as a poison is hardened into an elastic stopper. with
the result that, no matter how far the tree may sway and tug at the
wound, the filling gives and stretches, true to the task it has to perform.
This was the juice the crafty savage induced the tree to give up.
Wherever the bark was cut, the fluid poured forth to heal the break and
hardened like blood on a cut finger. The native caught it while it was
still soft and applied it to his simple needs.
This juice is not the sap of the rubber tree. Sap, which is the life-blood
of the tree, flows through the wood, but the juice we are describing is
contained in the inner bark, a thin layer directly below the outer bark.

Scientific men call this juice latex. It is like milk in three ways: it is
white, it contains tiny particles that rise to the top like cream, and it
spoils quickly.
The particles in cow's milk are full of fats which make it good for us to
drink. But a rubber tree's milk has tiny atoms of rubber and resin and
other things, and it took time to discover which of the vines and trees
was