CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15861, 26 February 1912, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS.

Mr Andrew Carnegie was summoned to Washington last month to give evidence before a Congressional Committee

MU CABNT.SIE GIVES EVIDENCE.

with regard to the affairs of the Steel Trust. He was kept in the city for three days, sixteen hours actually being spent in the witness-box, and at the end of that time he was handed £1 10s lid to cover his travelling expenses and £1 4s to compensate him for loss of timo. The famous millionaire accepted the money gravely and thanked the committee for its kindnesa. The ovidence that he had given was of very great interest. Mr Carnegie told tho story of the sale of his huge interests to tho Morgan group of financiers, which later became merged in tho United States Steel Corporation. Ho disposed of an old statement that he had been forced to sell by pressure of competition and showed that as a mattor of fact he had made a very good bargain. He took particular prido in telling how ho had beaten Mr John Rockefeller, of Standard Oil fame, on a deal in iron ore. Turning to tho futuro, Mr Carnegie said frankly that he did not expect the existing antiTrust laws to prove effective. The compulsory dissolution of tho big corporations would not meet the real needs of the case, he declared, and a rival concern could not hope to enter the field successfully against such a force as tho Steel Trust. Tho millionaire did not explain his own ideas fully, but apparently he believed that no step short of nationalisation would enable the people to control an industry. Ho thought that an immediate improvement of the situation might be secured by empowering a Federal commission to fix prices. Inoidentally Mr Carnegie said that ho himself was neither an industrial tyrant nor a philanthropist. He had not been a party to the forcible suppression of strike troubles at his mills and he was spending his millions in benefactions because ho believed that he ought nob to hoard his money. No doubt he felt that ho could find a good use for tho sum that he drew from the committee.

If the expectations of an American inventor

MO3E RUBBER.

are realised, Mexico will soon be producing rubber in very large quantities. The guayule plant, which, grows wild over large stretches of country in Northern Mexico, has long. been known to yield rubber of very good quality, and Government officers and private experts have tried to devise a commercial process of extraction. The plant has to bo crashed in order to extract the pulp and juices, and the resulting liquid is refined until a residuum of rubber is obtained. But the known methods of treatment have been costly and cumbrous, and Mexican rubber haG not been produced in marketable quantities. Mr W. M. O'Brien, a resident of Salt Lake Oity, claims to have devised a manufacturing plant that will treat the guayule rapidly and cheaply. He has produced samples of rubber that are stated by oompetent judges to bo of very high grade, and says that he will soon erect a large factory which will revolutionise the existing rubber industry. The juices that used to yield about 10 por cent of the finished product are made, under Ins process, to produce from 2o to 40 por cent of rubber, and tho cost is comparatively small. Mr O'Brien may have overestimated tho efficiency of his invention, but experts have been predicting for some tirao past that the concentration of inventive skill on the ip-noducfcion of cheap rubber would have its outcome in important developments. Tho raw material is much more widely distributed than many people realise. It is to be found in many thousands of tropical trees, plants and shrubs, and the fact that practically tho wholo of the world's supply is being drawn from a few species of trees at the present timo is due mainly to the comparative simplicity of I tho "tapping" operations. There is l j no scientific reason why plants like the guayule should not bo made to yield their wealth to the human race. \

the roon 6ILKWOK3I.

Tho silk manufacturers both in Britain and in America are making

a demand for protection from the competition of artificial silk. They say that the genuine product of tho silkworm is being driven out of various departments of tho dress trade by tho material that is made from wood-pulp Artificial silk cannot be distinguished from the real except by an expert. It is .soft, smooth and lustrous and can be dyed in brilliant colTies, ribbons, scarves, gloves and cloths are made of it in enormous quantities and the purchasers never know 2at they are being deceived, though

they probably wonder why silk is so much less durable than it was In the days of their grandmothers. The raw material for making artificial silk is wood-pulp or cellulose. The substance Is reduced to a jelly by the use of suitable- solvents and is forced through very fine circular holes, from which it emerges in thin, filaments. The jellylike threads are hardened in a chemical bath and aro then spun into thread. Lace and trimmings made from this substance aro said to be more easily washed than those of real silk, but they have no great wearing power. Tho silk manufacturers would like to have the substitute given a name of its own and not sold as silk at all, and they quote tho precedent of the fur trade. A very large proportion of the furs that aro sold to ladles to-day aro taken from tho body of the humble rabbit, and it has been held at law that a rnbbitskin may not be sold bb "seal" or "fox." But the use of tho word "coney" as a prefix has overcome* the difficulty, and so "bunny" figures in the shops as "coney-seal," "squirrel-coney" and so on, according to the method of preparation and tho colour of the dye. An arrangement of a similar kind' might give the poor silkworm a chance to earn ah honest living.