Page 1 Advertisements Column 4

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 276, 8 December 1906, Page 1

TOPICAL PORTRAIT SERIES. ■ « MR W. T. CARR. AN INVENTION LIKELY TO AFFECT AGRICULTURE ALL OVER THE WORLD, -Jjjjjgjijjljig^Blin ';■-- if ' r'sSßr " Four hundred years ago it was noted by one. of the companions of Columbus that the natives of Hayti played a game with balls made of the gum of a tree, and that the balls, although large, were lighter and bounced better than the wind-balls of Castile. It was not, however, untik nearly two and a-half centuries later that Humorous varieties of the rubber tree reached Europe, and Dr. Priestley, in the preface to his work on perspective, calls attention to india-rubber as a novelty for erasing pencil-marks, and states that it was. sold in cubical pieces of half an inch for three shillings each." Thus a writer of recent date, and to it this may be added: The rubber industry which fifty years ago was nearly all supply and little o-r no demand, is now overlapping demand and straining supply, with every promise of the margin growing against the latter by leaps and bounds. For the demand is now 80,000 tons a year, and if it grows as it has done for the last quarter of a century then in five years more it will be 100,000 tons, in ton years 120,000 tons, and in twenty years 200,000 tons. Where is all this to come from, and if it can't come from anywhere, the rubber forests failing, what is to become of the motor industry, the latter covering thousands of articles, many of thorn quite indispensable. At this point we turn to Mr W. T. Carr, an Englishman, who says that the solution of the rapidly developing difficulty is to bo found in the wheat-field. In a word he foretells the making of rubber from artificially masticated grain, really from its treatment by a machine that will chew it with a chemically contrived saliva and later press the mass into rubber of the highest quality. But noto one thing,—Mr Carr declares that his grain rubber will not bo- a substitute,, as si substitute is en "apology" or an imitation of something better, but a new form of rubber which will be found as superior to the eld, or present, as modern carriage varnish is superior to that which is used to go over the imitation oak door. There appears to be little of mere theory about this, for the all important part is provided in the statement that the inventor has made his first machines, patented them and started making the product; and that so far ho has turned out water-proofing, tubing, tyrerubber, linoleum, and rubber for paving and ball-making. The first "factory" was really his month, and in this way thousands of us have made rubber before to-day, literally by chewing a small harmful of grain pulled in a field or taken out of a bag at the millers. But the factory now is the one i-'.i.rning out "Threlfall Carr" rubber on a comparatively promising scale, winch has its product protected by patents all over the world, and which promises in less than five years to have branches everywhere—somewhat humorous rivals of the mills, to which the grain grower will look for part of his demand. It seems to be unquestionable that wheat-rubber is destined for a very high place in modern industry as some proof of which both France and Germany recently offered to buy the patents as a State transaction, but fortunately without success. Woman's advice to woman—lf troubled with constipation, headache, liver or kidney ailments, take Tamer Juice. o