WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1933. Husks Into Fenders

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 45, 23 February 1938, Page 4

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1933. Husks Into Fenders

Increasingly an enthusiast over chemurgy, Henry Ford announced the other day that his experiments with the utilisation of farm by-products, such as wheat and soy *bean chaff and corn husks, were approaching the stage where a considerable portion of an automobile could be “grown” on the farm. In the laboratory he is making from chaff a material which can be fashioned into fenders, doors, panels, and other body parts.

As a corollary, the Ford engineers are almost ready with a low-price tractor which will enable the farmer to raise at lower cost and in greater abundance the crops which he is confident will constitute an increasingly important proportion of the raw materials of industry. Substance is lent to the vision by the fact that soy bean products already are being used in finishes applied to many Ford cars and in the manufacture of such parts as steering-wheel rims and interior trim.

In brief, Mr. Ford is undertaking to substitute a product of the soil for steel. But what is steel? Technically, it is a refinement of iron oxide by the use of coal (in the form of coke) and limestone. In the last analysis, however, iron and coal and limestone actually are mineral or vegetable substances, of earthly origin, which have been processed by the passing of incalculable millions of years.

The difference between the steel now used for automobile bodies and the chemurgic material with which Mr. Ford is experimenting is one of time, not of origin. What he really proposes to do is to shorten the cycle from soil to fender from millions of years to a few months. In other words, intelligence, not time, would become the converter of nature’s bounty into the service of mankind.