Alternative Sources of Rubber

Abstract

ments was $514,053,971 and the finished products were valued at $882,538,514. There can be little doubt of the significance of this commodity in the American economy, yet the raw material for the rubber industry is produced almost entirely outside the political control of the United States, and in 1938 some 80 per cent of it was carried to these shores in foreign bottoms; 50 per cent British, 20 per cent Dutch, seven per cent Japanese, and three per cent Norwegian. The major trade routes of rubber have already shifted. In normal times 92.3 per cent of our rubber comes via Suez, .8 per cent by the Panama Canal, and 5.3 per cent across the Pacific to west coast ports. Between 1936 and 1938, 50 to 60 per cent of the rubber destined for the United States came via