The Rubber Industry and the Automobile

Abstract

There are fifty or sixty millions of our people using this indispensable means of individual transportation. We have indeed a motorized country. The horizon of our people in a social and economic way has been so widened by the introduction of the motor vehicle and the modern highway that the whole national life of America presents an astonishing comparison with that of other countries. Twenty years ago a large part of our country, even including the cities, was in a frontier condition as to roads. With the phenomenally quick acceptance of the automobile and its adoption into the daily life of Americans, there has been a parallel development of highways. Together they furnish a system of individual transportation which is so commonly in evidence in every direction that we hardly comprehend its extent and effect. It has had a farreaching influence in bringing to our citizens an enjoyment of comforts and conveniences of living far beyond those of any other country in the world. Except for rubber, the phenomenal development of the automobile itself and of a nation-wide system of improved highways would not have been possible. The automobile upon hard tires would not have been so quickly accepted as a convenient and comfortable means of transportation, nor would the modern science of road building have been able to cope with the problem of durable highways, subjected to the hard tires of countless thousands of rapidly moving, heavy vehicles. The shock of constant vibration would have presented a serious difficulty to the manufacturers and designers of the automobile. America, with sixteen million automobiles running on steel tires over concrete pavements, would be an inconceivably noisy place to live in.