Under pressure of the
new demand for automobiles the price of rubber jumped from $1.25 to $3 a
pound in 1910, and millions had been invested in plantations. If
Professor Perkin was right when he told the congress that by his process
rubber could be made for less than 25 cents a pound it meant that these
plantations would go the way of the indigo plantations when the Germans
succeeded in making artificial indigo. If Dr. Duisberg was right when he
told the congress that synthetic rubber would "certainly appear on the
market in a very short time," it meant that Germany in war or peace
would become independent of Brazil in the matter of rubber as she had
become independent of Chile in the matter of nitrates.
As it turned out both scientists were too sanguine. Synthetic rubber has
not proved capable of displacing natural rubber by underbidding it nor
even of replacing natural rubber when this is shut out. When Germany
was blockaded and the success of her armies depended on rubber, price
was no object. Three Danish sailors who were caught by United States
officials trying to smuggle dental rubber into Germany confessed that
they had been selling it there for gas masks at $73 a pound.
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