The German
gas masks in the latter part of the war were made without rubber and
were frail and leaky. They could not have withstood the new gases which
American chemists were preparing on an unprecedented scale. Every scrap
of old rubber in Germany was saved and worked over and over and diluted
with fillers and surrogates to the limit of elasticity. Spring tires
were substituted for pneumatics. So it is evident that the supply of
synthetic rubber could not have been adequate or satisfactory. Neither,
on the other hand, have the British made a success of the Perkin
process, although they spent $200,000 on it in the first two years. But,
of course, there was not the same necessity for it as in the case of
Germany, for England had practically a monopoly of the world's supply of
natural rubber either through owning plantations or controlling
shipping. If rubber could not be manufactured profitably in Germany when
the demand was imperative and price no consideration it can hardly be
expected to compete with the natural under peace conditions.
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