Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1917 — RUBBER FIRST UTILIZED BY AMAZONIAN INDIANS [ARTICLE]

RUBBER FIRST UTILIZED BY AMAZONIAN INDIANS

White Men Found Them Playing Ball With the Bouncing Stuff—Yankee, Adda Process. The average man believes that robber la rubber, just as silver k silver and ivory is ivory, but as a matter of fact, the different kinds of rubber run into the hundreds. Originally, all rubber came from the valley of the Amar zon. When it was discovered no one knows. At any rate, when the first white men visited South America they found the Indians playing with balls made from the exudation of the bark of a certain tree, and these balls differed from any the Europeans had ever seen,'*for' they bounded and rebounded and were full of life. The Indians also smeared this milk of the tree on their blankets to make them waterproof. Two hundred years and more went by, and while many wise men believed this elastic, cohesive, impermeable substance ought to be full of usefulness nobody found any way to use it to any advantage. It was so brittle in cold weather and so disposed to get soft it hot weather. But in the fullness of time a Connecticut Yankee started to puzzle it out. It took him the better part of ten years, but he did it, and in 1839 gave the world his vulcanization process— which is .in use to this day. Up to that time was so cheap that ships from South America sometimes used it as ballast, taking their chances of selling it for what they could get in some American port. With the discovery of the vulcanizing process, rubber took on a new value, and the tropics were searched for it everywhere. It was found in the vines nf Africa; and gutta percha, a. sort of first cousin to rubber, was found in Borneo; and a few years ago a Urge volume -of rubber was found in the Guayule shrubs of Mexico. As rubber grew in value the chemists fell to work and devised ways of recovering it from old shoes and hose and other articles into which it entered, and thus “reclaimed rubber” soon came to equal the new rubber in volume; and all these varieties found some legitimate use. —Gutta percha makes unapproachable insulation for ocean cablee. Balata, which comes from the Guinas, is famous for belting; and even “re claimed rubber” taken from the junk heaps, serves perfectly well for flooring and mats, and other articlewhere resiliency is not needed.