Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 150, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1904 — Worn-Out Rubber Made New. [ARTICLE]

Worn-Out Rubber Made New.

Worn-out rubber, like worn-out silver, is something that does not exist in these days. Ever since the advent of bicycles and automobiles, both of which draw heavily on the world’s rubber supply, and ever since the hun-dred-and-one uses to which rubber is put in connection with electricity, the material has become more and more scarce and valuable, so that even the old rubber shoe and the worn-out rubber boot may throw out their chests In pride at being worth really something. Nothing containing rubber is discarded nowadays. The old rubber coat over which the spring tires of a motor car may run on a country road to-day may some day find a nesting place in the -soft tresses of a woman's hair, after having been transformed Into a handsome comb. ZKvehTVulcanized rubber, which, owing to the sulphuric process to which it was subjected, was formerly valueless, is now subjected to a process which rejuvenates It and makes it tit to be wirked up again for the purposes of the manufacturer. Immense quantities of this product, which formerly was assigned to a rubbish heap, are now treated and admixed with a certain percentage of new gtlm, enough to cheapen the price of most rubber goods turnefl out by the manufacturers to-day. Old rubber, however, can be used by itgelf vylthout any addition of fresh gum, the process of treatment being a simple one.—Answers.