Rubber and Empire

Mark R. Finlay. Growing American Rubber: Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security. Studies in Modern Science, Technology, and the Environment Series. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009. xiii + 317 pp. $49.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8135-4483-0. Reviewed by Barbara Hahn Published on H-Environment (January, 2012) Commissioned by Dolly Jørgensen (University of Stavanger) “We could recover from the blowing up of achievements, among them the production of syn‐ New York City and all the big cities of the eastern thetic rubber from petroleum. In the twentieth seaboard,” declared Harvey S. Firestone in 1926, century and ever since, rubber has mattered a “more quickly ... than we could recover from the great deal to the U.S. economy and to its security. loss of our rubber” (p. 63). Firestone, of course, re‐ And the United States depends almost entirely on lied on rubber for his tire empire; his explosive outside suppliers for its raw material. example was no less true for that. Rubber was a The commodity’s situation is even more sur‐ crucial input for most twentieth-century technolo‐ prising when one notes that rubber can be grown gies: it contributed insulation for telegraph wires on trees--or rather, in trees, shrubs, and even dan‐ as well as tires for automobiles, bicycles, trucks, delions. Mark R. Finlay’s study, Growing American and airplanes. It also made rubber gloves and Rubber, the 2009 winner of the Theodore Saloutos medical tubing, condoms, and tennis shoes. From Memorial Award for the best book in Agricultural hospitals to auto repair shops, rubber went into History, examines decades of efforts by multiple every industry--both Henry Ford and Thomas Edi‐ actors to produce rubber on American soil. Many, son counted it an input. In 1942, the United States many species of plants produce some version of consumed 60 percent of the world’s rubber but rubber in a milky latex. With considerable effort, produced almost none; 97 percent was produced humans can process and vulcanize the liquid into in the Pacific, in regions that had fallen to the Ja‐ the strong hard rubber needed for so many goods. panese after Pearl Harbor. The U.S. government In Finlay’s analysis, the United States focused on rationed gasoline during World War II--primarily four main species: guayule, cryptostegia, golden‐ to protect the supplies of rubber that would other‐ rod, and kok-sagyz or Russian dandelion. Each wise be used in tires, by motorists. In the end, vic‐ had its ardent supporters and its seasons in the tory in World War II depended on technical sun. Each held out the promise, at one time or an‐ H-Net Reviews other, of providing a renewable supply of one of The Great Depression ended with a bang on industrial society’s most vital inputs. Each offered December 7, 1941, and, with it, easy American ac‐ technological and economic challenges along with cess to Pacific rubber supplies. As Edison had pre‐ hopes and dreams. All cost more than the avail‐ dicted, after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese worked to able alternatives at crucial moments, and the ex‐ cut off American rubber supplies, while supplying pense of production diminished the support cru‐ Nazi Germany. Research that had been desultory cial to the development of the crop. became crucial to government interests and the American attempts to grow rubber before war effort. In spring 1942, therefore, the Emer‐ World War II intended to relieve the nation’s de‐ gency Rubber Project (ERP) became one of the pendence on foreign imports, a prewar version of characteristic big-science projects of the era. It “energy independence.” Finlay begins this story in bailed out the IRC and acquired for the govern‐ 1911, during the Mexican Revolution, with the nu‐ ment all the IRC holdings, its patents, and seed merous rebel attacks on the Mexican holdings of stocks. In addition, the emerging military-indus‐ the American frm Intercontinental Rubber Com‐ trial-academic complex generated multiple rub‐ pany (IRC) and its subsidiaries. Within the next ber supply projects at, for example, Cornell, Clem‐ decade, World War I demonstrated to all combat‐ son, and the University of Minnesota. Caltech em‐ ants the vulnerability of relying on supplies pro‐ ployed Japanese scientists and nurserymen incar‐ duced in other nations. In Europe, this lesson of cerated at Manzanar and other internment the postcolonial world propelled nationalists to‐ camps. New crops rose to prominence in these ef‐ ward autarky and eventually fascism. In the Unit‐ forts, including the Russian dandelion kok-sagyz, ed States, the message of the First World War had while the more established guayule, goldenrod, much more mixed results. In the boom and bust and cryptostegia plants experienced renewed in‐ of the interwar decades, interest in domestic rub‐ terest in their production potential. Alas, commit‐ ber cultivation rose and fell. At frst, in 1922, ment to synthetic rubber--made from petroleum-- British rubber producers established the Steven‐ overtook both natural rubber sources and those son Plan “to restrict rubber exports and raise rub‐ synthetics made from renewable plant sources, ber prices” (p. 45). This threatened U.S. supply, such as grains. Synthetic rubber has dominated even as demand increased. It inspired U.S. efforts domestic production since 1945, diminishing to cultivate the crop both at home and abroad, in American interests in sustainable or renewable places like Haiti (occupied by U.S. forces) and Cen‐ sources of a commodity so crucial for domestic tral America (in the plantations of U.S. frms, such success. as United Fruit). Yet, while the Stevenson Plan be‐ Finlay demonstrates a healthy regard for the came a significant issue in American foreign and requirements of the various plants that his actors trade policy, the American preference for free considered as sources of rubber, but does not see markets prevented effective response. Edison nature, the world beyond human control, playing himself worked hard to domesticate rubber culti‐ a definitive or deterministic role. Business strate‐ vation on his Florida estate during his retirement gy provides better explanations, even as it inter‐ in the late 1920s. His death in 1931 cut short his acts with plant processes. This proves to be an ef‐ “impressive and systematic study of the problem” fective antidote for essentialism: a belief in (p. 74). In the next decade, unsurprisingly, the “essences”--some natural reality, outside human Great Depression curtailed new investments and history and human control, the same in every investigations. time and place. Edison’s interest in rubber cultiva‐ tion dated, for example, from a sudden rise in the price of the raw material used in his products. His 2 H-Net Reviews experiments always included calculations of the and testing station in Haiti. Most scholars know costs of production. Such efforts, from an astute the role of botanic gardens and other scientific in‐ businessman, do not surprise. But calculations of stitutions in the spreading empire of modern Eu‐ cost explain not only Edison’s efforts but also rope.[2] Finlay’s book conveys how, in the twenti‐ those choices facing anyone who would grow the eth-century United States, both the state and pri‐ plant to make industrial products. vate enterprise often drove similar processes. Edi‐ In fact, lacking the European ideology of au‐ son, for example--partly inspired by the British tarky to support cultivation schemes, economic Stevenson Plan to raise rubber prices--funded ex‐ concerns usually defined whether or not efforts to plorations and established correspondence with grow rubber succeeded or failed. Several of the plant-cutting scientists as far afield as Puerto Rico plants considered by Finlay’s actors require a and Cuba, both northern and southern Africa, number of years to produce useable latex; in Italy, and New Guinea. Firestone leased a million some, the latex could be harvested only in ways acres in “plantation-sized blocks” in Liberia for that required hand labor--for example, if the ninety-nine years (p. 77). The IRC--one of Finlay’s milky goo could be found only in particular parts principal actors--likewise straddled the border‐ of the plant, or at specific moments in its growing lands into northern Mexico. cycle. Other constraints on cultivation included This point is not brought forward in the text, expensive or complicated processing to turn plant nor much analyzed--it is not Finlay’s principal latex into industrial-grade rubber. In this book, goal to examine the American version of empire Finlay notes that people seem to have assumed as it took shape in the twentieth century.[3] In‐ that growing American rubber required mecha‐ deed, the book is rife with themes that pique the nized harvest and processing. Other crops used curiosity, and warrant fuller exploration: the hand labor in the decades that his story covers, so American culture of business celebrity, in which why did these plants’ promoters advocate such Ford, Edison, and Firestone mattered, even on heavy machinery requirements? Finlay does not topics about which they knew very little; busi‐ really address or question his actors’ assump‐ ness-government relations, which followed a tor‐ tions--even though the costs of mechanized har‐ turous path even after the emergence of plant vesting and chemical processing became an im‐ patents that protect corporate interests; and the portant factor in making domestic rubber crops adherence to mechanized production and extrac‐ cost prohibitive.[1] tion, despite the persistence of older ways in other Indeed, the low price of importing the com‐ crops. Focusing on these themes might have made modity derailed many American plans for culti‐ the history of growing American rubber tell a vating a domestic supply. It was simply cheaper larger history of the twentieth-century United most of the time to buy rubber produced outside States and its place in global processes.

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