So far research indicates that Verrill wrote at least 16 stories for Everyland from 1915 to 1919. Several more of these stories will be appearing here shortly./drf
The Story of Rubber
By A. Hyatt Verrill
DID you ever stop to think
how useful rubber is? Without it, this busy old world would be badly off
indeed, and if all the rubber was
suddenly taken from us, countless industries, arts, manufactures, and
businesses would cease and modern life would be impossible.
Without rubber, telephones,
telegraphs, electric lights, and the
wonderful wireless would fail; automobiles would be all but useless; aeroplanes
would be discarded; trolley-cars would cease to run; submarines would be
well-nigh impossible, and countless mills and factories would find their machinery at a standstill. Moreover, thousands
of people would be thrown out of work, great factories would be closed,
millions of machines would cease their
busy roar and hum, and many sick and injured people would die, for all these things and all these
industries require rubber or a substitute which has not yet been discovered.
Truly we live in an age of
rubber and yet our great-grandfathers,
or even our grandfathers, for that
matter, hardly knew the meaning of the word, and the
important and useful substance was used only for gum shoes and erasers.
Rubber is merely the juice of a tree and in its natural state bears
no resemblance to the tough, elastic
rubber or the shining, black or red,
hard rubber which we know.
There are many kinds of trees
and plants from which rubber is obtained, but some furnish better rubber than others and the
best of all is Para rubber, which comes from a tree found growing wild in Brazil.
Formerly all the rubber was obtained from the
wild trees, but nowadays, the rubber
trees are planted and cultivated on estates or plantations, and the Brazilian trees have been introduced to warm
countries in many parts of the
world.
Still, much of the rubber comes from the
wild trees in the forests, and
thousands of men—black men and Indians mostly—go forth into the vast tropical forests each year to find rubber
trees and to gather the juice.
The juice or sap, called latex,
of the rubber trees is between the outer and inner bark and when a cut is made in the bark the
white, milky sap trickles slowly out and after a time becomes thick and sticky.
As it is slow work gathering the milk by climbing the
trees and tapping them, many of the men in the
forests save time and trouble by felling the
trees. This is a very wasteful method, for rubber trees grow very slowly, and
in most countries where rubber is found there
are strict laws against destroying the
trees and laws regulating the way in
which the bark must be cut.
When properly bled, the tree is not injured, for the
cuts soon heal and the tree may be tapped
year after year.
When a tree is to be bled, the rubber gatherer
makes a number of V-shaped cuts in the
bark and connects these by a groove
or cut so that the juice from all the cuts will run down in this channel. Then at the lower end of this up-and-down cut a little
trough is driven into the tree and a
cup or other receptacle is placed
beneath.
As the
juice fills the cups it is poured into
big gourds or bowls, where it is hardened or coagulated. In the forest this is done by using certain leaves
whose juice partly hardens the latex,
but on the estates it is
accomplished more rapidly and thoroughly by means of acid.
When the
rubber gatherer has accumulated a
sufficient quantity of rubber he builds a smoky fire and, dipping a stick into the latex, twirls it about until a quantity
of the rubber has adhered to the rod.
This he holds in the smoke of the
fire to cure it, and by repeatedly dipping his stick in the
rubber and smoking it he gradually forms a huge mass or ball of cured rubber on
the end of the
pole. These big balls are then
shipped to the seacoast to be sent
to all parts of the world.
On the
estates, however, the rubber is made
in sheets or thin cakes which are packed in bales for shipment. Thus you can
always tell forest rubber from plantation rubber, and as the
gatherers of wild rubber often try
to cheat by enclosing stones, sticks, or other
material within the balls, the estate rubber can be depended upon and, therefore, brings a higher price.
When the
Europeans first visited South
America, they
found the Indians using rubber for
balls with which to play games, and also as a waterproof varnish, but its real
value did not occur to the white men
for a long time, or until some one found it could be used for rubber shoes. But
these gum shoes, as they were called, were very poor, sticky, heavy
things, for they were made by
dipping a clay mould in the latex
and smoking it over a fire, after which the
clay was broken up and removed.
Gradually other articles of rubber came into use, but these were all of the
same gummy, soft rubber as the
shoes, and it was not until a Mr. Goodyear made a wonderful discovery that the true value of rubber was realized. Mr. Goodyear
found that by mixing sulphur with rubber and then
heating it the substance became hard
and firm without losing its elasticity or waterproof quality, and that by this
"vulcanizing" process, as it is called, the
rubber could be made to any degree of hardness provided that the right proportions of sulphur and the right amount of heat were used. When this became
known, rubber could be used for thousands of purposes never dreamed of before,
for it could be cast, moulded, or pressed into any form while soft and then vulcanized until it was hard and retained the desired shape.
There was nothing equal to it
for surgical appliances; it withstood acids and chemicals which ruined other substances; it could be easily cleansed; it
never decayed, and it could be turned, carved, or polished like wood or ivory.
Dentists found it the best of all
materials for making plates for artificial teeth; it was made into elastic
bands, waterproof garments, shoes and boots, toilet articles, and rubber cloth,
and when it was found that rubber was a non-conductor of electricity it became
of the utmost value in many new
ways.
So, year by year, the value and uses of rubber have increased until
to-day we could not get on without it, for man with all his skill and science
has never found a way to make artificial rubber or even a substitute for the juice of the
wonderful South American tree.
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