Exposing Standard Oil Rubber Program Flop
MUNRO, DAVID A.
Exposing Standard Oil Rubber Program Flop By DAVID A. MUNRO WASHINGTON. — Every trade re ** porter here seems to know the big Standard Oil rubber scandal. But nobody says anything about it . . ....
...Government housing plans will also be rejected, snd federally owned war plants will be quickly disposed of to private industry...
...But since a 1 cohe I is the main cost of rubber derived from alcohol, the post-war price of this synthetic may be estimated fairly closely...
...The situation was confused by the fact {hit butylene, an ingredient of high-octane gas, is woefully short and is a stage in the same process...
...The exponents of the butyl process have put a very large percentage ef their beat technical men on it . "What companies agKaponsoring that...
...New Deal fundamentalism fades out...
...Testimony was not adduced, however, as to imports from Japan, via Russia...
...The alo hoi plants "are running weU over rated capacity...
...Roosevelt appears to have capitulated...
...Capitol Hill . . .will place all bets on the ability of competitive industry to provide high production and employment . . ." rejecting governmental projects for public works and planning and direction of private industry...
...The Germans didn't nee petroleum ae • base for their rubber process, to begin with...
...The Government pay* as much as 90 cents...
...At Prodajcfloe "¦frjTYL," said the Colonel, -bee been ** -a greet disappointment Frankly, the progtaa has not as yet worked...
...Standard Oil," said the Colonel...
...Colonel Dewey reported that the experts had been unable to finish the Baytown plant because of difficulty with the process...
...And, unless the bugs new known to exist in the petroleum process ere ironed out, the nation may again have to rely on alcohol for its rubber...
...As of the Rubber Director's last public testimony, the "butadiene from alcohol (building program) is 87 percent finished...
...Also, one of the related compounds is used in one of the secret devices of war which eeeld sot be mentioned in this testimony...
...And only "28 percent of the butyl capacity is finished...
...Oh the matter of price, testimony showed that the Government is now buving its alcohol far over the OPA ceiling of 48 cents a gallon...
...Unofficially it in known that petroleum butadiene plants have been rebuilt as much as throe times...
...Okie,) seeking to pat Wag on the nameless "exponents...
...ft" In the Placer* * ? • *T*HE Committee tried to get at com-parable petroleum-rubber prices, but the by-product situation made the determinatkn difficult Testimony did reveal, however, that crude rubber was usually unofficially available before the war in New York at 8 or 9 cents from the low-cost plantations even when the nominal quotations were more than double this figure...
...A further reason is thst the process is simpler and cheaper...
...But that is all there is on the record...
...Charts presented by Rubber Development Corporation showed imports of 41,000 tons for 1942, anticipated 46,000 for '44...
...let Colonel Bradley Dewey, who has worked with and defended Standard Oil aa Robber Director, tell it in Ilia own words...
...from petroleum it is 39 percent finished...
...asked Senator ETMr Thomas (D...
...ej » Toward a New HordiaaCoofldfe Hoover Pro . Under the meaningful' headline, "A Resurgent Congress Shapes a Pro-Business Future for the Nation," the Wall Street Journal carried a story from Washington predicting that a conservative Congress will dominate America's post-war career...
...Some estimates put it as low as rive cents a pound, others "safely" at seven...
...ThiB also anticipates a sharp downward revision in the orst of producing alcohol...
...Exposing Standard Oil Rubber Program Flop By DAVID A. MUNRO WASHINGTON...
...Only hop 'bnp's) jump bints appeared * in the teslimbViy of the like breakdown of the butadiene from petroleum process...
...Most of the money—f*60,-000,000 end all of the priorities were banded over to the petroleum lobby...
...In contrast to the U.S.A., "Britain, it appears from here, will concentrate on its Beveridge plan, its monopolies backed and directed by the state...
...of those "in operation for S months or more, the production over all the last S months has been ISO percent of their rated capacity, with some of those units running over 150 percent, and in seme cases they come np to 170 percent" The reason for this is that production of rubber from the alcohol process exceeded the mcst favorable estimates in product per gallon...
...From present development* on the rubber front ft weukr appear that there , eras a Streak ef pheny running through this whole drama a mile vide...
...Congress will also defeat any legislation for enlarged social security, the Wall Street Journal predicts...
...Of the 183,600 tens of Buna 8 which saved the day for America in 1943, three-fourths came from alcohol, and, because alcohol was late getting its money and its priorities, 105,000, or considerably more than half of this total, was preduced in the third quarter alone...
...The record is also abundantly clear as to the resistance alcohol had to fight to be able to perform this service for the war effort...
...Though difficulties were at first put in the way of the alcohol process, until it became evident that jthe country might thereby be threatened, the favorable directive of December 9, 1942, marked the end of this official attitude...
...1 But the whole business has now been put on the record by Colonel Bradley Dewey, under cross-examination on the stand before the Gillette Committee...
...It continued with the Baruch Committee resolving the conflict between the unorganised farmers and (Standard Oil on the basis of 800,000 tons of allocated production to petroleum-derived rubber as against 200,000 tons allocated to alsobsi But this was a tongue-in-cheek allocation...
...Again let Colonel Bradley speak...
...In all this tremendous, scandalous frontpage ry with its overtones of treason the public- was given to believe that I) Standard Oil had indeed secured the German patents which told ail about bow to make robber eat of petrcieem, and 2) Standard Oil had meanwhile developed its own rubber, known as butyl, which it was smart —ugh to keep from the Germans...
...It began with a veto by President Roosevelt of a bill passed by the Senate to set up a separate authority to make rubber out of alcohol...
...He told It because be is big and outspoken, end because, aa he aays, when this thing is over he doesnt want to get his "tail caught in the gate...
...That is to say, the petroleum program that Standard Oil Jammed through the War Production Board has flopped and the production from the ale hoi plants has saved America's war effort...
...Srondord OH I. G. Forboe Deal AND how did alcohol perform...
...Now flash back to the big oil fight involving Standard of New Jersey, its Standard Oil Development Company, I. G. Farbenindustrie and rubber...
...But nobody says anything about it . . . For the embarrassment includes some who were listed as enemies of Standard Oil...
...Summing up two years of the rubber fight thst began with Pearl Harbor and will not stop until the last shot is fired, the Colonel admitted that "in the actual working out of this whole (rubber) program we are today at a place where the alcohol plants here are giving us moat of our production...
...Though' the petroleum plants are scheduled to "come in" next year and stop the total up to 710,000 tons for 1944, Colonel Dewey already admits he will rely on akohcl production for 45 percent of the total...
...They, too, failed to figure that it would turn out this way...
...And the butyl story...
...Bet the broad picture was revealed by the Colonel when he disclosed that butadiene production had so lagged in the oil regions ef the Southwest and had prospered so mightily In the alcohol regions of the Northeast that be anticipated having to ship butadiene from Philadelphia to Texas to supply the synthesizing plants there...
...This situation was enly changed bp the insistent action of the Gillette Committee, and it was not until December 9. 1942, that the alcohol was granted the special high priority it needed...
...In other words, Congress will adopt the program of the National Association of Manufacturers for "free enterprise"—the program now endorsed by the Communists...
...Colonel Dewey himself suggested that alcohol might come down to 12 to 14 cents a e-sllon...
...And...
...The development work which Standard Oil once said was all over is now being hurriedly done in wartime...
Vol. 27 • January 1944 • No. 3
