The Birth of an Industry

The Synthetic Rubber "Mess" in World War II

Bibliographic Data

ID4021790
AuthorsWilliam M Tuttle (corresponding author)
Year1981
Volume22
Issue1
Pages35
Publication date1981-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTechnology and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3104292
OpenAlexW2320771858
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited1

The Alfalfa Club, one of Washington, D.C.'s most exclusive good fellowship organizations, had never seen anything like it. Its nearly 250 members, mostly United States senators, Supreme Court justices, army generals, influential lawyers, and wealthy Washingtonians, were accustomed to verbal bombast and incessant one-upmanship, but a fistfight was another matter altogether. Yet on April 9, 1942, at the club's annual meeting, two of its wealthiest and most distinguished members, Eugene Meyer and Jesse Jones, came to blows. The pugilists fought over synthetic rubber, which was obviously one of the most contentious issues in the capital during America's first anxious year as a belligerent in World War II. Earlier that day Meyer's Washington Post had published an editorial criticizing Jones's administration of the nation's still-unborn synthetic rubber industry. Jones was one of the busiest public officials in Washington, serving as secretary of commerce and as chairman of several of the wartime subsidiary agencies of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. For example, as the chief executive officer of the Rubber Reserve Company and the Federal Loan Agency, and as board chairman of the Defense Plant Corporation, his activities included not only the pre-World War II stockpiling of natural rubber, but also the financing of plant construction for the new synthetic rubber industry. A multimillionaire, Jones possessed not only business and financial acumen, but also a ponderous ego; he was too thin-skinned to abide criticism. And in the spring of 1942, with the United States still struggling to mobilize its industrial potential for war, Jones was the recipient of blame and censure that were beyond the endurance of even a humble person.1

Composite material · Economic history · Economics · Natural rubber · Political science · Synthetic rubber · World War II · American History and Culture · Engineering · Law · Materials Science