Progressive reductions in the price level at which the industry can operate profitably will also play an important part in minimizing the challenge of substitutes. The growing employment of substitutes, however, is a phenomenon by no means peculiar to the dictator countries; for many substitutes, besides possessing in a limited degree the attributes of natural rubber, have also other qualities which the natural product does not possess. In a sense, therefore, they are not merely substitutes for rubber, but actually new raw materials. And if rubber can be invested with the properties at present peculiar to substitutes, important new fields for rubber may be opened up by, virtue of the lower cost of rubber.
This question, of course, is one for the research organizations associated with the industry and is, in fact, already receiving active attention. But so long as considerations of political expediency and military strategy dominate economic policies in considerable parts of Europe, it is inevitable that crude rubber will be displaced to a material extent by uneconomic substitutes. This makes it all the more urgent that the competitive position of rubber should be strengthened in other markets where ordinary economic forces are still allowed a certain amount of play. It is clear, at any rate, that the Rubber Growers' Association is alive to the importance of current trends and is ready to play its part in the gradual process of reorganization necessary for strengthening the basic position of the industry.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.