MAKING CRÊPE RUBBER ON A CEYLON ESTATE. _Page 83_] To see what comes out of such factories we need only look around us at the common objects of everyday life. In the streets there are motor-cars, taxicabs, omnibuses, and bicycles running on wheels that have rubber tyres. On a wet day most of the people outdoors are wearing macintoshes, whilst some of them are further protected against the rain by galoshes; even on a fine day, rubber is worn a very great deal outdoors in the form of boot-and-shoe-heel protectors. In the house there are rubber washers on the taps, rubber rings on the stoppers of the ginger-beer bottles within the pantry, a teapot on the kitchen dresser has been mended with a rubber spout, and the children are playing with rubber balls, dolls, and toy balloons. In the hospital the doctors use surgical instruments that have important parts made of rubber, and many of the patients are provided with rubber necessaries, such as elastic stockings, made of rubber thread, for bad legs, and false teeth on a plate of vulcanite, which is chiefly rubber. Travellers take rubber baths and rubber cushions about with them. Golfers play with rubber balls. Machinery would be at a standstill without rubber belting. What an inconvenient world this must have been to live in less than a hundred years ago, when anything made of rubber was a novelty! And there is no telling how much more comfortable and convenient rubber may make life in days not so very long ahead. Knowing the form in which rubber goes into the manufacturer’s possession, and a few, at any rate, of the many forms in which it next makes a public appearance, we are naturally very anxious to learn how such transformations take place. It is impossible for me to take you over a rubber goods factory, much as I should like to do so. All such establishments keep very strictly to the rule of “No admittance except on business.” There are secrets to be hidden, not from the public, but from a rival manufacturer. You must quite understand that no offence is meant to you personally when no exception can be made in anyone’s favour in case some rival’s friend should slip through. You need not be very disappointed--enough is known of the way rubber goods are made to satisfy much of your curiosity. The manufacturer must always bear in mind that he must fulfil two important conditions: first, his goods must serve the purpose for which they are intended, and next, the price which customers will pay has to be taken into consideration, with the idea of producing the best wearing article that can be made for the money.