RUBBER: Reform

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The International Rubber Regulation Committee, with almost nothing left to regulate, last week decided on a new course — cooperation. IRRC's life expired on Dec. 31. But the Committee, created in 1934 by Dutch, French, Siamese, British and Indian Governments controlling over 95% of the world's crude rubber production, refused to die. It extended its feeble life for four more months, during which time it proposed to reincarnate itself as a "more widely representative committee for consultation and collection of information." Rubber-consuming countries (such as the U.S.), which were kept on the sidelines in the years when the Committee's iron hand set production and export quotas, have now been graciously invited to become full members, even to have voting power.

Thus the British and Dutch rubber producers took a more realistic position. They fear U.S. synthetic rubber production, and its possible tariff protection in the postwar era, more than the mischief of the Japs on their conquered plantations.