concerned with this, though we are interested in the manifold
applications of these new materials.

There seems to be no limit to these compounds and every week the
journals report new processes and patents. But we must not allow the new
ones to crowd out the remembrance of the oldest and most famous of the
synthetic plasters, hard rubber, to which a separate chapter must be
devoted.




VIII

THE RACE FOR RUBBER


There is one law that regulates all animate and inanimate things. It is
formulated in various ways, for instance:

Running down a hill is easy. In Latin it reads, _facilis descensus
Averni._ Herbert Spencer calls it the dissolution of definite coherent
heterogeneity into indefinite incoherent homogeneity. Mother Goose
expresses it in the fable of Humpty Dumpty, and the business man
extracts the moral as, "You can't unscramble an egg." The theologian
calls it the dogma of natural depravity. The physicist calls it the
second law of thermodynamics. Clausius formulates it as "The entropy of
the world tends toward a maximum." It is easier to smash up than to
build up. Children find that this is true of their toys; the Bolsheviki
have found that it is true of a civilization. So, too, the chemist knows