Rubber agreement

On 8 January 1915 the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, informed the British ambassador in Washington that terms had been agreed on which American industry could receive rubber from the British Empire. The agreement with the American rubber industry was intended to ensure that neither the raw material nor products made from it reached Germany through the United States. The British chronology of the war places it only under 29 March 1915, but according to American documents and the trade press of the time it was announced at the beginning of January and put into effect in February.

The rubber embargo

A large part of the world’s production of natural rubber then came from plantations in British colonies, above all in Malaya and Ceylon, and London was the main market for the trade. Rubber was essential to armies for making tyres, insulating cables and medical equipment, and Germany, cut off from overseas supplies, had nowhere to get it from. Britain put it on the contraband list, and in the last months of 1914 banned its export from British ports, including to the United States. It feared that the raw material or products made from it would reach Germany via America.

For American industry, especially the fast-growing production of motor tyres, the embargo was painful. In December the State Department asked London to ease it, passing on a draft of the guarantees American manufacturers were ready to give. At that time more than 2,000 tons of rubber bought and paid for by Americans lay in warehouses in London and Liverpool.

The guarantees

Under the agreement, shipments were consigned to a bank in New York, which released the goods only after the buyer had lodged a guarantee with the British consul general. For the duration of the war the manufacturer undertook not to export crude rubber, reclaimed rubber or rubber waste from the United States anywhere except to Great Britain and British possessions. He was to use the raw material in his own factory, and to fill orders for rubber goods from neutral European countries from stocks in Great Britain or through it, under British licences. He also had to check that domestic buyers did not intend to export his products to Europe, report shipments to non-European countries to the consul and mark exported tyres. The British later explained that the export ban also applied to rubber bought outside the Empire.

Rubber Club of America

At the end of January Sir Richard Crawford, commercial adviser to the British embassy, arrived in the United States to oversee the implementation of the agreements on rubber and wool. He decided it was best to leave the details to the industry itself. On 13 February the secretary of the Rubber Club of America, the association of American manufacturers of rubber goods, announced that the club had been appointed trustee safeguarding the interests of the British Empire in carrying out the agreement. A special control committee was set up, which received guarantees, checked deliveries and collected a fee on every case of rubber. Anyone in the industry who did not object was regarded as a party to the agreement.

The German trade press wrote indignantly that the Americans had submitted their industry to British control. The American trade journal India Rubber World replied that the British had the rubber and could dictate terms, and that without the agreement the embargo would have hurt America without helping Germany.

Aftermath

The British required similar guarantees from the Americans for supplies of wool, tin, graphite and ferromanganese. Together with the naval blockade, tightened in the following months, this system seriously hampered Germany’s efforts to obtain rubber. The Germans tried to make do by reclaiming old rubber and by work on synthetic rubber. How valuable the material was is shown by the merchant submarine Deutschland, which in the summer of 1916 took on board at Baltimore, for the return voyage to Germany, among other things 350 tons of rubber.