Growing American Rubber: Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security

Acknowledgments

xi Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge the many scholars, colleagues, archivists, and friends who have helped make this book possible. Its origins may lie with Alan Marcus, then at Iowa State University, who first introduced me to the rather obscure ideology of “chemurgy,” whose proponents proclaimed that agricultural products were essential both as raw materials for industrial production and to the politics of national security. Thus the relationships between plants and power, and the history of human manipulation of plant organisms, have interested me long before biotechnology and renewable resources emerged as buzzwords of the early twenty-first century. Yet I came to the issue of domestic rubber somewhat suddenly, when my colleague at Armstrong Atlantic State University (AASU), Anne Yentsch, proposed that I participate in a project with the Edison & Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, Florida. I soon became immersed in Thomas Edison’s research on domestic rubber crops, working in fruitful and collaborative relationships with historic preservation consultants Suzanna Barucco and Marty Rosenblum. The product of this research—mainly evident in chapter 3 of this book—appeared as a substantial section in their report: Martin Jay Rosenblum , R. A., and Associates, Historic Structures Report (Edison & Ford Winter Estates, 2002). A desire to put Edison’s work into a broader context impelled me to broaden the project. Along the way, countless scholars have provided further guidance. The list begins with Peter Neushul of the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose 1992 dissertation and personal expertise with domestic rubber enthusiasts provided essential source material as well as valuable suggestions on how the argument might be framed. Others who have provided xii Acknowledgments important guidance include Doreen Valentine of Rutgers University Press; the late Philip Pauly of Rutgers University; David Wright of Michigan State University; Paul Israel of the Thomas Edison Papers; Deborah Fitzgerald of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jonathan Harwood of the University of Manchester; Gabriela Petrick of New York University; Audra Wolfe, now with the Chemical Heritage Foundation; Anne B. W. Effland of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Bill Kovarik of Radford University; Jeffrey Jones of Purdue University; Shane Hamilton and his colleagues at the University of Georgia; Uwe Luebke and Frank Uekötter of the German Historical Institute; copyeditor Nicholas Taylor; among others. Nearly as important as the intellectual support, I also benefited from financial support and travel assistance from the Edison & Ford Winter Estates, the William C. Clements Center for Southwest Studies and DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University, the Baylor University Collections of Political Materials, and a Research and Scholarship Grant as well as other support from AASU. I am further grateful for the help of Frank Akira Kageyama, who participated in the search for a domestic rubber crop while interned at the Manzanar War Relocation Center during World War II. Katrina Cornish and Betsy Brottlund , both connected with the Yulex Corporation, helped bring the story into the present century with information on rubber crop research currently under way. Several descendents of important actors in this history also provided vital documents, memories, and genuine enthusiasm for my project. These include Thomas Dudley Fennell, Glenn Kageyama, Richard Anderson, Wolf Dieter Hauser, and the late Margaret Crowl MacArthur, each of whom understood that the search for a domestic rubber crop is an important yet largely untold story in twentieth-century American history. In addition, I would like to thank just a few of the many archivists who have helped guide me through important manuscript sources during my visits to their facilities. These include Doug Tarr and Leonard DeGraaf of the Edison National Historic Site; Tom Smoot, Pam Miner, Lisa Sbutonni, and MaryAnna Carroll of the Edison & Ford Winter Estates; Andrea Boardman of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies and Cynthia Franco of the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University; Ben Rogers of the Collections of Political Materials, Baylor University; John V. Miller of the Department of Special Collections, University of Akron; Mark Hatchmann and Richard Potashin of the Manzanar National Historic Site; Tom Rogero of the Fairchild Tropical Garden; David Pfeiffer of the National Archives; Dale Mayer of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library; David Farrell of the Bancroft Library at the University of California; John Weeren of the Seely G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; Amy Cooper of the Special Collections Acknowledgments xiii Department, University of Iowa Libraries; Lian Partlow of the Pasadena Historical Museum, Pasadena, California; and Carl Van Ness of the University of Florida...