Business: Tires Patched

When Cyrus Stephen Eaton preached the Baptist gospel in Cleveland, it was seldom that his sermons received front-page space. Yet last week the Cleveland Plain Dealer front-paged the Sunday sermon of Rev. J. M. Russell, pastor of the Monroe Memorial United Presbyterian Church of Akron, Ohio. The reason: Mr. Russell’s sermon was one of the most acrid attacks on the rubber industry yet heard, and many a Clevelander, especially Goodyear-controlling Mr. Eaton, has a stake in that industry.

“Our industrial heads are no doubt very excellent gentlemen,” said Mr. Russell. “But they are extremely individualistic in the management of their business. They have forgotten the principle of” ‘live and let live.’

“War between the nations is a barbaric and futile thing. Can we speak any more kindly of an industrial war between economic interests?

“Why cannot our rubber magnates act like gentlemen toward one another and get together for the stabilizing of the price of rubber tires?”

Annoying even to God-fearing rubber-men must have been this sermon. But the fact, however unrelated, was that before the ensuing week was out leaders of the industry met and conferred and, on the one day of the week when all stocks were weakest, rubber stocks suddenly firmed, flurried higher on the glad tidings that some of the many troubles of the tire industry had been patched.

How much this agreement will really help the over-produced tire industry is yet to be seen, but it aims to terminate the most vicious phase of overproduction: price-cutting. The recent war began around July i when one large manufacturer broke the unwritten law of the tire world by stealing an important southwest dealership from another. Retaliatory steps were taken; other companies became involved; havoc was played as each company vied in adding more 10% discounts to its prices than rivals.