Judge, 1916-11-25 · page 21 of 32
Judge — November 25, 1916 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **advertising content**, not satire. The page celebrates the United States Rubber Company by tracing rubber manufacturing back to Scottish inventor Charles Macintosh's waterproof fabric discovery. The illustration shows a Scotsman in traditional dress wearing an early "macintosh" raincoat—a historical reference point. The narrative contrasts the original invention's poor quality (expensive, brittle, leaking) with modern U.S. Rubber Company products, which are "standard, well proved, durable." The copy emphasizes the company's scale (47 factories) and product diversity (footwear, tires, wire insulation, mechanical goods), while claiming quality as its guiding principle. The company's seal appears centrally. For modern readers: this is **corporate myth-making**—presenting commercial success as a natural evolution from a clever Scotsman's invention, positioning U.S. Rubber as the rightful heir to that legacy. It's typical early-20th-century advertising rhetoric emphasizing industrial progress and standardization.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘A Scotchman Started It N a dull, rainy day in f Glasgow, many years ago, a Scotchman wearing an odd-looking cloak sauntered along in the drizzle. His good neighbors won- dered what he could be about. Doubtless they thought him daft. Little did they know how much he was to add to the future com- fort of the world. For this was the first practical test of Charles Macintosh’s dis- covery that rubber could be fabricated. Rainproof coats came into favor very slowly. Rubber was expensive, the wearing The making of thousands and thousands of weather coats is a great business by itself, But it is only one of the many activities of the United States Rubber Com- pany, the largest rubber manufacturer in the world. Included in the output of its 47 factories are also all styles of rubber footwear, canvasrubber-soled shoes, tires for automobiles, mo- tor trucks and all other vehicles, druggists’ rubber goods, insulated wire, soles and heels, belting, qualities of the rubberized fabrics of that hose, packing, mechanical and moulded day were poor, and the styles were hideous. | rubber goods of every description. The old caped “macintosh” soon grew brittle and leaked. To furnish this vast output the United States Rubber Company has built up an immense organization, based on a founda- The United States Rubber Company tion laid 74 years ago. Some of its units makes weather coats of standard,well proved, —_ are especially skilled and equipped for the What an improvement today ! durable materials, tailored to satisfy every taste. Among them. are weather coats for all people and all services—from the light-weight garments that modish women wear tothe heavy storm coats used for production of one kind of rubber goods, some foranother. But every unit in the United States Rubber System is guided and dominated by this fundamental policy: the standard of quality must be hard work—or play. maintained. United States Rubber Company comicbooks.com