{"id":378,"date":"2018-10-09T19:25:44","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T19:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/?page_id=378"},"modified":"2018-11-04T14:11:32","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T14:11:32","slug":"rubber-at-war-goodyear-firestone-in-akron-ohio","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/memoriesofloveandwar\/rubber-at-war-goodyear-firestone-in-akron-ohio\/","title":{"rendered":"Rubber at War: Akron during World War Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rubber<\/strong><\/p>\n

Known by many as \u201cRubber City,\u201d Akron, Ohio is synonymous with the rubber industry. Found at the confluence of rail, steel, and coal, the city played a major role during World War Two. As noted in Hugh Allen\u2019s Rubber\u2019s Hometown: The Real-Life Story of Akron<\/em>, \u201cVictory was won, not only on the battlefields of Europe, and over the blue waters of the Pacific, but as well in the factories of the United States\u201d [Allen, Rubber\u2019s Hometown<\/em>, 206]. At the outbreak of war in 1941, Akron was the home of six tire factories: Goodyear, Goodrich, Firestone, General, and Mohawk in Akron, and Seiberling in Barberton [Allen, House of Goodyear<\/em>, 427]. With rapid advances by the Axis powers in the early start of the war, a Rubber Survey Committee was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to examine the state of the rubber industry in wartime America. In a 1942 report put forth by Bernard Baruch, he stated, \u201cOf all critical and strategic materials; rubber is the one which presents the greatest threat to the safety of the nation and the success of the Allied cause\u2026if we fail to secure quickly a large new rubber supply our war effort and our domestic economy both will collapse\u201d [Allen, House of Goodyear<\/em>, 427]. With natural rubber locations overrun by enemy forces in Africa and Asia, once rival companies allied themselves to provide a synthetic solution. Headed by the Defense Plant Corporation, massive factories were built in the American Southwest and Pacific Coast to produce the greatly needed resource. \u00a0Hugh Allen stated in The House of Goodyear<\/em>: <\/em>A Story of Rubber and of Modern Business<\/em>, \u201cThe full significance of that result, in making America independent of an outside source of supply for a natural resource so important to its economy, is still probably incompletely realized\u201d [Allen, House of Goodyear<\/em>, 211].<\/p>\n

War Production<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the war, the factories put out rubber products needed for the soldiers on the front. Products such as self-sealing rubber fuel tanks, rubber boats, \u201cMae West\u201d life vests, and barrage balloons were mass produced. Apart from rubber products, \u201cFirestone made gun mounts and gun carriages, for the 40 mm. Bofors gun, General made bombs and steel barges. Goodyear made anti-aircraft guns, .50-calibre machine-gun cartridges, and high-explosive shells. Firestone made wings for the Curtiss Commandos, and Goodyear erected an airplane plant larger than the parent factory. There it built parts for twenty types of Army and Navy combat planes; turned out more than 4,000 complete Corsair fighters, and became one of the twelve greatest airplane factories of America\u201d [Allen, House of Goodyear, <\/em>209].<\/p>\n

Rosie<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the call for men to the frontlines of the war, many factory vacancies were filled by women. Tressie McGee, who built B-6 bomber gas tanks at Goodyear, wrote of her experiences of being a \u201cRosie\u201d during the war. She stated, \u201cIt had to do a lot with your feelings. You feel you\u2019re working for a purpose, the same as the soldiers out there. They knew they had to get out there and hold their line and fight. We knew if we didn\u2019t supply the material, they couldn\u2019t do their job\u201d [Love, Wheels of Fortune, <\/em>121]. Kenneth Nichols\u2019 Yesterday’s Akron: The First 150 Years<\/em> accurately depicts the era, \u201cAs the nation fought for its life, Akron became a twenty-four-hour town turned upside down. Women \u201cmanned\u201d factory machines; nightclubs were open in daylight hours, and restaurants served dinner at six in the morning to swing shifters. There was a shortage of everything but a desire to get on with the war and bring back the 30,000 young men and women in armed services (950 never returned)\u201d [Nichols, Yesterday’s Akron<\/em>, 86]. As the war progressed, factory wages increased [Allen, Rubber\u2019s Hometown, <\/em>212]. \u201cWomen who worked at Goodyear could buy special uniforms at the company store with emblems reading, \u201cRemember Pearl Harbor.\u201d Their outfits in the shops ranged from belted overalls to slacks and blouses with buttons in the back for safety. With their new incomes, though, some of the women opted for finer attire. \u201cWe\u2019d see them coming to work in slacks and high heels and fur coats,\u201d recalled Rita Dunlevy, a retired General Tire executive secretary\u201d [Love, Wheels of Fortune, <\/em>122].<\/p>\n

Post-War<\/strong><\/p>\n

By the end of the war, the three largest companies doubled and trebled their peacetime production figures: 786 million, 681 million, and 419 million [Allen, Rubber\u2019s Hometown, <\/em>212]. Following the war, Akron was the scene of a wave of laboratory research into rubber. However, there was a significant negative impact on female workers. As described in Wheels of Fortune<\/em>, \u201cA day later, though, the realities of peace began to set in. Thirty thousand Akron workers would be laid off, half of them from Goodyear Aircraft. The War Manpower Commission figured half of those laid off would be women. In some places, the layoff rate for female workers was much higher. When Firestone released twenty-seven hundred employed from its aircraft division, 75 percent were women who, the company said, could not be placed in rubber factory jobs. Those were for the men\u201d [Love, Wheels of Fortune<\/em>, 122].<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Allen, Hugh.\u00a0House of Goodyear.\u00a0<\/em>Cleveland: Corday & Gross Co, 1949.<\/p>\n

Allen, Hugh.\u00a0Rubber\u2019s Hometown: The Real-Life Story of Akron.\u00a0<\/em>New York: Stratford House, 1949.<\/p>\n

Love, Steve.\u00a0Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron.\u00a0<\/em>Akron: University of Akron Press, 1999.<\/p>\n

Nichols, Kenneth. Yesterday’s Akron: The First 150 Years.\u00a0<\/em>Leipzig: E A Seemann Verlag, 1975.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rubber Known by many as \u201cRubber City,\u201d Akron, Ohio is synonymous with the rubber industry. Found at the confluence of rail, steel, and coal, the city played a major role[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":492,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-378","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/memoriesofloveandwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/memoriesofloveandwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/memoriesofloveandwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/memoriesofloveandwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/492"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/memoriesofloveandwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/memoriesofloveandwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/memoriesofloveandwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/378\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.bridgewater.edu\/memoriesofloveandwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}