David Spence: Guayule Rubber Project Records

David Spence was a Scottish-American rubber chemist. Born in The Manse at Udny, Scotland on September 26, 1881, Spence earned his Ph.D. from the University of Jena in Germany in 1906. He moved to the United States in 1909 when he accepted a position as the research laboratory director at Diamond Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio.

Spence stayed at Diamond Rubber after it was purchased by B.F. Goodrich Company in 1912. He left B.F. Goodrich in 1914 and founded Norwalk Tire & Rubber Company, where he served as vice president and manager until 1925. While working at Norwalk Tire & Rubber, he served on the National Research Council’s Rubber Division during World War I. After leaving Norwalk Tire & Rubber, he worked at Intercontinental Rubber Company, where he served as vice president and manager.

Between the mid-1920s and mid-1930s, Spence oversaw Intercontinental Rubber’s efforts to develop an alternative natural rubber source from the guayule plant (Parthenium argentatum), a Mexican desert shrub that contains latex. It was found that this plant contained enough latex to be harvestable and that it could be refined into natural rubber. In 1926, Intercontinental Rubber started large scale cultivation of guayule in California’s Salinas Valley. Under Spence’s guidance, the firm cultivated eight thousand acres of guayule, which produced up to five tons of latex per day.

Over the course of this project, Intercontinental Rubber determined that natural rubber produced from guayule was a useful alternative, but it could not be produced as cheaply as imported rubber from Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, Spence published a paper urging the United States not to become too dependent upon imported natural rubber. This paper attracted the attention of the United States War Department, who sent two majors (one of whom was future United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower) to inspect Intercontinental Rubber’s guayule operation.

The outbreak of World War II and Japan’s conquest of much of Southeast Asia cut off the flow of natural rubber to the United States at a time when it was vitally needed for the American war effort. To address this problem, the federal government passed the Emergency Rubber Project Act in 1942. Under this legislation, the Emergency Rubber Project was established to find domestic sources of natural rubber, which included cultivation of guayule and kok-sagnyz.

Under the auspices of the Emergency Rubber Project, the Guayule Rubber Project was created, which placed Intercontinental Rubber’s guayule operation under the direction of the United States Forest Service. As part of this project, more land in California’s Salinas Valley was devoted to growing guayule and nurseries were set up in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. By 1944, more than 32,000 acres were devoted to growing guayule.

During World War II, David Spence served as a consultant to Guayule Rubber Project, where he worked with the Office of the Rubber Director. He also served on the War Production Board. As one of the United States’ leading rubber experts, he contributed the expertise he acquired as head of Intercontinental Rubber’s guayule operation.

As Spence learned during the 1920s and 1930s, it was once again found that while natural rubber produced from guayule was a useful alternative during wartime, it was not a truly viable commercial proposition. The cost of growing guayule in the United States and competition from Mexican grown guayule made its cultivation unattractive to American farmers. The Guayule Rubber Project’s demise was further hastened by the successful wartime production of wholly synthetic Buna (butadiene and natrium) rubber by Standard Oil of New Jersey and a consortium of large rubber companies (Firestone, B.F. Goodrich, Goodyear, and United States Rubber). After the end of the war, the Guayule Rubber Project was terminated and the land used for growing guayule was turned over for the production of other crops.

David Spence was awarded several patents over the course of his career. In 1941, he became the first recipient of the American Chemical Society Rubber Division’s Charles Goodyear Medal.

David Spence passed away on September 24, 1957.

Sources

David Spence: Guayule Project Records, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Guayule Rubber Industry in Salinas, California, University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California. Guayule Rubber Industry in Salinas, California, ca. 1942 (cdlib.org)