In the decades before World War II, many prominent Americans aggressively sought domestically-grown alternatives to imported rubber. Activists in the chemurgy movement-those who promoted the use of agricultural surpluses as a basis of industrial raw materials-insisted that midwestern grain, when converted into alcohol, provided the necessary raw material for synthetic rubber. In July 1942, farm state politicians and chemurgists pushed a bill through Congress that would have required the use of grain alcohol for synthetic rubber production.
However, petroleum industry
lobbyists and others pressured President Roosevelt to veto that bill. Petroleum
interests soon dominated the committees that directed the $650,000,000 appropriation
for synthetic rubber, and in the long run, a chance to develop a sustainable
resource was lost. Based on government archival records, the papers of Bernard
Baruch, and chemurgy- movement documents, this
paper will investigate a little known turning point in the rise of Big Oil.