United States Rubber Company

The United States Rubber Company, renamed Uniroyal in 1967, was a large maker of tires and rubber goods whose Textile Division spun and wove asbestos yarns, fabrics and tapes under the Asbeston name, chiefly at its Stark Mills plant in Hogansville, Georgia. Asbeston went into wartime fire suits and fittings and later into ironing board covers and Carosel dish towels. Uniroyal was later sued over asbestos products; no Uniroyal asbestos trust appears on our list.

Draft. The history on this page was written from the documents in our library and has not yet been reviewed by a person.

History

According to a 1967 anniversary article in the trade magazine Asbestos, U.S. Rubber began on March 30, 1892, when a group of New England footwear companies pooled their plants. Its only product then was waterproof rubber footwear. By 1967 the company, newly renamed Uniroyal, Inc., had 79 plants in the United States and fourteen other countries, and less than half its output was rubber.¹ In 1964 Asbestos reported that the company was adopting "UniRoyal" as a worldwide trademark, to replace its circular U.S. Rubber trademark.⁹ This entry covers only the company's asbestos business.

Asbeston

Patents assigned to U.S. Rubber show its work on asbestos textiles by the late 1930s. A 1939 patent by Willis A. Gibbons covers an asbestos yarn with a spun asbestos core and a looser asbestos cover, and another 1939 patent, by Boutwell H. Foster, covers an asbestos fabric for ironing surfaces.¹⁰¹¹ In December 1941 the company filed to register the trademark "Asbeston" for asbestos yarns.¹² In December 1942 Asbestos reported a new factory at Hogansville, Georgia, where U.S. Rubber was making its Asbeston products, "particularly asbestos yarn."²

War work. In April 1943 Asbestos reported that U.S. Rubber was making fittings from Asbeston fabric to take the place of scarce metals.¹³ That September the magazine said the company would raise its capacity for asbestos fabrics by 50 per cent by expanding its textile division at Hogansville. It said U.S. Rubber had developed a new method of spinning asbestos into fine yarns, and that the light Asbeston fabrics were suited to fire-fighting suits, heating and de-icing ducts for bombers and fighter planes, and insulating tape for naval cable.⁴ In February 1944 the magazine printed a picture of asbestos-cloth fire helmets being made in a mid-western U.S. Rubber plant, for use with asbestos suits on aircraft carriers and at airports.¹⁴

Household goods. In August 1945 Asbestos reported ironing board covers made of Asbeston, "the fabric developed by the United States Rubber Company" for Army and Navy fire suits.⁵ A 1945 patent by Herbert E. Sunbury, assigned to U.S. Rubber, covers a fire-resistant ironing board cover.¹⁵ In 1947 a New York store's safety award went to an ironing board cover made by another company from Asbeston cloth produced by U.S. Rubber's Textile Division.¹⁶ A 1947 patent by Foster and Sunbury covers a fabric intended mainly for dish towels.¹⁷ In August 1948 Asbestos reported that the price of Carosel asbestos towels, "made of Asbeston cloth," had been cut to 69 cents.⁶ A reference book in our records describes the Carosel dish towel of 1947 to 1949 as 20 per cent asbestos.¹⁸

Postwar products and plants. In 1947 U.S. Rubber bought the Seaboard-Stevens plants in Burlington, North Carolina, in part to make new products including glass-asbestos decorative fabrics.¹⁹ Product records list Asbeston as interwoven glass and asbestos yarns, fabrics, tape and pipe covering as of 1950, and list an Asbeston aluminized asbestos jacket.²⁰²¹ A 1959 advertisement said the company's asbestos textiles were made "in our own modern plant at Stark Mills, Hogansville, Ga."³ In December 1965 Asbestos reported that the company was expanding production of Asbeston asbestos fabric at Hogansville.²² A 1966 advertisement described Asbeston as "ordinary asbestos, except that it's been spun and woven, brushed and calendered."²³ A 1961 Sunbury patent covers wet-brushing woven asbestos fabric to make it smoother and whiter.²⁴ By 1967 the Asbeston advertisements gave the Textile Division's address as Winnsboro, South Carolina.¹

Gaskets. U.S. Rubber also made asbestos gaskets. A 1955 Union Carbide report said the company had recently had difficulties with U.S. Rubber No. 899 asbestos gaskets in valve bonnets at its No. 1 Cellosolve unit, where they slowly deteriorated in a hot butanol and ethylene oxide mixture.²⁵ A 1956 Union Carbide letter listed U.S. Rubber Nos. 899, 3773, 200 and 9 among asbestos and rubber gasket and packing materials suitable for the lower molecular weight ketones.²⁶

The asbestos textile industry and dust

On January 25, 1957, B. W. Luttenberger, works manager of Raybestos-Manhattan's asbestos textile plant at Manheim, Pennsylvania, answered a letter from Frederick W. Sands, an industrial hygienist at U.S. Rubber. He described the plant's dust controls and chest X-rays of its textile mill workers, said Pennsylvania treated asbestosis as an occupational disease, and recommended that U.S. Rubber join the Asbestos Textile Institute and its Air Hygiene Committee.²⁷ In 1958 U.S. Rubber merged its asbestos sales department into a new industrial textiles department; Sunbury, the former manager of Asbeston sales, became sales development manager.²⁸ At its March 1960 meeting the Asbestos Textile Institute announced that U.S. Rubber had been elected to membership.²⁹ In 1964 S. J. Peele, Jr., of U.S. Rubber became the Institute's president.³⁰

Lawsuits

Uniroyal appears as a defendant in asbestos decisions in our library from 1997 to 2024.³¹⁸ A 2007 South Carolina Supreme Court caption names "Uniroyal Holding, Inc. (Successor to U.S. Rubber Co.)" as a defendant; that is how the plaintiffs named it, not a finding by the court.³² In Parks v. A.P. Green Industries (Ind. Ct. App. 2001), the plaintiffs alleged contact with asbestos products made or sold by Uniroyal and others, and the plaintiff spoke of inhaling dust from "Unibestos or Uniroyal insulating blankets"; the court reversed summary judgment for Uniroyal on the statute of repose.³³ In Westfall v. Whittaker, Clark & Daniels (D.R.I. 1983), the claim concerned talc exposure at the Uniroyal plant in Providence, Rhode Island.³⁴ Uniroyal Inc. was still a defendant in a federal case in Louisiana in 2024.⁸ Our library holds no record of a bankruptcy by U.S. Rubber or Uniroyal over asbestos, and no Uniroyal trust appears on our list of asbestos trusts.⁷

References

1. Asbestos, April 1967, p. 10
2. Asbestos, December 1942, pp. 5–6
3. Asbestos, May 1959, p. 54
4. Asbestos, September 1943, p. 34
5. Asbestos, August 1945, p. 41
6. Asbestos, August 1948, p. 52
7. Asbestos trusts A–Z
8. Legendre v. Louisiana Insurance Guaranty Association (E.D. La. 2024)
9. Asbestos, August 1964, p. 9
10. Asbestos Yarn, US Patent 2,179,087 (1939)
11. Asbestos Fabric for Cover for Ironing Surfaces, US Patent 2,180,515 (1939)
12. Asbestos, March 1942, p. 39
13. Asbestos, April 1943, p. 20
14. Asbestos, February 1944, p. 12
15. Ironing Board Cover, US Patent 2,382,830 (1945)
16. Asbestos, May 1947, p. 40
17. Carosel Towels, US Patent 2,413,964 (1947)
18. Carosel (U.S. Rubber)
19. Asbestos, September 1947, p. 44
20. Asbeston (U.S. Rubber)
21. Asbeston Style S/6555 Amf (U.S. Rubber)
22. Asbestos, December 1965, p. 5
23. Asbestos, June 1966, p. 10
24. Wet Brushing of Woven Asbestos Fabric, US Patent 2,993,261 (1961)
25. UC-813: A. C. Hamstead and L. S. VanDelinder, Final Report on Gasket Materials for Ethylene Oxide-Butanol Process Equipment (1955), p. 1
26. UC-938: A. C. Hamstead to G. L. Lansdale on Ketones and Materials of Construction, Including Asbestos Gaskets (1956), p. 1
27. B. W. Luttenberger to Frederick W. Sands of U.S. Rubber on Manheim's Dust Control and Asbestosis Cases (1957)
28. Asbestos, September 1958, p. 38
29. Asbestos, April 1960, p. 50
30. Asbestos, February 1964, p. 3
31. Sharpless v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas (Pa. Com. Pl. 1997)
32. Henderson v. Allied Signal, Inc. (S.C. 2007)
33. Parks v. A.P. Green Industries, Inc. (Ind. Ct. App. 2001)
34. Westfall v. Whittaker, Clark & Daniels (D.R.I. 1983)

Asbestos products

9 products our documents name United States Rubber Company as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Asbestall (U.S. Rubber)
• Asbeston (U.S. Rubber)
• Asbeston Style S/799A (U.S. Rubber)
• Asbeston Style S/6555 (U.S. Rubber)
• Asbeston Style S/6555 Amf (U.S. Rubber)
• Carosel (U.S. Rubber)
• Carosel Dish Towels (U.S. Rubber)
• Sanibestos (United States Rubber)
• Uniroyal (United States Rubber)

Plants

Plants where asbestos products were made that the documents say United States Rubber Company ran.

• United States Rubber Company plant at Burlington, North Carolina
• United States Rubber Company plant at Hogansville, Georgia

In our library

3 documents in our library name United States Rubber Company, by collection.

Other library documents (3)

• Label: Carosel Dish Towels (United States Rubber Company) (publisher)
• Product photograph: ASBESTON (US Rubber) (publisher)
• Product photograph: Asbeston (US Rubber) (2) (publisher)

In the Union Carbide documents

United States Rubber Company is named in 7 Union Carbide documents dated 1932 to 1964 (7 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• National Safety Council, 1932 Transactions of the Twenty-First Annual Safety Congress, Industrial Health Section Excerpts on Mineral Dusts, Asbestos and Silicosis (1932) Union Carbide H (mentioned)
• National Safety Council, 1932 Transactions of the Twenty-First Annual Safety Congress, Excerpts with Papers on Mineral Dusts, Asbestos and Silicosis (1932) UC-5086 (mentioned)
• Singer American Meter Division Material Specifications, Section 24, Listing Phenolic-Asbestos Filled Valve Material from Niagara Insul-Bake (1951) UC-5299 (mentioned)
• A. C. Hamstead and L. S. VanDelinder, Final Report on Gasket Materials for Ethylene Oxide-Butanol Process Equipment (1955) UC-813 (mentioned)
• A. C. Hamstead to G. L. Lansdale on Ketones and Materials of Construction, Including Asbestos Gaskets (1956) UC-938 (mentioned)
• J. A. Faucher, G. M. Bryant and J. V. Koleske, Polypropylene Resiliency Studies: Dynamic Mechanical Properties of Polypropylene, Asbestos-Filled Polypropylene, and Nylon 66 (1963) UC-4754 (mentioned)
• Oleesky and Mohr, Handbook of Reinforced Plastics of the Society of the Plastics Industry, Chapter III-2 'Asbestos-Reinforced Plastics' (1964) UC-5292 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for United States Rubber Company, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: U.S. Rubber Co · US Rubber · U. S. Rubber · U.S. Rubber.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names United States Rubber Company, across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.