 Competing newspapers either ignored the campaign or wrote vehement editorials against Sinclair's programs.Just before World War II in October 1941, a disastrous explosion and fire in Fall River, Massachusetts destroyed a large plant of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company and with it a large part of government's supply of raw rubber, necessitating scrap drives to collect rubber.Boddy was on the air every night for more than four months, appealing to the public to collect and turn in their old automobile tires and other scrap.