MANUFACTURING: Alcohol for War

OPM last week ordered U.S. distillers to stop making neutral spirits for beverages on Jan. 15, start running off industrial alcohol. In a shooting war, when every 16-in. gun blast burns up 60 gal. of alcohol in its powder, the U.S. needs alcohol more than liquor.

But drinkers need not worry yet. U.S. distillers have over 500,000,000 gal. of whiskey in warehouses, four years’ supply. Furthermore, though forbidden to make neutral spirits for gin and “blends,” distillers can still make 100,000,000 gal. of straight whiskey in 1942, about three-quarters of total 1941 output.

U.S. liquor companies have already helped the regular industrial alcohol makers by taking contracts for 76,000,000 gal.* of alcohol for powder (TIME, Oct. 13). Now they will make another 114,000,000 gal., boost total U.S. industrial alcohol output to around 500,000,000 gal., the highest ever. Unless Army & Navy consumption of powder exceeds all estimates, the distillers alone will soon make enough alcohol to slake the thirst of the guns. Then the regular industrial alcohol makers can go back to their normal customers (plastics, paints, chemicals, etc.).

Not only will the powdermakers get alcohol, but they will get it fast. Early last month four freight cars bulging with corn rolled up to National Distillers’ big Carthage distillery in Cincinnati. Less than 96 hours later this corn was alcohol gurgling into a waiting railroad tank car; 48 hours later the alcohol was being piped into an Indiana powder plant.

OPM’s order was designed to relieve not only a looming smokeless powder shortage, but the sugar scare (see p. 70). Most ethyl alcohol is normally made from molasses, a by-product of sugar. To increase their production, however, the regular alcohol makers have recently been using not just blackstrap molasses but whole cane syrup (high-test molasses), thus cutting into the sugar supply.

Liquor stills normally use neither cane syrup nor molasses; they use grain (mostly corn). This is plentiful, but expensive. To make alcohol profitable for the distillers, OPA last month raised the price ceiling from 24½¢ to 50¢ a gal.

* Proof gallons. In 190-proof alcohol, two proof gallons roughly equal one wine gallon.