Business: Wax Hunt

Last week Herbert F. Johnson Jr., president of S. C. Johnson & Son, posed in front of his two-motored Sikorsky Amphibian at Milwaukee Airport, informed newshawks that he was leading a 22,000 mile expedition into the wilds of Brazil. He was disturbed, he said, by a shortage of carnauba wax. With him were a Johnson research chemist, a Johnson purchasing agent, two pilots, field laboratory equipment, specimen cases, cinema cameras, guns, fishing rods. Heading for Para, Brazil, was Dr. B. E. Dahlgren, botany curator of Chicago’s Field Museum. Although the expedition had the earmarks of a happy combination of pleasure and publicity, Johnson’s President Johnson announced that he would search for new growths of carnauba palm, whose leaves supply the basic substance of high-grade wax and polish.

The carnauba palm is “the tree of life” to native Brazilians, who use its wood for cattle pens, its leaves to thatch huts, its fibre for baskets and fishing nets. Industrially, carnauba wax is used mainly in floor, shoe and auto polishes, has no substitute.* After the rainy season it forms on the succulent carnauba leaves, sealing up moisture for the arid months. Natives cut the leaves twice a year, dry them in the sun, beat them with clubs until the wax scales off in white, greasy flakes. Most prized is the golden wax taken from the eye of the palm. Some natives boil the wax in water; others toast it in a dry kettle. Finally, they strain it through a cotton cloth, leave it to cool. From 1,500 to 2,500 leaves are required for one arroba (32 Ib.) of wax.

Brazil is the only source of carnauba wax. Last year exports totaled 13,500,000 Ib., more than half of which went to the U. S. Principal uses are: floor and furniture polish-Johnson & Son, A. S. Boyle Co.; shoe polish-Gold Dust (Shinola, 2-in-1, Bixbee), Whittemore, Griffin; auto polish-Simoniz, Du Pont.

Having no organized market, wax is handled by a group of Manhattan importers. Because prolonged rains reduce the carnauba’s need for hoarded moisture, the wax crop varies widely from year to year. This year the rains came early, stayed late. Result is a delayed crop, a rise in price per Ib.-now 38¢, almost four times that of the 1932 bottom, but far short of an 80¢ peak price in 1918. Few U. S. waxmen agree with Johnson’s President Johnson that there is a serious shortage.

Founded half a century ago in Racine, Wis. by Samuel Curtis Johnson, who developed wax as a sideline for his hardwood floor business, S. C. Johnson & Son now accounts for more than one-half the U. S. wax business. Prosperous, family-owned, famed for its model employe benefit plans, the company is now headed by the founder’s grandson, Herbert Jr., no salesman but a trained chemist who likes technical problems, supervision of new products. Every year he flies in his own plane to Canadian wilds for three months of hunting & fishing.

*Before carnauba wax was first used commercially about 50 years ago beeswax was used for polishes. Today most beeswax goes into Catholic altar candles, which must be at least 51% beeswax to meet an old Church law based on the supposed virginity of bees. No such rule governs votive candles, sold in great numbers to the faithful. These may be made of ordinary stearic acid and paraffin.