Business: Wanted: Nails of All Kinds

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the rider was lost; for want of a rider, the battle was lost; for want of a battle, the kingdom was . . . .

For want of such seeming trifles as nails, much of U.S. industry was fighting a losing battle of production last week.

For want of slaughtered livestock, soapmakers lacked tallow and grease to keep up their three billion pounds a year production. Many would have to shut down. For want of soap, laundries all over the country had to reduce their laundering; millions of housewives did the same; wool producers (to whom soap is a major necessity) lamented: “No woolens.” For want of glycerine, a by-product of animal fats, General Electric could not get the lacquer it needed to finish thousands of refrigerators. For want of industrial soap and stearic acid, all synthetic rubber production in Akron was expected to drop sharply in November, stop completely in December.

For want of lard, National Biscuit Co., the nation’s largest baker, closed its New York and Philadelphia plants. All other big bakers either cut production or planned to close. For want of hides and leather, shoe production next month would drop to about one-third of the first-quarter level, with many shutdowns of shoe factories in the offing. For want of animal extracts, insulin and streptomycin supplies dwindled toward a critical low.

The Have Nots. There were other vicious cycles. For want of soda ash, glass makers have been forced to cut down drastically; for want of glass bottles, dairies in New York and elsewhere have been forced to cut down on deliveries of milk, which is somewhat short for want of cows. For want of castor oil, used as brake and shock absorber fluid, automakers could not roll out all the cars they had hoped to deliver. For want of nails to make curing racks. Georgia farmers this year were threatened with the loss of half of their $57,000,000 peanut crop.

By last week, even Government bureaucrats were willing to admit that all of these secondary shortages were caused by the ramshackle structure of controls left by the slowly collapsing OPA. OPA could not be blamed for some of the basic shortages caused by 1) abnormal demand and 2) the worldwide shortage of certain raw materials, notably fats & oils for soap.

The Haves. But most businessmen blamed the present crazily unbalanced system of controls for the pyramiding secondary shortages that made the overall shortages worse by cutting off what supplies of materials there were. Worst bungle was in meat (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). But there were others. Example: when Brazil’s castor bean growers raised their price, the U.S. held firmly to its domestic ceiling until much of the crop was sold elsewhere. Had the bureaucrats learned their lesson? Last week, they showed once more that they hadn’t.

To cure the “controlled” leather shortage, OWMR Boss John R. Steelman announced that U.S. tanners would be permittee to buy hides in the world market at world prices (almost 90% above OPA ceilings) but they must still sell all products, except leather from imported raw calfskins, at ceiling prices. No tanners could afford to do this. Anyway, the U.S. had waited so long to make up its mind that other nations had bought up nearly all the hides there were.