The Score

The Department of Agriculture last week announced that chances of a sugar shortage this year are "remote." To the conditioned reflexes of the average citizen, that was enough to make the sugar scare scarier. Plenty of housewives had found the corner grocery store limiting their purchases to 2-5 lb. or less; Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Hershey Chocolate and other big sugar users were rationing customers to their 1940 consumption; there were whispers that the Government was printing sugar ration cards. What was the sugar score?

The score is that 1942 sugar supplies may well be the highest ever, but that widespread hoarding may create an artificial shortage anyway. Last year users hoarded an estimated 1,000,000 tons, almost one-seventh of U.S. consumption.

Grounds for the hoarders' fears: 1) Hawaii and the Philippines, which should have contributed some 2,000,000 tons of raw sugar to the U.S. this year, may not be able to supply any; 2) vastly increased needs for alcohol for smokeless powder (see p. 66) may throw all the supply figures galley west; 3) nobody knows how much sugar the U.S. may have to Lend-Lease to Britain, the U.S.S.R., other allies. But the Commodity Research Bureau last week estimated minimum raw-sugar supplies for 1942 of 4,575,000 short tons, not counting any at all from Hawaii or the Philippines. This, added to the estimated carryover of 3,786,000 tons, amounts to 5% more than 1941's record consumption, including hoarding.

Thus any immediate sugar shortage is self-imposed by panicky housewives and foresighted industrial consumers. Meanwhile the U.S. Government took precautions: > Month ago, 0PM forbade all deliveries to industrial users and wholesalers of any more sugar than each took in the corresponding 1940 period. (This order was the main reason for such retail and industrial rationing as has occurred.) > Last week RFC's Defense Supplies Corp. was all set to sign up with Cuba for the largest sugar order ever: $200,000,000 worth, 3,450,000 tons. This is 80% of Cuba's total 1942 crop. > OPA raised its ceilings on raw and refined sugar about 7% (24-c- per cwt. for raw, 20-c- for refined). While the chief reason for the raw-sugar rise was to bring all prices into line with the DSC-negotiated price to Cuba, it should also encourage increased production, both off-shore and domestic. > This week refiners and large industrial consumers met in Washington to discuss sugar allocations for the year. One likely outcome: requisitioning and reallocation of excess stocks. This would be particularly galling to the big users who stocked up foresightedly last year, some of whom are said to have a two-year supply. Fearing such an order and considering curtailed sales, traders on the New York Stock Exchange last week sold Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola down to new 1941-42 lows.

But nobody has doped out a way to reallocate the jumpy housewife's unmeasured hoard. If she plays squirrel again as she did in 1939 (TIME, Sept. 18, 1939) ration cards will be the only way to keep her calmer neighbor in sugar.

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