Parachutes Mean Bare Legs

It was a black week for the U.S. female leg. Du Pont announced tersely that, "because of demand for military purposes," nylon would no longer be sold on contract but on a spot basis (i.e., if there was any to sell). That meant that hosiery makers would get no nylon. They had long since stopped getting silk.

On what silk the U.S. has left WPB tightened its grip last week, even at the Army's expense. After March 1 "no silk may be used in the manufacture of parachutes until the grade and type has been approved by the Defense Supplies Corp." Evidently the Army had been wastefully using it on parachute shroud lines and cords instead of saving it for canopies. If nylon is subjected to similar husbanding, women can at least feel that their sacrifice is necessary.

What will they wear instead? Of the 43,000,000 pairs of women's full-fashioned hosiery shipped last year, 7,000,000 were all nylon, 22,000,000 were all silk, and all but 1,500,000 of the rest were either silk or nylon from the knee down. Fortnight ago, WPB ordered the rayon industry to increase the percentage of its output earmarked for hosiery. But the increase (from 9 to 12% of the viscose and cuprammonium output and from 5 to 6% of acetate) was not enough to make up the difference in quantity, even if women liked rayon stockings, which they don't.

Despite longtime experiments by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, hosiery stylists never cottoned to cotton either. No modern stocking machine exists that can make acceptable full-fashioned cotton hosiery except from long-staple cotton, which grows only in small quantities in the U.S.

Moreover, long-staple imports, chiefly from Egypt,* are not to be depended on. And if U.S. production of long-staple cotton booms (the Government is now encouraging it with special subsidies), U.S. spindles to spin it are limited, even on a three-shift basis, to a maximum of 4,000,000 Ib. a year. If all of that were spun into the best hosiery yarn, it would take care of only about 3% of the normal U.S. women's hosiery market. Furthermore, long-staple cotton has important defense uses, such as powder bags, balloons. Upshot: many a girl who used to take pride in her legs will wear either seamless (i.e., shapeless) cotton stockings made from coarser, short-staple cotton, or knee-length "campus hose," or nothing.

* Last week W. R. Grace & Co.'s Cecil Kern began a campaign to lower the U.S. duty, kill the quota regulations on Peru's long-staple cotton. These limitations (dear to U.S. cotton Congressmen) normally keep U.S. imports to only 4,000 bales out of Peru's total crop of over 300,000 bales.

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