Trouble in 40%

As East Coast householders last week fretted and froze over the fuel oil problem, they at least had one big consolation: thousands of nonwar businesses were in trouble too. OPA's order to slash oil use up to 40% was playing havoc with hotels and laundries, stores and office buildings with their own private power plants, semi-war industries like paper mills and textile dyers. Examples:

> Farsighted Union Bag & Paper Corp. asked Washington for priorities to buy coal pulverizers and storage bins for its Savannah mill way back in August 1941.

Last month it finally managed to purchase part of a unit, but had to build the missing pieces before the unit could be used at all. If OPA should stick to its ruling, Union's mill would have to close down one month this quarter, might not reopen for the duration because hard-to-hire mill hands would romp off to other jobs. Probable outcome: Kraft paper is so essential for shipping war materials that oil may be provided.

> Washington laundry operators went into a huddle and came out screaming about "epidemics." Reasons: 1) water for washing clothes must be very hot to sterilize properly; 2) oil use parallels laundry tonnage.

> Because the Navy would always have first call on oil supplies, Manhattan's tony Ritz Carlton Hotel will padlock its oil tanks, buy steam for power and heat from New York Steam Corp.

> Last week the Brooklyn plant of Fanny Farmer Candy Shops was told to convert to coal. The plant now uses two boilers fired by oil, will have to run at least one while converting. The hitch: it must get an OPA permit for enough oil to run one boiler for 60 days.

> Most ingenious solution was in Sloatsburg, N.Y., where little Ramapo Piece Dye Works rented an old Erie locomotive, rolled it on to a siding, piped it to the plant, hired a fireman to keep the engine at full steam.

Nobody knew what the final outcome of the industrial shortage would be; statistics were sadly lacking. OPA last week said there was plenty of oil to cover all ration coupons outstanding, then admitted it still did not know how many gallons worth of coupons it had issued.

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