Confusion

Sugar was in a nut house all last week. Even Government bureaus bickered with one another.

WPB jolted Washington with its bland statement that consumer sugar stocks were "only slightly below normal" and that there was no need for rationing. Up jumped the Agriculture Department: "Sugar for use in the continental U.S. is expected to be the smallest in 20 years." Then, with a so-there flip of its head, the Department added: "Rationing is necessary." OPA-which doled out the 130,000,000 sugar-ration cards-quickly and emphatically agreed.

All this hithering & thithering threw refiners and consumers into a dither. Most of them wanted to believe WPB-and acted accordingly. Thus some U.S. refiners last week put customers back on an easy-payment basis (31 days instead of hard cash), wired buyers to come and get it. California's giant Spreckels Sugar went a step further, cut prices ten points to 5-35-c- a lb. to lure customers. Finally OPA told Western beet-sugar outfits to stop shipping sugar east. Unofficial reason: the East has enough.

Most housewives, meanwhile, were taking rationing in their stride. Bakers, candy makers and soda-pop makers (cut to 70% of 1941 use) got along with substitutes, complete elimination of some lines, and good old American ingenuity. But restaurants and hotels (slashed to 50% of 1941 consumption) howled for more.

Maybe they will get it. According to the Agricultural Department's own figures, there were 2,137,000 tons of sugar in the U.S. at year's end. Since then imports (mostly Cuba and Hawaii) have totaled 1,200,000 tons. Domestic cane and beet output runs over 2,000,000 tons a year. Each week, even now, from 60-70,000 tons are imported. Besides, Cuba is nervously holding 3,000,000-plus tons only 200 miles from Florida and the waiting railroads; Puerto Rico has up to 1,000,000 tons more. Normal U.S. consumption, meantime, runs only 6,800,000 tons annually, v. only 5,500,000 tons allowed under present sugar rationing.

The only people really scared by sugar rationing are sugar producers. They fear that rationing may permanently dull the U.S. sweet tooth, seriously curtail the whole sugar industry. Sniffing this Cuba's powerful National Sugar Producers Association this week rushed over to the U.S Ambassador in Havana, asked him to stop the "U.S. campaign against sugar"--pronto.

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