Try a Pipe

"The women, oh, the women," sighed Tobacco Salesman Joseph White across his counter on Manhattan's Sixth Avenue. "They are piling into this cigaret shortage like a Sherman tank. Will they take these peculiar brands? . . . They will not. Fifteen or 20 bags of tobacco for rolling your own I sell every day. It used to be two. . . . Always there were a few women, sure, who chewed a little in a ladylike way. And in private. Now you wouldn't believe it. They sidle in here, wait till the counter is clear of customers, then ask for 'a sweet, aromatic pipe tobacco, please.' Or a pack of those little cigars. Or a box of snuff. Then they pop the stuff in their handbags quick, spin around and beat it."

From Tennessee, West Virginia, Missouri, Illinois and Ohio came other reports last week that women, deprived of popular-brand cigarets, were taking to pipes. Across the nation, cigaret shelves were bare and gagsters were demanding "a package of 'Stoopies'--the kind you stoop down behind the counter for." Manufacturers of unknown brands were making--and, some thought, selling--hay. A group of doctors learnedly gave a U.P. reporter nine rules for getting along happily without cigarets (least helpful: give yourself a pep talk; maybe you don't want a smoke, after all).

Washington offered three explanations for the acute shortage: 1) hoarding, 2) a growing black market, 3) more smoking by more people who are jittery in wartime. Threats to crack down on black marketers rumbled from OPA. But for increased consumption among both civilians and soldiers, there was no immediate solution. U.S. domestic consumption, which was 206 billion cigarets in 1941, has already gone to 181 billions in the first nine months of 1944. The overseas armed forces (18 billion in 1942, 32 billion in 1943) will get 63 billion cigarets in 1944.

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