Dry Spell Coming?

The bustling soft-drinks industry last week wept into its pop -- and bitterly. In the lack of sugar it foresaw its undoing.

Government bungling (failure to offer the Cubans enough to induce heavy planting), the use of 900,000 tons of sugar to make synthetic rubber, plus 26% greater demands by the services, plus strikes in Puerto Rico, plus a drought in Cuba, had cut the amount of sugar available for U.S. civilians from last year's 6.1 million tons to less than five million for 1945.

To make matters worse, more bungling in rationing is allowing over half of this year's sugar to be used up in the first six months of 1945, and before the big demand for summer canning.

The prospect is that the soft-drinks business may have its sugar ration cut from 65% of prewar (1941) to 50%.

John J. Riley, Secretary of the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages, last week pointed out to the House Special Committee to Investigate Food Shortages that the last time the production of soft drinks was cut in half (during the depression) more than half the operating plants folded up. Big producers like Coca-Cola Co. (with some 1,200 bottling units), Pepsi-Cola Co., Dr. Pepper Co., etc. may hang on until the sugar shortage eases. But for the smaller companies the outlook is gloomy. A drop in production will wipe out their slim profits.

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