Word: burlap
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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There is apt to be very little more jute (or burlap, which is made from jute) for the U.S., and no abaca (Manila hemp). Those facts may sound esoteric to the layman, but they have the U.S. Government-and all who know about jute and hemp-in a frenzy...
...Burlap is the "wrapping paper of the wholesale trade." The U.S., even in normal times, consumes more than 500,000,000 lb. of burlap a year. Bulk foods-grains, raw sugar, coffee, salt, livestock feeds-are bagged in burlap; so are cotton, wool, fertilizers, chemicals, countless industrial products. In wartime it is also needed for sandbags and camouflage fabrics. As raw jute, or as manufactured burlap, 99% of it originates in India, and 85% of that comes from around the steaming Ganges Delta in Bengal Province. In no other part of the world where acceptable jute can be grown...
Since Pearl Harbor, the U.S. has made herculean efforts to conserve burlap, to get in as much more as its thin line of groaning ships can bring. By Government order, two-thirds of all burlap is earmarked for military needs, the other third for essential farm needs. Non-essential users, like carpet and furniture makers, have been denied any burlap at all. Yet U.S. warehouse stocks are now less than a third of consumption in a good year; Calcutta stocks (if the U.S. can get them) are about the same...
What's To Be Done? Best substitute for burlap is that lately over-produced U.S. staple-cotton. Since late January, the U.S. Government has been salting away a stockpile of osnaburgs (heavy cotton) by draining off one-third of all production. Hoped for, and far from achieved, total: 200,000,000 yards (one-fifth of normal burlap consumption...
Last fortnight, bag makers got A-2 priorities on cotton bagging but, with all the other demands on cotton mills, the rating so far has turned out to be about as good as Confederate money. Up to now, burlap-starved farmers have got by somehow with emergency allocations, used-bag collections, etc. With mounting cries from bag-starved Lend-Leasers and Good Neighbors, best hope is that such makeshifts-together with stepped-up production of Latin American substitutes-will continue to keep the hand and the mouth connected...