Blockade Benefits

The world's blockades have erased the livelihood of many a little U.S. businessman (such as spice importers -- TIME, May 2). But free trade is a two-edged sword, and many another has found the blockades more fun than a protective tariff.

Items:

> Handmade glassware, a craft industry of small factories in Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, was practically wiped out and most of its workmen went on relief after a reciprocal trade treaty with glassmaking Czecho-Slovakia cut the tariff in 1938. But by last year, when war had knocked U.S. imports of all kinds of glassware from $6,500,000 to $2,300,000, U.S. factories not only had the domestic market to themselves but exported $14,750,000 worth of goods. Last week they had more orders than they could fill.

> North Carolina has a "yarbing" industry (from mountain lingo for "herb"). For years residents have made their spare time pay by gathering wild cherry bark, white pine bark, horehound, peppermint, Jimson weed, elderberries, angelica root, other drugs and flavorings which grow in the Piedmont woods. Middlemen between gatherers and drug companies are the "yarb house" operators, whose dean is gnome-like Isadore Wallace of Statesville, still hale and merry at 79. In the business since he was 18, Wallace operates in an old building of unpainted, roughhewn pine timber fastened with wooden pegs, redolent with years of steeping in exotic herb smells.

After World War I, imports kept "yarbing" prices down to a level where its pay was about 50-c- a day. But by last week domestic peppermint, normally 15-c- a lb., brought 75-80-c-, other herbs were up too, and Herbalist Wallace looked forward to a time when gatherers could make $1 a day and his warehouse would smell more than ever.

> U.S. cheesemakers are making substitutes (with varying success) for Norway's gjetost, the bleu cheeses of France and Belgium, Holland's Gouda and Edam, Italy's asiago and provolone.

> For ramie, a tough, stiff fiber used in gas mantles and other woven goods, the U.S. has been dependent on Asia. Now a plant is abuilding at Atmore, Ala. to process ramie grown experimentally at Alabama's State prison farm. Three other States are also trying to grow the fiber.

> With Holland's tulip bulbs cut off, U.S. growers in Michigan, North Carolina and the Pacific Northwest have the market mostly to themselves, get twice pre-war prices.

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