Babassu, Have You Any Soap?

Most Americans have not heard of the babassu nut since September 1936, when Alf Landon attacked this "jungle product" as an example of the riffraff being let into the country by Cordell Hull's reciprocal trade treaties. It grows in Brazil and its oil, used in margarine, competed with U.S. butter. Alf's "babassu speech" was a major milestone on his route to Kansas. But last week the babassu nut came into its own.

The U.S. depended on the Far East for some 1,600,000,000 Ib. of vegetable fats and oils--to make soap, linoleum, paint, varnish, oleomargarine, shortenings, for many a food and manufacturing process. Pearl Harbor threw all this fat in the fire. At once domestic oils--soybean, cottonseed, linseed--felt the surge of the shifted demand, began to soar in price. OPA clapped on a price ceiling; but last fortnight, to prevent hoarding, OPM had to freeze all U.S. stocks of some 1,800 different fats and oils, domestic and imported. No food, soap or paint manufacturer can now carry more than 90 days' supply. Tung-oil restrictions are even tighter.

German housewives, to make soap, keep greasetraps in their drains, or send children to the woods for beechnuts. U.S. housewives need fear no such shortage, since U.S. fat output can be increased. This week the Department of Agriculture met with State agriculture leaders, begged them to increase 1942 plantings of soybeans and peanuts by 3,000,000-4,000,000 acres (7,000,000 acres of soybeans, 3,500,000 acres of peanuts had already been scheduled for this year). But U.S. oils do not have the rare quick-lathering properties of coconut oil.

Florida is raising tung trees with some success. Brazil's oiticica oil is a tung-oil substitute; the U.S. imported 16,000,000 lb. last year. The muru-muru and tucum trees, also Brazil's, are palm substitutes. Venezuela's jungle-grown corozo and macanilla nuts have the quick-lathering qualities of coconut oil. So has the babassu, of which the U.S. imported 63,000,000 Ib. last year, mostly for soap. In fact, of all imported oils still available to the U.S., Brazil's babassu is now the most important for soap--even in Kansas.

Short selling has all but disappeared in Wall Street, thanks to stricter margin requirements and trading rules. At year's end, the short interest on the New York Stock Exchange was a record-small 349,154 shares. On May 25, 1931, it was 5,589,700 shares.

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