Outlook

The U.S. is running out of liquor slowly but surely. The nation is drinking itself dry.

In Manhattan many liquor retailers reversed one of the most ancient rules of business: a customer who wanted to buy a case-lot had to pay more per bottle than the single-bottle price. In California police cars careened through the streets of Oakland and Berkeley in the best Volstead manner, chasing gangsters who had hijacked hooch ; in dry Charlotte, N.C. bell hops and hack drivers bootlegged moonshine from nearby wet counties. And in Washington OPA huffpuffed.

Tipplers began to wonder anxiously: was the dry old man with the stovepipe hat sneaking in by the back door? The answer was no: if the U.S. goes dry in this war it will not be by law but because the liquor supply has dried up.

The Supply. Gin stocks are always low because little aging is required. Rum and Scotch are imported. Consequently the U.S. liquor industry's 100% conversion to war last fall threw hard-liquor bibbers back on domestic whiskey. Since many citizens regard liquor as an unnecessary evil, the Federal Government has never seriously considered rationing it. Result: the distilling industry has been forced to do its own: distributors are now getting about 70% of what they took in 1942. Meanwhile liquor consumption has increased along with payrolls.

Rule-of-thumb rationing down the line to the ultimate consumer has resulted in all kinds of inequalities. States with local liquor control compounded the confusion; 13 of the 17 liquor-monopoly states have instituted rationing. Thus the per capita quota runs from a pint a week in Virginia to as much as two quarts a day in Vermont. But, on a national basis, liquormen figure that U.S. stocks of domestic whiskeys (404,000,000 gal.) will last for about three sober, 70% years, leave another year's supply aging for the peace.

The Price. Like almost every other manufactured commodity, liquor prices came under Leon Henderson's "General Max" ceiling-over-everything a year ago. Since then the industry has been allowed to raise prices twice to meet rising costs, is now dickering again with OPA for new ceilings. And recently customers have noticed another change in their local liquor stores: brand names that no one ever heard of before. Reason: big distillers have gone shopping around the U.S., buying up little distilleries, and relabeling their stocks.

In 1938 the Big Four U.S. distillers (Hiram Walker, National Distillers, Schenley's, Seagram's) produced 64% of all domestic whiskeys, owned 20 of 97 operating distilleries. By last week the same four owned at least 20 more of the smaller distilleries, and Deputy Price Administrator J. Kenneth Galbraith estimated that the big fry control 80% of all the bulk whiskey in the U.S. Topers had one safe bet: for the duration liquor will be both scarce and expensive. But they had one nip of comfort--the sober outlook for drinkers makes the outlook for Old Man Prohibition bleak.

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