Light on Lights

The U.S. smoker, taking any kind of cigaret he could get last week, found himself also short of matches. The free match book that once went with every pack of cigarets had gone, and the smoker was hard put to it to buy matches of any kind.

He might find what comfort he could in the news that, statistically, there is no acute match shortage. This year the U.S. will produce 460 billion matches (475 billion in 1944), using its own chlorate of potash instead of importing it, as before the war. But, practically, there is a shortage. Reason: the military has taken all the safety (penny-box) matches, and 35% of the paper-folder kind. U.S. civilians get what is left.

Kitchen matches, the strike-anywhere type, will be mainly what the civilian smoker will get. There will be 175 billion of them available this year, plus 125 billion book matches. Thus, statistically, each of the 100 million civilians old enough to play with matches could get 3,000 for the year. Lighters are reducing match consumption. Last week Ronson lighter officials estimated that there are some 40,000,000 lighters in use, including those in the armed forces.

But the War Production Board, taking no chances, last week issued the first match allocation control order, to attempt equitable distribution of the match supply for 1945. If the order should surprise everybody by being effective, there should be enough matches for everybody in 1945.

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