Ah, Sweet Mystery of Sugar

No matter how carefully they have spooned, housewives lately have found the sugar bowl almost empty. Last week. OPA thought it had found one new reason. In Philadelphia Federal District Court, OPA charged that many U.S. sugar refineries have stopped making sugar. They have found it far more profitable to make cane syrup.

As evidence, OPA haled into court Philadelphia's Chandler Laboratories (ice cream mixes, fruit flavors, etc.). Chandler has an annual quota of 23,396 Ibs. of sugar. Yet, charged OPA. it made a deal with four Louisiana sugar refineries (Vermillion Sugar, Abbeville; Erath Sugar, Erath; Ruth Sugars, St. Martinville; D. Moresi's Sons, Jeanerette) to get cane syrup equal to some 40,000,000 Ibs. of sugar, enough to supply U.S. consumers for two weeks.

Chandler argued that syrup is not sugar, thus does not come under rationing. This, it said, was what it had been advised by the law firm of onetime OPA Boss Prentiss M. Brown. OPA brushed this argument aside. It held that cane syrup cannot be used commercially without being purified and crystallized--and crystallized syrup is sugar. The Court agreed, cut off Chandler's syrup supply by a preliminary injunction. Armed with this, OPA is now investigating some 50 refineries in Louisiana, which supplies some 60% of U.S. sugar, and hopes to force syrup makers back to making sugar.

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