Shaking Out the Lead

"If I could shake a few OPMites, I could get enough lead out of their pants to last us for a year," said an angry foilmaker last week. With this and more reasoned squawks, they got enough for a month. Four days after Priorities Director Don Nelson had banned the use of lead and tin foil for cigaret, candy, chewing-gum and other wrapping, the order was rescinded for 30 days.

The foilmakers had indeed shaken the OPMites. They were sore. The curtailment order had come with practically no warning: no foilmaking for these uses after Jan. 15, on the grounds that the foilmakers (using lead as a substitute for aluminum) had tripled their lead consumption, and were eating into the supply of lead for defense. Reynolds Metal Co., largest U.S. foilmaker, was the sorest. Richard Samuel Reynolds felt the order was aimed straight at him. So he drew up a bill of particulars:

P: The lead shortage was not a shortage for defense but for other civilian users. Why ban lead for foil while permitting its use for toy soldiers, sinkers for fishermen, ammunition for sportsmen?

P: Reynolds had developed a process which cuts by one-half the amount of lead needed in foil making. To keep at work its 1,600 employes it needed only 2,500 tons a month, 3 1/2% of available supply.

P: This 3 1/2% could easily be obtained from increased production if Leon Henderson would lift the price ceiling a few notches from its present 5.85-c- a lb. (TIME, Nov. 17). Mine production could be upped by 30%, said Reynolds, as demonstrated in the 1925-26 period when lead prices climbed.

To support the claims came telegraphic testimonials from Reynolds' customers: Liggett and Myers, American Tobacco, P. Lorillard, Life Savers, Hershey Chocolate Corp. Their production would be hampered, they wired, if they could get no Reynolds foil.

Candy and tobacco, it so happened, are among the non-defense industries which Leon Henderson has named as capable of useful, harmless expansion despite defense, to keep up morale and provide an outlet for surplus purchasing power. It also happened that Reynolds, because of his venture into the aluminum business in competition with Alcoa, has been a New Deal darling; last week he said darkly that his profitable foil business made possible his aluminum program, if foilmaking were cut off his credit might be impaired. In any case, the foilmakers got a reprieve.

Less successful were funeral directors and coffinmakers. They showered OPM with telegrams of protest against the recent ban on copper, claiming that burials in bronze caskets are vital to U.S. morale. No soap.

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