STATE OF BUSINESS: Boom

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Wool, Burlap, Manganese. Copper sales may have dropped, but typical of industries still selling in a frenzied market to customers fearful of a famine of imported materials is carpet wool, currently being consumed at the fastest rate in history: (September consumption, 16-to-17,000,000 grease pounds). Last two months stocks have been reduced by 10,000,000 grease pounds. Shrewd speculators bored with the stockmarket's stalling with the headlines, have made wool a medium for some pretty certain cleaning up if Europe stays at war; spot wool is priced at $1.26, cannot be bought anyway, but wool for delivery in July 1940, when the war shortage should be much worse, is priced at only $1.09. A less obvious bet, already paying cushy dividends, is burlap, imported from Calcutta, where a monsoon run on the warehouses is going on. One use for burlap is binding the springs of auto seats—it removes the squeak. Last week one auto parts supplier was "in" more cash as profit on burlap inventory warehoused well before the war, than it hopes to make from its seat division all year. Another company standing to clean up on a raw material shortage is Freeport Sulphur Co., which in addition to handling a thriving chemical business, owns 89.84% of up-and-coming Cuban-American Manganese Corp. Last week insurance companies, at wits end to know what to do with their money in this war market, put $3,000,000 of it in some 3% Freeport Sulphur bonds. This cheaply rented $3,000,000 will have plenty of work to do in Cuba and the U. S.