Republican farmer., 1920-01-30
WORST YEAR EVER FOR SOAP TRADE
Big Production and Euro pean Scarcity Led to Gen eral Stocking Up Beyond Reason and Reaction Hit Manufacturers Hard.
By S. W. BCKMAN.

that the local District Attorney in his effort to run down the prof1teers and bring down the high cost of living, give his attention to soap manufac- turers, whom she evidently thought to be chief offenders along this line. If the District Attorney followed this good Iady's advice he probably dropped his investigation after his visit to the first soap manufacturer.
 The fact of the matter is that 1919 will go down perhaps the worst year ever known in the laundry soap business. This is the view both from the point of view of gross volume of business and net profit. One con- cern, which closed its year several $1, 900, 900 in 1918 and a loss of about half that amount in 1919.
 While the war was on, the soap manufa cturers could hardly fill their orders. During this time the by-prod- uct, glycertne, sold up 70 over soc per pound, against the normal high price of 20c, and naturally every manufacturer strained to the utmost to get out the greatest possible vol | ume not only on account of the profit l involved, but because the Government was urging a maximum production of 1 glycerine for war purposes.
 1 Soap Was Much Talked About. 1 Probably no article received any more free advertising during the war | than common laundry soap- Letters | from soldiers to their folks back home, as well as articles appearing in the papers, showed that dough- boy could walk down the main street of any French village with cake of soap in his hand and could get prac- tically anything short of part of deed to a mans home in exchange there for.
 Prices of all fats and oils were go-
 ing up continually and 1t was the l general consensus of opinion that soap prices must skyrocket. The fact | of the matter was that. although the
 cost for the manufacture of soap ap- proximately tripled during the war,
 the cost to the consumer never got
 above double the pre-war cost and
 hardly reached that The reason for
 this was that the soap maker set off
 against the price of his soap the value
 of the glycerine and in that way was , able to keep the price of soap down
 $1 per box or more below the price l which would have been required had 2 g1ycerine been selling at It's normal value.
 The result of the general situation e was that during the last year of the war, Mrs. Consumer, instead of buy 1 ing 25c or 50c worth of soap, bought
 a box, or two or three boxes, and
 put it away. MT. Retailer. instead of ,. buying five or 10 boxes, bought fifty s or 100 and filled his cellar. MT. Job
 Der instead of buying 100 boxes,
 1000; so that at the time of the ar
 mistice there was Q very large supply
 of soap in the hands of distributors
 and consumers all over the country.
 Jobbers Had Soap Galore.
 One jobber has recently circularized e the wholesale grocery trade, offering ,- 14,000 cases of different brands of
 laundry soap, which he evidently has )l had on hand since before the end of d the war. If he has this much surplus
 a year after the war is over, one can a imagine how many thousands of cases
 he must have had when the armistice
 was declared.
 IT The result of all this was that t&e y- soap manufacturers found sales d-oe-
 ping off almost to the vanishing point s during the early months of 1919. IT O many instances factories were closed 70 down entirely, and in every instance IS they were run on part time after al .r the available storage capacity wa: T, filled up.
 Il Along in February practically every If manufacturer was in the same boat
 in so far as heavy accumulation o1
 manufactured stock was concerned A about that time the raw material. g. had dropped to considerably under ,a half their value at the time of the he armistice, and then the manufactur of CTS began the glorious game of cut a. ting their prices to conform with tht . new price level of the raw materials
 This in spite of the fact that gIy .d cerine had dropped off to its pre-wal ba price and also that the goods on hand 
 ,s l made at full wartime cost, or in fac ,1I, at still higher costs because of tn, bs low production when storage spac' = | was exhausted.
 Relating In Soaps.
 Then began the relating to the pob IT. bers to the extent of as much as S1 an per box, and immediately after t1i n operation had been gone throug1 ;t- raw materials began to go up, du ne somewhat to European exportations re with the result that soap manufactu ,er CTS were compelled to raise thei 'n. prices again. In June and July tn % volume of business throughout tn
 country and for export was exceed an ing1y large, but it Is safe to predic ut that in the disposal of the larg so stocks accumulated in the late winte in and early spring, the manufacturer h. as a rule lost money because thes ti- goods were made with high price,
 stock at a time of reduced factor
 production with consequent high over
 head costs. These features were no
 taken into consideration at all in tn rt price of the soap to the trade. to- A Slump in Soap Demand. ast By September a decided slump ha m come about. With the talk emanatin sb from Washington and going the roUo
 of the press to the effect that tn
 high cost of living was sure to com ny down very soon as result or gov on " ernmental efforts, normal sales wer ito impossible. Stocks accumulated i
 the hands of the manufa cturer he again, and 1t was not until people be os- gan to realize, along in October an In November, that the talk about reduc
 ing the high cost of living was 1argel
 political gossip, that they came int
 the market and bought their norma
 requirements of soap.
 nvI All this time factory costs had, 6 the -