Haymaker

War and the Senate Finance Committee last week swung a haymaker on the chin of the U.S. sugar lobby and smashed its House-passed bill (TIME, Dec. 8) to a pulp. The Senate's new bill extended the present sugar act for three years, with no juggling of quotas at all. It increased the subsidy for domestic producers (annual cost to the U.S.: $10,000,000) but contained no rebuff to the offshore producers.

The attack on Hawaii and the Philippines (normal suppliers of almost one-third of the U.S.'s sugar) somewhat subdued even sugar-shameless Joe O'Mahoney. Nonetheless, he took his shellacking in character. Three days after Pearl Harbor he was still telling the Senate Committee that some freeze-out of Cuba was essential to domestic sugar growers and that it would not affect U.S. sugar supplies till after the war anyway, because the lid is off for the duration.

The Committee was not impressed, chose not to tell U.S. ally Cuba that the Good Neighbor policy was solely a U.S. war measure. It was just as well: sugar, which is also crucially needed to make alcohol for explosives, is now the one U.S. food staple in which a shortage and rationing may possibly develop by next year.

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