TUNG-OLD OIL FOR NEW NEEDS 



fore the war, when it was a comparatively rare chem- 

 ical, the drying oil prepared from it sold for fifteen 

 cents a pound. During the war pentaerythritol was 

 made in vast quantities and its cost greatly lowered, so 

 that the prospective competitor of tung oil prepared 

 from it can be expected to be cheaper in price and 

 available in any desired quantity; ready, in other words, 

 to serve as a very effective brake upon runaway prices 

 for any of the natural oils used in modern coatings. 



The wartime price of thirty-nine cents for tung oil 

 is away out of line with peacetime values. It was based 

 on the $100-a-ton price for nuts fixed by the Commodity 

 Credit Corporation. Jasspon says, "Growers can make 

 satisfactory profits out of nuts at $50 a ton, and $100 

 is an atrocity that promises outrageous inflation of land 

 values. Good Florida farm land that I bought three 

 years ago for $25 an acre cannot be touched today for 

 $50. The discovery of petroleum in the neighborhood 

 has added to the inflationary values, but that high sub- 

 sidy price on tung nuts plays directly into the hands 

 of the land speculators." 



Once upon a time an orange grove was touted as the 

 easy way to security. The real estate columns among 

 the want ads in Northern Sunday newspapers were 

 bejeweled with literary gems describing the salubrious 

 climate, the easy labors, the rich profits that awaited 

 the lucky owner of the famous El Succero Orange 

 Groves of twenty acres of two-year-old trees offered 



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