THINGS SCARCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1519, 7 March 1916, Page 4

THINGS SCARCE.

BOOM IN BOTTLES.

Many articles of everyday use can only be obtained nowadays with some difficulty (says a London paper), there being, for instance, a boom in old bottles, and a very persistent demand for pianos, new or second-hand. A correspondent sends an interesting list of common things that the war has made uncommonAmong them he mentions - Tins. String. Bottles. Glass retorts, etc. Many drugs. Pianos. Second-hand clothes. Buttons. Patent Fasteners. Jars, jam pots, etc.

Of these the majority before the war came either from enemy countries or from countries laid waste by the war.

A TWINE FAMINE.

“There is no string to be got in London,” a tradesman is reported to have said in the course of some county ' court proceedings last month.

That, of course, is au exaggeration, as everybody knows who has bad occasion to do any shopping and has received a parcel lavishly entwined much the same as usual. But there is undoubtedly a shortage of the article which is so abundantly used by shopkeepers, and it is due to obvious causes. “Twine which is used for securing parcels is all manufactured here,” the head of a firm engaged in this business told a Daily Chronicle representative recently, “but the raw material comes from abroad, mostly from Russia and Italy. Russian hemp is used for making the coarser sorts of string, and Italian hemp the finer kinds, Italy stopped the export of all raw material two months before she entered the war, and though Russia has plenty of hemp to dispose of, the difficulty is to get it out of the countrv. Hemp has consequently risen about 100 per cent, in price, and this, coupled with dear labour, makes the cost of string more than double what it was.”

Fortunately, economy in string is not difficult of attainment. An easy solution is for shoppers to carry home their purchases in handbags —thus solving the double problem of parcels delivery and the twine famine.