"Pipe Dreams" Of Smokers Nearer Realisation Now

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 164, 13 July 1945, Page 4

"Pipe Dreams" Of Smokers Nearer Realisation Now

By CC.T. < "U/HEN all the dust and clatter sub- \ \' ' sides over the cigarette shortage j jj I wonder if anyone will remember j • the poor old pipe smoker? Since j | !ong before El A'amein —aye, and; \ Pearl Harbour —he has been literally \ t enjoving "pipe dreams." but cneyj: I dreams, of rich, nutty briars. He? I has been immersed in memories o: >. { ambrosiaS indulgence in the fragrant :• weed of orgies of smo.-ung. oz; i tobacco saturnalias with short pipes.. i-hick oioes. lone-stemmed p;pes., 5 -^sant"ofoes or just main p:pes: out; ! all Stamped with the name of '•■ arnou= British firm. 1 P. G. Wodehouse once wrote of a I 'ournalist with an ancient pair ot ? ; pince-nez spectacles frequently re-- ! baired with a length of ginger-oeer \ ■ bottle wire. Pine smokers since, long? • before the Fall oi France have oeen > • morovising lust like Psmtth the!; I tournalist. Thev have resurrected? frcm drawers, old boxes, wardrobes j and rubbish dumps English briars? which were first Sit in the hals-for-1 cot'en dzvs when Musso invaded; Abvssinia." when Suzanne Lengien; plaved on the centre court at | iVimbledon. or when former Prime Ministers were promising us wel were "just round the corner." Scraped and cleaned, fitted with an | ersatz "stem, buried in Mother Earth for a fortnight or dipped in brandy. the old warriors have entered the j fray for a snell of war service. But every nine has its day. and ycur in- j veterate" smoker has. perforce. switched tc the fast-diminishing sup-; ply of cigarettes or taken the plunge ; : —cut out smoking. I I know one man whose relatives in j England", posted him two p3irs of \ nice- nines during the war and then advised him that the market there; I was bare. Briar and Rubber Scarce Some people think the scarcity of j i smoking pipes here has something j I to do v.jth import restrictions. Noth-1 ! ing of the kind. Pipe importers in j I Auckland have licenses to import j ! enough pipes to satisfy a large seg- J ! ment of the demand —if they could i get them. Almost all the pipes manu-i factored'in England in the last few; vears have been allocated to the fighting forces. Some of the larger pipe factories have been making] aero parts and other accessories tc j the war effort. Briarwood, the sine qua non of | the best pipes, has been practically j j unobtainable because it is grown in j i France, parts of Italy and North i Africa, all of which were in the i hands of the Nazis. Vulcanite, the only reliable material for making stems, is a rubber compound, and everybody knows where all the rubber has gone. Some of the smaller English fac- \ tories have maintained a midget ! output 'judged by pre-war standards) !bv drawing on stocks and on dribs and drabs which have filtered into the country. As rubbtr is a lendlease material it could not be exported except for war purposes so > the vulcanite stems had to go by the j board.

In an effort to fill the gap wholesale houses in New Zealand have accepted trial shipments of American pipes, but the merchandise .is reported to have been of such inferior quality that they refuse to handle more such lines. Not only were these pipes "junk"—to quote one merchant—but they were sold at terrifically high prices; the landed cost was over 100 per cent. I was told that these pipes wee- made of compressed briar dust in some cases and would not withstand the heat. The stems were made of some plastic which could* be easily bitten through. Before the war such pipes mighrhave retailed for 1/6; one consignment here sold in the shops at 17/9.

American Offer Rejected There is a storj- going about that a trade organisation urged Mr. Nash to accept an American offer and import large quantities of these pipes and that Mr. 'Nash refused. Agents for overseas pipe manufacturers I contacted expressed approval of Mv. Nash's action because the market would have been flooded with dear merchandise «f poor quality and the public would have been the sufferers. The more reputable American pipe manufacturers, it was stated, were suffering th~ same handicaps as those in Britain and would not risk their good name with an article constructed from wood dust and other inferior materials. With the war in Europe well out of the way and normal trade channels re-opening what prospects have smokers of converting their pipedreams into reality? The outlook is fairly bright. Actually two shipments 'deceptively that sounds a lot) of English briars —the first of the war years—have been landed in the Dominion, but the quantities have been so small that relatively only a handful of smokers have benefited/ These pipes have not been of top quality and they have retailed at about 10/6 each, but according to the experts they are the best pipes imported since pre-war. British Market First Writing in May, a world-famous British manufacturer jonsidered the export ban would not be lifted till the home market was partly supplied. A small amount of briar root, he said, had been procured from Algeria, and the real difficulty was the lack of rubber for vulcanite mouthpieces. It seems that in recent months British importers of briar from the Continent have had to pay high prices for the raw material. Manv briar factories have been captured intact from the Germans. One on the Swiss border, where the briar is cut and rough-turned for export, has been producing throughout the war. Recent advice that local importers could transfer their licenses and import Australian pipes was not very enthusiastically received since their opinion of these pipes is not high. In Wellington, I understand, some success has been achieved in manufacturing pipes from totara. but to a real smoker there is nothing to approach genuine briar. . "Anybody can turn out an -article that looks like a pipe, but how many can make one that will smoke sweetly and endure?" That remark by an authority on pipes seems to sum up the situation. Within a vear. perhaps longer, New Zealand pipe-smokers will have their requirements fulfilled. In the meanwhile—patience.