GUM CHEWING

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3833, 12 February 1929, Page 2

GUM CHEWING

A WORLD-WIDE HABIT

AMERICAN EXPORT FIGURES

Gum-chewing, originally an exclusive American pastime disfavoured in foreign countries, bids fair to become a world-wide habit, according to trade statistics, which show that in 1927 exI'oru valued at 1,5iriu,770t10l were sent from the United .States to eighty difbnt countries, ranging in amounts iroir 171b for Paraguay to 10,503,4y<i1b for the United Kingdom (states the 'Literary Digest'). In 1926 the larger total of 2,194,207d0l was lvaehed, an export value nearly ten times greater than that of chewing gum shipments in 1914. It was the American doughboy over in France to whom the distribution of millions of packages of chewing gum meant " a relief from nervous tension, an aid to digestion, a substitute for tobacco, and in the absence of water tit to drink a mitigant of thirst," we read in the ' Review of the Pacific,' published by the American Trust Company of San Francisco, who spread the chewing gum idea to soldiers of foreign armies, and they returned home as populansers of the' habit that has so increased the trade. The growing demand has led to the establishment of small-home industries in a few foreign countries, notably Germany, Japan, and Egypt', but w'e are told that this competition hj very small, and in the leading markets of the world the American product has the largest sales. It is further reported that in Ceylon, India, and Straits Settlements chewing gum has begun to "replace the immemorial betel nut, and in China and Japan its use has become fairly general." For export American manufacturers I have had the gum wrappers printed in ; eighteen different languages. Pacific 1 Coa.st interest in the industry grows , out of the mintiields of the north- ' west, chiefly peppermint and spearmint; "about one-third of the Orei gon and Washington mint oil produc- ! {ion is said to be absorbed by the ! (principal gum manufacturers." ; it takes 131b of chicle, cooked down from the basic milky juice of the i chicle tree, to make about 15,000 j pieces of chewing gum. The crude chicle in 251b blocks, dutiable at 10 cents a pound, is' shipped into the United States, whore the product is cleaned, refined, and manufactured into fiie chewing gum of commerce. Seventy-five per cent, of the total importations comes from Mexico. In 192'". the imports from all countries amounted to 12,331,0001b, of whicii Mexico contributed 9,222,0001b. In i the same year the imports from Honduras were 1,526,7701b; from British Honduras 1,304,9721b, and from Venezuela ] 10,7741b. Apprehension of continuing supply under haphazard and wasteful gathering methods has led one American company, it is reported, to acquire 355,000 acres of forest land in Mexican Yucatan and introduce plantation methods. The original industry is said to have got its start on a capital of 55d01. Crowing exports, however, are small compared to growing home s&ies, for it is in the United States, we arc informed, that chewing gum has tfie greatest hold on the public and the largest consuming market is found. This country is the world's largest manufacturer of chewing gum and a pioneer in the industry. The census of manufacturers for 1925, which gives the latest available figures on the growth of the industry, places the total value of gum manufactured in that year at 47,833,150d01, and the number of establishments engaged in its production as forty-one. The number of wage earners employed in the industry was given as 9 ,i30, and their wages totalled 2,532,509d01. From the same source of information it i.-. learned that domestic consumption is or. the increase. In 1014 the ler capita consumption of chewing gum was thirty-nine sticks, and eleven years later" in 1925, the consumption had grown to eighty-eight sticks per capita, an increase "of 125 per cent. While the production of chewing gum in 1925 was 68,913,4071b, its over-the-counter or retail value was 91,861,572d01, which means that more than 7,500,000d0l was spent each month in the United States alone for gum.