Word: silk
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...Japan's 72,222,700 people are farmers, living on four islands whose area is smaller than California. When Japan began to industrialize, she soon found her specialty to be light industries and consumer goods. One-fourth of her population last year was either growing or manufacturing silk, 25% of her factory hands worked in cotton mills-but the raw cotton was imported from the U.S., Brazil and China. Her cheap manufactures undersold the world; the American Legion bought Japanese-made American flags; Japanese beer was sold in Berlin. Japan's future lay obviously in a world...
...years 1936-40 her standard of living fell by an estimated 40%. Industrial production, which hit its peak in 1939, has gone downhill ever since. At war with the U.S., Japan cannot increase this production. Only change likely in her dervish economy is the removal of some cotton and silk workers, their markets gone, back to the rice paddies, to try to feed the population...
Thus Allied promises of last summer to free both Syria and Lebanon were fulfilled. The Biblical land of silk, olives and tall cedars (long since decimated for lumber), a western terminus of the oil pipeline from Iraq, gained complete independence for the first time since its political separation from Syria in 1864. Lebanon's newly elected President Alfred Nacache, formerly Prime Minister under the French Mandate, set about choosing a Cabinet representing both Christians and Moslems...
Black markets flourished in East End streets. Barrow merchants sold silk stockings (probably stolen goods) with only a pretense of accepting rationing coupons. Crates of oranges, strictly restricted to children, passed through a market speculator to his favored customers. Housewives evaded milk rationing by registering with two companies, thereby getting twice their legal share...
...offered a pony coat for ?16 (half the store price) by a woman black-market agent who had about 20 fur coats in the back of her limousine. Other gangs thrived on door-to-door selling in apartment buildings. A laundry collector had a lively sideline in silk stockings...