656 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS The eosins for stains and pigments were dull and drab. Now there is a whole range of stains with new type lakes, which are bright and transparent with colour. The United States Food and Drug Administration forced such tight controls on medically acceptable colours for use on skin and hair, that the manufacturers of them have become aware of their responsibility to produce pure, clean, bright colours on a repetitive basis. These were the days of wood alcohol, and Q spirit was yet to come. Base formulations were not very scientific today they are. Most materials were of natural origin. Now many are especially synthesized for specific effect, compatibility and prolonged shelf life. You fellows can now produce more or less any type of emulsion and it will only break under circumstances of your choosing. In the $0's emulsions were liable to break at very embarras- sing moments - for example, the undesirable elements of wool fat have been eliminated. But let me now get on to the second decade, the 40's, the war period. These were the years of frustration and awakening, of growth despite control, of improvisation, of hard-fought-for but eventually accepted recognition of the industry by the government, of black marketeering because of ridiculous Purchase Tax and LIMOSO legislation, and of final governmental recognition in everything but taxation, that cosmetic products were a necessary part of the life of our female population, and not a luxury that should be discouraged. It was in this period that manufacturers really helped one another and barriers were broken down. Mind you, they had little option - the Concen- tration of Industry Regulations saw to that. Industrial and military uses were found for our products. Barrier creams against dermatitis in govern- ment filling factories during the critical period of the war, reduced enforced absenteeism enormously when the problem was tackled by the industry's experts instead of by civil servants. Facial camouflage was developed for the Chindits. The high conversion factor of your products was eventually seen by the authorities, and your industry was then able to expand at home in direct relationship to the way in which it expanded abroad, but by its own efforts. This was a period when the industry's standing with the government was at its highest point. True, this was brought about through adversity, but there was a great togetherness. In subsequent years, this deteriorated to a point where the relations between top government and the industry have, it seems to me, reverted to the complacently bad, old pre-war days. I hasten to add here that I think that today maybe we deal generally

AN INDUSTRIALIST LOOKS AT THE COSMETIC INDUSTRY 657 with a higher grade civil servant, but we seem to have lost the right that we so successfully fought for, to direct ministerial contact, which enables you to deal with what a government is thinking when it is thinking it, instead of having the frustration of trying to alter it after it has done it. One good thing has happened: your Society has been formed and you work in close co-operation with the trade association. It is not like the days in the 40's when the industry was fighting like hell to maintain individuality of product and, at the same time, through the back door, a group of chemists were recommending to the government of the day that there should be pool cosmetics controlled by a scientific board made up of their members. It was a pity in a way that the trade and the Board of Trade discontinued the use of the Board of Trade Advisory Council. Maybe one day it will come back. It would not be amiss here to mention some of your troubles during this period. You were not only plagued by shortages of good raw materiMs, but there was also a tremendous decline in the standards of packaging materials. We had the scarcity of good perfumery materiMs, the phony Otto of Rose, the grey talc, the shortage of oils and waxes, the cardboard or wooden or Cellophane lipstick containers and the bottles - yes, I must mention them. The standard of glass containers was already low before the war, but it dropped even further when amber glass replaced opal. You must remember the jam-jar quality glass, greenish or strawish in colour, full of air bubbles, with uneven thickness distribution, the alkalinity of which produced precipitation in most clear lotions. I would think it is true to say that a non-returnable mineral water bottle today is far superior in every respect to the bottles being used for expensive lotions in the $0's and 40's. Let me here again pay credit, mainly to America, for the insistence on quality control, which sometimes seemed to suppliers unnecessarily harsh, but which was forced upon them. On reflection, we had to agree that such quality control was overdue and vitally necessary, and resulted in improved standards of packaging materials. No longer do people have to take what the suppliers in the 30's called "a good commercial match". But still the industry progressed and it was now on the threshold of what I call the Inflationary, or should I say Complacency Period, the 50's. There was, as you can see, a terrific stride forward in this decade. Full employment, expanding markets, higher standards of living, all meant increasing volume for the trade. Technological advances opened new aven- ueq• the television medium gave greater impact to advertising, and the male