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Show U. S. Spends More Than a Billion Dollars for Candy CHICAGO. More than a billion dollars was spent in the United States last year on candy and that figure is for wholesale prices only. According to the 1948 Britannica Book of the Year, this was an all-time all-time high, a gain of almost 40 per cent over 1946 sales. The 1947 confectionery business amounted to nearly three billion pounds, at an average value at wholesale of 36 cents a pound. The 1946 wholesale average was slightly slight-ly over 28 cents a pound. Candy bars represented more than half of the industry's tonnage for the fourth successive year. Bulk goods represented about 20 per cent of the total, and package goods made up about 15 per cent, but penny goods were practically unavailable. un-available. Candy production and consumption consump-tion is centered in a region extending extend-ing from New England westward through Illinois and southward through Virginia. This section, made up of 18 states and the District Dis-trict of Columbia, produced 85 per cent of all the country's candy, and ate up 55 per cent of it. The rest of the country, the book reveals, produced only 15 per cent and con-I con-I sumed the remaining 45 per cent. |