Living a Ration Book Life

[Sharpsburg]

True, but in WWII there WAS a huge black market problem all over the US. Rationing in America was done largely to maintain some control of distribution of material shortages. It never reached the level of desperation found in British wartime rationing (and postwar rationing, too). I pray we never experience the level of true desperation they experienced in wartime Europe. I don't know if we could hold together the way they did. WE'd be more Mad Max than There Will Always be an England.

 

[kiwilrdg]

Sheeplady, I think you misunderstood my post about administration. I put the will of the people before proper administration because the cooperation makes the savings happen while the administration is needed to ensure that the right things are being saved. An example is that when every dead animal, meat drippings, and fat was needed for rendering to make explosives many folks would not have realized how important it was without the ad campaigns and the tight rationing of butter and margerine. There was a breakdown in administration in many areas when the scrap drives resulted in more metal than could be transported.

The administration is not the same thing as enforcement.

 

[kiwilrdg]

When I practice extreme economy I usually end up eating better than when I do other times because I put more thought into what I cook. I always limit my purchases but I do not economize on gasoline as I make a lot of long trips for my volunteer work. My trips to do the volunteer work roughly follow a route that trains and a ferry covered during WWII so It could have been done then, but nsot now.

 

[LizzieMaine]

True, but in WWII there WAS a huge black market problem all over the US. Rationing in America was done largely to maintain some control of distribution of material shortages. It never reached the level of desperation found in British wartime rationing (and postwar rationing, too). I pray we never experience the level of true desperation they experienced in wartime Europe. I don't know if we could hold together the way they did. WE'd be more Mad Max than There Will Always be an England.

Buying black market in the US got you pretty much what you paid for -- a lot of the "beef" sold out of car trunks was actually somebody's old farm horse, and was diseased to boot. A major outbreak of trichinosis in Detroit in 1943 was traced to black market pork, and news stories like that tended to make shoppers wary of such products. And where that didn't work, there was always a healthy dose of shame:

 

[kiwilrdg]

I have heard stories about parties when a dairy cow that was not producing was missing the next day and there was an unexplained pail of fat at the rendering plant. Some black market was overlooked because it saved transportation and used items that would be wasted when the system could not handle small lots.

The trichanosis sounds like propaganda as it would have been killed if the meat were fully cooked. Much of the pork carried trichanosis back then and it is still a possibility today.

 

[LizzieMaine]

So to put this in terms of the original question -- who here is willing to stand up and say that they themselves would gladly take advantage of the black market rather than obey the rationing laws? Who would be willing to trust the wholesomeness and safety of meat purchased from some "it fell off a truck" entrepreneur? Who here would be willing to overlook the ethical concerns of black market dealings for the sake of personal expediency? Never mind what some nebulous 'they' did -- what would *you* do? Be honest. This could be even more revealing than the original question.

 

[sheeplady]

So to put this in terms of the original question -- who here is willing to stand up and say that they themselves would gladly take advantage of the black market rather than obey the rationing laws? Who would be willing to trust the wholesomeness and safety of meat purchased from some "it fell off a truck" entrepreneur? Who here would be willing to overlook the ethical concerns of black market dealings for the sake of personal expediency? Never mind what some nebulous 'they' did -- what would *you* do? Be honest. This could be even more revealing than the original question.

To be honest, if it was between starvation and the black market, I'd choose the black market. Particularly if my child was hungry. In the U.S., however, it was never that critical. Hunger motivates people to do things you can't imagine. I'm not talking lacking sugar here, I'm talking not getting enough to eat.

However, I'd rather rely on my forging wits than to trust old horse meat. I'd be a vegan before I'd eat or feed questionable meat, eggs, or dairy. I know enough about the current food supply to almost turn me vegan, and that food supply is regulated. I'm assuming a person could hunt, trap, forage, and fish freely.

What happened to farmers or individuals who kept hen houses? Were they regulated in terms of taking animals and products for their own?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Your own farm produce was yours to do with as you saw fit -- even in city neighborhoods there were a lot of people raising rabbits in the backyard, keeping the occasional chickens, and such as that wherever they could. Hunting was subject to the usual regulations on season and bag limits. The problem there was that ammunition for civilian use wasn't easy to get -- while it wasn't rationed, it was by no means plentiful. So if you're going to go that route you'd better be a good shot.

Another thing to keep in mind is that in most cities the black market was dominated by organized crime, which meant you were dealing with some pretty sleazy, dangerous characters for the sake of a couple of steaks.

 

[CLShaeffer]

Interesting side note to the discussion (which I've been enjoying but don't have too much to add to) is that it might offer additional insight into why the U.S. was so terrified of Communists after the War. In many ways the war-time rationing experience of most Americans was very similar to communism in certain aspects and I can see wanting to distance ourselves from that in a hurry. It helps me understand McCarthyism, or at least the backdrop for it since I wasn't around at the time.

Really, if the US faced a serious threat similar to WWII (recalling that our territory attacked and that the Nazi's fully intended to invade the States) I have a feeling our current degree of internal bickering would vanish. Nothing brings people together like a clear external threat. There would still be dissent, as there was during WWII, but the rank and file American would line up behind the war effort as we did before.

It would look different, though. I'm not sure we'll have another conventional war like that again. I'm not sure that rationing would be required to sustain the war effort. If it were, though, we'd find a way to get through it.

To answer the questions in the OP, I could get by with everything except 12 gallons. 35mph would be doable if everyone else was doing the same, of course, though I don't think that would be an issue as explained earlier. Here in rural (and expen$ive) Hawaii many of us pretty much live that way anyway - just a matter of stretching dollars in an expensive place where wages haven't (even remotely) kept pace with cost of living increases. Which, if oil costs went up due to a theoretical conflict that triggered rationing... we'd be in a world of hurt as the prices of everything shipped in would skyrocket. Wouldn't have to ration, at least. And gardens would become necessities.

 

[Otis]

So to put this in terms of the original question -- who here is willing to stand up and say that they themselves would gladly take advantage of the black market rather than obey the rationing laws?

Since the term "black market" is an arbitrary, perjorative term for "free market", and I'm a defender of the free market, I will.

Who would be willing to trust the wholesomeness and safety of meat purchased from some "it fell off a truck" entrepreneur?

This is a separate issue. Ethically speaking fraud is fraud whether the transaction is legal or not. The fact that the State won't prosecute fraud committed by so-called "black marketeers" is immoral, imo.

Who here would be willing to overlook the ethical concerns of black market dealings for the sake of personal expediency?

As I said, I believe the ethics of the market are on the free side and it's State that's acting immorally when it's interferes into it's operations except to prosecute cases of fraud and coercion.

Never mind what some nebulous 'they' did -- what would *you* do? Be honest. This could be even more revealing than the original question.

I've answered your questions truthfully. What do my answers reveal?

[/QUOTE]

Now to the subject of the poster - I don't believe that it would ever have been as depicted. Think about it - do soldiers eat more sugar away from home, or less? How about butter? Meat? Ahh, but tires/metal/gasoline you say. And my reply is a shortage only exists at a given price. Let prices freely fluctuate as they do in peacetime, and supply would meet demand. Long-term, shortages only exist because gov't policies (eg, price, wage controls, legislative restrictions) create the conditions of shortage.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've answered your questions truthfully. What do my answers reveal?

That you aren't somebody I'd care to know in person.

 

[CLShaeffer]

My understanding of butter and oil rationing was that those were used for munitions manufacture. Same with bacon fat recycling and the like.

The wartime rationing was as the poster depicted, in its oversimplified way, due to the enormous resource demands of a massive conventional war. Part of why our current military is the way it is (smaller, more air power, surgical, etc.) was a conscious decision to create a military that did not have the same voracious demand for the raw materials the citizens wanted. That's why we can have a decade of conflict as we've had and not feel it in our access to basic resources.

That was intentional, both to enable a stronger military and to reduce future need for things like the WWII rationing system.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The imagery in that particular poster depicted the threat of hoarding in the first panel -- the older woman, a cartoon stereotype of a dowager, is clearly using her economic power to clean out the stock and accumulate a storehouse of goods as protection against future shortages, at the expense of the ordinary housewife. There were very real instances of sugar hoarding, as one example, in the run up to the issuance of Ration Book 1 in the spring of 1942, and it's a scenario that would have been familiar to the typical housewife of the era.

When Ration Book 1 was issued, you were required to declare under oath the exact quantities of sugar in your home as a condition of receiving the book, and the corresponding number of ration stamps were cut out of the book by the ration board. The fact that your ration board was made up of people who likely knew you personally made it much harder to get away with hoarding -- sooner or later, the board would find out, and they'd pull your book if you thought you could get away with holding more than your fair share.

 

[kiwilrdg]

There was a post that farm produce was your own. That is partly true. The farms had regulations on certain products but farmers were allowed to keep more than the general public. My grandmother had more butter than the rations would have given her but she did not get margerine.

The cow parties that I mentioned earlier are an example of gray market activity. The cow that is butchered because it is not producing milk is too old to use for meat to sell on the regular market but farmers use meat like that quite often. People all have something extra so they bring a covered dish and a bit extra. The meat is taken home by the folks that attend the party. There is no ration system for dairy cow meat but everyone else had been eating it before the war as well. An urban form on a smaller scale would be trading a rabbit for some sugar.

Some black market was large scale organized crime but there is also gray market and small scale black market. In the case of trading for home produced foods it does not follow the letter of the law but in some cases it could provide better nutrition with
less impact on the war effort.

 

[kiwilrdg]

Information is an item which may need to be rationed if the US ever enters a full scale war again. An example is that the American GPS satellites may turn on their encryption so only allied forces can use GPS

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's all? I was hoping for some deeper insight. And I don't think the same about you at all. I think we'd have a ton to talk about. Of course I'd probably feel compelled to "straighten you out" and you being a bright, spirited lady you'd certainly have a go at me right back and then some. But would be fun, just like it is here because it's always interesting to discover someone else's 'first principles'. That's the basic premise of interviewing someone, isn't it?

I make no pretense at being Katherine Hepburn, and you sure as hell ain't Spencer Tracy. For one thing, he was far less condescending.

 

[kiwilrdg]

I have thought of another black market scenario. In the 1970s my family usually bought meat in bulk so it was cheaper. The meat was cheaper than cheese. We would trade steaks to a family for "government surplus" cheese. A family that could not afford hamburger got steak and we got some of their cheese. While technically it was illegal both families ended up with better food using the same resources. That is the type of case when I will say that I would use the black market.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not really a comparable siituation -- it wasn't a matter of national emergency in the 1970s. (And that cheese was so good I wouldn't have traded a speck of it for all the steaks in Omaha.)

 

[kiwilrdg]

If the cheese example is not to your liking as an example what about the cow parties I described. I was not born yet but my grandmother got several jars of jam and people who owed her meat when they needed to cull an old cow. It is still an example of a practice that does not follow the letter of the law but results in the intent of the law to be followed or exceeded.

I did have cousins that shipped meat to NYC on the black market in WWII that made a hefty profit and they were not well thought of for it.

 

[lolly_loisides]

I have several war time copies of the Australian Ladies Home Journal, they have a regular column where they list the names & addresses of people convicted of selling & receiving black market goods.
Personally, I'd never deal with the black market, but I imagine the national naming & shaming of those caught would be a huge deterrent to those considering it.