Wartime rationing

Restriction of civilian access to food and critical materials during World War II due to the needs of the armed forces and the demands of war production

Rationing changed everyday life in America, limiting dietary choices and altering lifestyle. Official restrictions concerning the use of critical materials also affected industry’s ability to supply common household products to the civilian market.

During World War II, the conflicting needs of the American civilian population and its military forces and industries gave rise to various systems for apportioning goods between the two spheres. Rationing of food and critical materials began almost immediately after U.S. entry into the war in 1941, and it became one of the defining aspects of everyday life on the home front. Industries, which were as deeply affected by rationing as were individuals, sometimes discontinued the manufacture of consumer goods due to having insufficient access to needed materials. Shortages also led some businesses to embrace programs of self-rationing in order to spread their limited goods as far as possible in an equitable manner.

The task of regulating food distribution was a major concern for the federal government from the beginning, with the Food Rationing Program set into motion in the spring of 1942. The Department of Agriculture unofficially handled administrative oversight until December 5, 1942. On that date, an executive order by President Franklin D. Roosevelt reorganized the department, putting a director of food distribution in charge of all agencies dealing with food processing, storage, allocation, and distribution. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) also played an important role in the rationing of food, issuing stamp-type coupons to be used by consumers when buying officially rationed goods. Affected foods included meats and poultry, eggs, canned fish, fats and oils, coffee, and sugar.

The OPA distributed its ration stamps in a series of war ration books. Red-stamp rationing covered all meats, fats and oils, and most cheese. Blue-stamp rationing covered processed foods, including canned, bottled, and frozen fruits and vegetables, as well as dried beans. The books carried printed warnings that the violation of rationing regulations was a criminal offense. Sugar rationing took effect in May, 1943, with the distribution of sugar buying cards. The OPA also issued nonmetallic tokens for use in purchasing rationed items.

Food rationing had its positive counterpart in a public campaign to encourage the planting of gardens as a means to supplement the civilian diet with fresh vegetables. By 1945, an estimated twenty million households had established “victory gardens.”

Some items of clothing, such as shoes, came under direct rationing. A far greater number, however, fell under indirect rationing as a result of strict restrictions being imposed upon manufacturers and wholesalers by the the War Production Board (WPB) program for the conservation of strategic materials. Domestic production of nylon, for instance, was entirely redirected to military use in February, 1942, with nylon stockings subsequently disappearing from the civilian marketplace. Nylon had numerous wartime uses, notably in parachutes. Similarly, the increasingly popular tennis shoes became almost impossible to obtain because of restrictions on rubber. Leather was also largely reserved for military use. Although cotton was not immediately restricted, heavy requirements by the military, the changing of cotton lands to crop production, and poor cotton crops later in the war affected the supply of even this relatively common material.

Some items that required silk, certain finishes, or kapok for their manufacture became scarce. In general, shortages of materials that had their sources in the Far East had been anticipated and sometimes even already experienced before America became directly involved in the war. Paints and lacquers came under restriction, sometimes for reasons other than heavy military demand. Chemicals used to produce certain shades of red paint had a higher priority in making explosives. Aluminum paints had already fallen under government control before the war. Such lumber items as birch veneer, heavily used in airplane manufacture, were similarly removed from the civilian sphere.

Metals naturally fell under WPB restrictions and rationing, affecting the availability of household items ranging from cutlery to Christmas tinsel. Since many goods made of steel, iron, or zinc had doubled in retail price shortly before the war, a degree of price rationing occurred even before the metals fell subject to official restrictions. Once rationing began, some metals, such as tin, were progressively removed from noncritical use in cuts of 10 percent or more at a time. Others were quickly removed from nonessential use, as was the case with copper and copper-base alloys, which were sharply cut off from many manufacturing applications on May 6, 1942.

Consumer Goods

Direct rationing was imposed upon some fully manufactured consumer goods, with adult-size bicycles being one such class of item. The WPB froze their sale or transfer in April, 1942. After then releasing thousands to California aircraft plants, whose workers were experiencing intensifying transportation problems during that spring, the OPA began allotting adult bicycles to defense workers only.

The rationing of consumer goods was taken another step further on December 29, 1942, when the WPB announced Order L-219, which limited the quantities of consumer goods that retail merchants, wholesalers, and stock-carrying branches of manufacturers could keep on hand. Although a stock-reduction order, it was also designed to equalize consumer goods supplies around the country, and to help smaller outlets operate on a more even level with larger ones. The order affected some 25,000 merchants, 12,000 manufacturers, and 8,000 wholesale establishments, as well as, indirectly, all the nation’s consumers. The order excluded inventories of food and petroleum.

Rubber and Gasoline

Controls over rubber, which was heavily in demand by the military, were significantly tightened during the war, especially since natural rubber supplies depended on conditions in the Far East. By February, 1942, the United States had been cut off from 90 percent of its natural rubber supply.

Gasoline windshield stickers bearing letters of priority, with trucks being given a special “T” priority sticker, were issued. Most civilian automobiles carried “A” stickers, which limited the number of gallons to be used per week. Vehicles being used for higher-priority reasons were given “B” or “C” stickers. Between 1942 and 1945, a national speed limit of 35 miles per hour was imposed to conserve gasoline and rubber tires.

Restrictions on wood pulp and paper affected magazines and newspapers across the country. By 1945, the newspaper industry was dealing with an availability of 600,000 fewer tons of newsprint than its normal yearly supply. Restrictions on wood pulp affected other manufacturing areas, since wood was used in producing many fiber products, plastics, and rayon. Cellulose sheets, including cellophane, came under restrictions early in the war.

The rationing of materials to industry had unexpected effects upon civilian life, including the virtual disappearance of low-price items from stores. Besides the imposition of pricing regulations, which made it difficult for companies to produce low-price items at a profit, manufacturers tended to reserve their small stores of scarce materials for the making of higher-ticket items.

Relaxation of Restrictions

After Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945 (known as Victory over Japan Day, or V-J Day), the secretary of agriculture, in conjunction with the price administrator, terminated rationing of meats and fish. Rationing of fats and oils also ended, although the outlook for oil production continued to be low due to reduced hog production in the United States and Canada. Sugar remained under rationing because of continuing shortages, with production being estimated to be 13 percent below prewar levels.

Even while official rationing controls were being removed, quota limitations continued to be imposed on some manufacturers and producers, including those of shortening, margarine, salad oil, and other edible oil products, so that some of the effects of food rationing continued well beyond 1945. Price controls also continued, in part because rationing’s influence on price stability was being removed from the marketplace. In Canada, controls over both pricing and rationing were continued into 1946. On the whole, however, large-scale food rationing ended on June 30, 1945, when, at the request of the war food administrator, the program was returned to the oversight of the Department of Agriculture.

Self-rationing and Other Late Effects

The relaxing of rationing had immediate effects in the civilian sphere. Production of nylon for civilian goods, for instance, resumed immediately after the war, with hosiery-yarn production quickly expanding to a point above prewar levels. On the other hand, continuing short supplies of many materials made the immediate postwar months and sometimes years seem an extension of wartime restriction. While lumber requirements by the military drastically dropped after V-J Day, lumber would remain scarce or unavailable for years. Among materials still in short supply two years after the war ended were wood, paper, cardboard, steel, leather, and some textiles. Rubber also remained scarce. While controls over synthetic rubber and scrap rubber were lifted in 1945, supplies of natural rubber remained under restriction into the postwar years.

An example of widespread self-rationing occurred in the men’s apparel industry. After having dealt with increasing shortages of goods through the war, in 1945 retailers faced dramatically increasing demand because of the numbers of returning soldiers seeking to trade in their khaki for civilian clothing. Suits, shirts, and other items remained in short supply, however. To best serve the most customers, most retailers adopted a voluntary rationing plan that allowed the individual customer to buy only one of any particular type of item.

Impact

The effects of rationing varied across the country, in part because the contributions of victory gardens to local food supplies varied greatly from region to region, and in part because border populations had access to Canadian and Mexican markets, which had different and often more lax rationing programs. Since the OPA had eight regional offices, regional differences in administration and enforcement also came into play. All the same, being national in scope, the OPA and WPB programs affected the entire civilian populace. Rationing, shortages, and war ration books became a part of everyday life and culture. New recipes, new menus, and new grocery-store packaged-food favorites were some examples of this changed culture.

While some rationing programs made little or no difference to overseas military efforts, it remains a fact that the United States was able to feed, clothe, and equip its armed forces while also feeding and housing prisoners of war, and while providing food and materials to other countries in need of assistance. These successes must be regarded as having been made possible in part by the national rationing of food and materials on the home front.

Bibliography

Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Brings together social history, public policy analysis, and cultural studies in examining food rationing during the 1940’s.

Hayes, Joanne Lamb. Grandma’s Wartime Kitchen: World War II and the Way We Cooked. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. In addition to being a history covering government food rules, ration books, and wartime entertaining, this book collects recipes that employed common wartime commodities.

Hoopes, Roy. Americans Remember the Home Front. New York: Berkley Books, 2002. An oral history that focuses on the transformations of families, industries, and American society as a whole during World War II.

Lingeman, Richard R. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941-1945. New York: Nation Books, 2003. A widely ranging cultural history that depicts American civilian life during the war, giving coverage to work, business, and housing issues as well as domestic and social life.

Winkler, Allan M. Home Front U.S.A.: America During World War II. Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 2000. A serious and exhaustive study that details war contributions undertaken on the home front.