Print Your Own Ration Stamps!

[Fletch]

Story, great link there. Wonder if the early V-8 Fords could have run as easily on kero. Of course there were many, many more A's about.

To your point, sure, there was illicit trading. But somehow I don't feel trading one kind of ration stamps fror another was quite so illicit. And many patriotic folks, I'm sure, didn't trade at all.

My step-gm was a war worker (Remington Arms, Bpt, CT) and step-ggm converted their large home to a boardinghouse. Due to various factors (including a large measure of kindly consideration from neighborhood tradesmen!), the family lacked for literally nothing.

On the other side, things were a little easier in small town/rural IA, where there had always been barter of one kind or another. Gf, a legendary tightwad in the best of times, began a little chicken yard in back of the house. Dad shot squirrels as soon as he could be trusted with a .22, and gm stewed 'em. Gf & gm rode bikes around town (gf still had that big old black bike in his 80s) and only took the car ('41 Chevy 2dr) on long mandatory trips. About all dad remembers in the way of privations is that there was not enough bubblegum, and what there was was of subpar quality.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Interesting stories. It's pretty well established -- and, indeed, was known at the time, that the OPA system was extremely vulnerable to corruption, especially at the local level. The smaller the local board, the easier it was for coupons to mysteriously go missing out the back door. Counterfieting was actually a very minor problem because it was so easy to get hold of the real thing thru black market channels.

 

[FedoraGent]

It was the Vintage Night with ADSC and Fedora Loungers...and the gent is a friend of mine. The A ration sticker is the only one he had...and it came with the car. I called him to ask him whether he knew about the B's and he told me that sure he did...but it was what was in the glove box when he got the car...

FG.

At the ADS of California do at the Presidio last month (pictured somewhere on FL), some gent in chauffeur's livery with a Big Black Cadillac had a class A gas ration sticker.

I thought, "Heck, even my salesman and newspaperman gf's had B rations, which meant they traveled for their work. This gent probably has A 'cause the only gas ration he knows about is A. Chauffeur-having Cadillac-owning 40s folks were big shots, and big shots had to have better connections than that."

Well, I figured I better google for more info, and sure enough, there was a "VIP" class X card - for Members of Congress and presumably high industrialist mucky-mucks as well - but it was gotten rid of due to public outcry.

What a country. Here the rest of the world is under martial law or worse, and we could do that.

The biggest gas ration after X was abolished was T (trucking), then C (essential workers = doctors, police, firefighters, and letter carriers). Presumably Congress had to get along on the 8 gallons a week entitled the B card, along with war workers, pharmacists and other not-quite-essentials.

Class A was "nonessential," and you can bet a chauffeured Cadillac qualified. 3 measly gallons a week of go-juice. And rationing was per household - not per vehicle. The big guzzlers probably never left the garage.

As I said - what a country.

 

[Twitch]

Thanks Lizzie- there's some very interesting stuff in there.

 

[dhermann1]

Another irony, of course, is that while Americans thought they were really tightening their belts, to the embattled Brits, we looked like the lap of luxury. People really were hungry in Britain. We had the "Bundles for Britain" program here to help them out. And when Italy fell, the unfortunate folks there were drastically worse off than the Brits who were sending food to them. And of course there were other regions much worse off than that.