However, this store-controlled rationing actually bears little resemblance to what really occurred during WWII and the aftermath.
In the US, government rationing of consumer goods began in 1942, with rubber, gasoline, and sugar as the first items to be controlled, but many other food items were soon added to the list. Ration books held coupons that were removed to purchase specific items and had to be used within the designated time period. Families with fruit trees were allowed to purchase a little extra sugar during canning season.
Other foods covered by the ration books:
- Meat
- Lard, shortening, and other cooking oils
- Coffee
- Cheese
- Canned fruits and vegetables
- Dehydrated fruits and vegetables
- Other processed foods
- Butter and margarine
- Canned milk
- Jams and jellies
Following the war, all rationing ended, except for sugar, which continued to be controlled until 1947. However, in Europe the situation was strikingly different. As hostilities ceased, bread was also rationed and the sweet ration was cut in half. Rationing in some form continued until 1954, 10 years after the war had ended.
To conserve food and be able to send aid to starving Europeans, Americans were also asked to:
- Use no meat on Tuesdays
- Use no eggs or poultry on Thursdays
- Save a slice of bread every day
- Clean your plate at every meal
Other items subject to rationing were fuel oil, firewood, and coal, shoes, appliances, clothing, and typewriters. Penicillin was so scarce that a triage board at each hospital determined which patients would receive it.
I found several aspects of the rationing system of
interest. Each ration book was assigned
to a specific person. If ration books
were found, they were to be turned in to the ration board. This board was composed of volunteers in the
community. People were encouraged and
warned to budget their ration coupons and points well. There was to be no pleading that they’d spent
all their coupons and had run out of canned food for the baby. Because only a few people in the community
were allowed to have cars, grocery shopping was done at small neighborhood
markets and groceries were taken home in wagons. Everybody knew everybody, and there was no
cheating the system. And very few people could get life-saving penicillin.
That’s what happened in history.
How would history repeat? How would all of this work out today? What if the government had gotten involved in rationing food and other items in 2020-2021? We can only make guesses. But I have a pretty good imagination at times, and imagining what politicians will do to ration food in the future gives me a pit in my stomach. All the shortages I’m reading about in appliances, lumber, PVC pipe, fencing materials, printer ink, labor (why work when the government will pay you up to $4K a month not to?), in addition to skyrocketing prices for the same, are creeping me out. I just can’t help but feel that we have serious changes in our way of life in the not too distant future. What happens when we go full Venezuela and have doctors but no supplies? No antibiotics? Not looking forward to it.
Links to related posts:
Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures (Venezuela)
References:
https://www.history.udel.edu/about/history-media-center/wwii-ration-books
4.17.21
I can tell you right now with the way people are now things would not be like they were back in the 40's. People would cheat and steal and do everything they could to beat the system.
ReplyDeleteIt would be a rare neighborhood that worked together in order to make it through the rationing.
What did the people who were rural do about getting to the store, I wonder? Carpool maybe?
One proposed rationing system, based on currently available technology: every household is assigned an identifier (card, log-in, membership number) which serves as their identification for their ration card. Likely one would have "assigned shopping days" to lower the overall personnel flow. Every week, a member of the household would go to one of a set of assigned stores in their local area and make their purchases, which would be electronically checked and verified at time of purchase for correctness. Individuals shopping outside of their "range" would be immediately flagged. Individuals not coming in during their assigned day would be flagged. At some point, I supposed, failure to go to the right store or at the right time could be punished with loss of shopping variety (e.g., only staples for you this week).
ReplyDeleteI would think this is easily achievable now with the current technology in place.
I hadn't much considered their ability to monitor whether we go shopping. I keep thinking more along the lines of total collapse, but I should plan for slow collapse as well.
DeleteJennifer as an history buff seldom is a collapse "sudden".
DeleteMajor economic bubbles can suddenly collapse like Stock Market crash of 1929 but the system staggered onward until the Dustbowl occurred. Times got really bad and in Europe and especially Germany nationalistic politics arose.
Most historians point out Rome fell to the Barbarians but the Barbarians they speak of were Roman Trained Troops that Rome cheated of their wages with worthless denarii and better Historians noted that along with Predatory Elite robbing the states treasures, that a major 2-4 year drought made the price of foods go out of the reach of citizens, thus the Bread and circuses. To keep internal revolt down.
You and I are LIVING in a "Slow Collapse". Small failures, more acceptance of small failures, loss of the value of money, and so on.
Systems and people continue to make it work with less success and more systemic failures until the great machine shudders to a stop.
In a way "Normalcy Bias" is a group survival mechanism that keeps common folks from fleeing from "Obvious" systemic troubles.
The Rothchilds can trace their ancestry as a Roman Upper Class that saw the troubles coming and left before Roman money was worthless and set up shop in the most prosperous "Barbarian" nation near the now France.
Some of my family line being German Bankers saw the writing on the wall and unstable political situation and took the loss of selling, paying the bribes of wedding bands to be let go and moving to England and then America.
A German Banker took a job as a NYC dockworker (Had to Buy in with a dab of gold coin) to provide a couple of rooms and food for his family. From there they rose into solid middle-class Americans, served in the military and Police.
We spoke a bit about the Art of Looking Ahead. It's not a common trait as it requires allowing yourself to think beyond the it's not THAT BAD".
SOME of my family line refused the Banker turned Dockworkers assistance to come to America, saying "We are Good Germans" and things are getting better, and so on.
Rationing assumes a functional system and rational government, sudden collapse would make that all moot.
Interesting after this morning's reply above to find this:
Deletehttps://100percentfedup.com/morgan-stanley-downgrades-u-s-dollar-rating-bad-times-ahead/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=morgan-stanley-downgrades-u-s-dollar-rating-bad-times-ahead
When looking ahead, one must evaluate the sources' reliability and cross check when available.
This looks like a much closer waterfall event than I expected.
Got two years garden seeds Jennifer? After I shovel the rest of the driveway it's seed inventory time.
I so wish I had the retention ability of my 20-year-old brain. Sigh. Anyway, maybe it was Hemingway or one of his characters talking about financial collapse. How did you go bankrupt? Slowly, and then suddenly.
DeleteI'd agree we are in a slow collapse right now. I believe that sudden collapse is near, maybe a year away, hopefully not too much sooner than that. Reading in the book of Revelation this morning, however, reminds me that there will also be a very sudden collapse and puts it in the forefront of my thinking.
Yes, there's a good supply of veggie seeds here. I started onion seeds last week. Fortunately or not, I am a garden-seed-buying addict always looking for a fix.
DO you have any new seeds or crops you're trying this year? I think the one I'm most excited about is Naked Bear Pumpkins, grown as much for their seeds (and I'm going to try extracting oil from them as well) as for their flesh. I'm also going to grow more Damaun corn, a super-sweet open-pollinated corn. The small patch I had of it grew fairly well last year, and so I want to grow more of it this year. Need more land. Sigh.
I meant to add with the Naked Bear pumpkins, those seeds are hulless, so much more enjoyable to process and eat. It's just what I've read, no experience yet.
DeleteJennifer, I am interested in your oil seed project. I've seen the presses and filters used. Just how much pumpkin oil do you expect and what do you use it for? How much per pumpkin as I assume you'd have ability to eat the rest of the pumpkin.
DeleteI've found that my critters might LOVE Pumpkin (I collect Halloween ones) but even the pigs slow down and or stop eating them after a while.
I'm pretty sure you know this, but some readers might not know:
SNIP: Note: If you plan on saving seeds from your pumpkins or squash, remember that the different species of the genus will cross. So if you plant a C. pepo pumpkin and a C. pepo squash (often zucchini or summer squash), they will cross. Or if you plant a Hopi Pale Grey squash and your next door neighbor grows Hubbards, they’ll also cross. But you can plant one of each species, C. pepo, C. maxima, C. mixta and C. moschata and still save pure seeds as they will not cross. To raise pure pumpkin or squash seeds, they will often need to be planted a mile from the nearest like species unless you have a thick woods, tall hills or some other physical barrier between the crops.
My favorite storage squash is Hopi Pale Grey. Grows great, voles so far (knock on wood) have not found them tasty, they ignore free ranging chickens once the flowers are now medium sized fruit and they store really well.
I'm working on my wheat crops; I call it my pancake patch. I can do hulless oats, but the birds enjoy them too much and a small bird protected plot gives me all the oatmeal I desire.
New seeds? Limited, I do heirlooms only. Gurneys is pretty much a waste of paper for me. Too many seed catalogues sound like Heirloom but when you read the seed package it's a hybrid.
Your sweet corn sounds interesting, a de-hybrid sweet corn?
I hobby farm now but am looking always at things that scale up quickly.
Honestly, I do not anticipate getting much oil from the pumpkin seeds. But who knows? I could be pleasantly surprised. My goal is to process as much of the pumpkin flesh as possible, but I'm sure I'll get tired of it. Fortunately, it won't have to be done al at once. Yes, I imagine the chickens tire of it as well. During the height of tomato canning season one summer in Missouri, the chickens had been receiving the tomato peels and seeds for about a week or so--quite happily, I might add. And then Becky and I took another load of waste out together. We were both shocked at the language that issued out. It would have made a sailor blush.
DeleteI will be bagging the squash blossoms to prevent cross pollination. That's the easiest solution for me.
I got the Damaun corn seed from Territorial Seed. I grew some OP heirloom corn in Missouri one year. We were not impressed with it. As I recall, Damaun was advertised as the first open-pollinated super-sweet corn. I'm really looking forward to expanding the gardens this year.
The shortages and rationing that will occur after the coming economic upheaval and collapse will make WW2 look !ike a tea party. Americans then were highly self sufficient, now days...very few even understand the term.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree.
ReplyDelete