Ration Banking

Each month U.S. consumers put 130 million sugar-ration stamps into circulation and on the Eastern Seaboard 150 million gasoline coupons. After Nov. 22, the entire nation will use gas coupons, and when OPA's Christmas present of an all-purpose ration book reaches all the nation's people so many extra millions of coupons will be spent each month that local ration boards will no longer be able to cope with the ever-mounting piles of papers. So OPA last week started testing, in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area of New York, a plan for ration-coupon banking.

Four thousand gasoline and sugar wholesalers and sugar retailers in the guinea-pig area opened ration-coupon accounts with their banks, began depositing, for pound and gallon credit, the coupons they had received from customers. Tellers counted them as carefully as dollars and cents, made up special ration-banking statements for the depositors and OPA. Bank guards deposited the coupons in the bank's vaults, from which they will be removed and burned by officials at two-week intervals to prevent a huge paper accumulation. To replenish their stocks of merchandise, depositors began to write the first of many U.S. ration checks.

While the nation's bankers and OPA bigwigs watched the experiment with interest, some of the local Albany-Schenectady-Troy citizens who read of the new banking shenanigans in their papers were confused. A matron walked into one bank to buy a pound of sugar.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.