"They Don't Understand"

On gasoline the pressure tightened. In 16 Eastern States OPA cut the value of A cards 25% to save 20,000 bbl. of gas a day, in the rest of the U.S. ordered rationing to save rubber, beginning Dec. 1. And in many places the people fumed in rebellion.

A bloc of 75 Western Congressmen demanded a 90-day deferment of nationwide rationing, to them a wholly unnecessary act. Michigan's Representative Frank Hook got cheers for suggesting a clipping of Leon Henderson's authority, but the hefty OPA head stood his ground. Oil had to be sent to North Africa, said he, even if it meant epidemic pneumonia in the East. (North Atlantic ports are 1,400-odd miles nearer Casablanca than the oil ports of the Gulf of Mexico.)

Six New England Governors predicted a "completely ruinous fuel oil shortage" and begged for help. Louisiana's Governor Sam Jones reported "almost universal" opposition to rationing in his State. Of Detroit's 546,000 passenger car owners, nearly all of them war workers, 166,000 neglected to register, and OPA had a choice of extending the Dec. 1 date or risking lowered war production. Some Oklahomans refused to register for gas books. Texas was maddest of all.

Off to Mexico. Sam Rayburn, the House speaker, who comes from Texas, urged "further study" although Bernard Baruch's rubber report, giving a choice of discomfort or defeat, was only ten weeks old. Some Texans drove across the Mexican boundary, registered their cars there, paid about $180 in duties, got Mexican tires and gas. Californians feared rationing would mean a traffic holocaust, especially in spread-out Los Angeles; they freely used words like panic, riot to describe their fears of what rationing might bring.

OPA inspections during a drive against black-market operations uncovered the fact that 70% of 500 Eastern filling stations were bootlegging gasoline and otherwise violating rationing rules. In six days OPA made a list of several thousand drivers who used B and C cards for gas to get them to race tracks, football fields, other Eastern sporting events.

So Rubber Administrator William Jeffers picked up his ruler to rap the nation's knuckles: "There is a good deal of organized opposition in various quarters--the funds for which are being furnished by people who should know better--protesting the application of gas rationing. I don't question their motive. They just don't understand. The period from now until we can start to allocate substantial quantities of synthetic rubber for civilian use, which will be many months, must be bridged by saving rubber through gasoline rationing. The alternative is a possible collapse of transportation which would be followed by a collapse of our civilian economy."

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