Exit the Can Opener

To chalky, dingy schoolhouses last week trudged 35 million bewildered U.S. householders to stand in impatient lines for their second ration books, to get a lesson in wartime living and the ways of Washington.

Few citizens admitted having more than the permitted five packages of 250-odd point-rationed frozen, canned and dried foods. Many of the rest overlooked what every grocer knew: that the previous month's buying spree had loaded many a cupboard full up. Only one person in a thousand could remember how much coffee he had three months earlier or think of any reason at all why OPA now should hand out a maddening questionnaire with a naive entry: "Pounds of coffee owned on November 28, 1942, minus 1 pound for each person included in this Declaration whose age as stated on War Ration Book One is 14 years or older."

An Evanston, 111. dowager demanded 17 ration books for her 17 cats. A family of three Philadelphia Main Liners declared an excess of 4,500 cans--enough to cost them 108 eight-point coupons a year for 41 years.

A Milwaukee man had hoarded 158 Ib. of coffee, his quota for a decade. Boston 'racketeers stole householders' food by posing as OPA inspectors come to check excess supplies.

Yet most of the registration was comparatively painless: the real pain came this week when point rationing began.

> Grocers went to work in defense plants, joined the Army, or (if they stayed in business) gloomily predicted a 50% drop in trade.

> Quickly housewives discovered how hard are the facts of rationing: with his 48 points a month, each civilian could buy only three or four cans. Rationing also meant a leveling of U.S. diets: upper-income groups had once eaten the bulk of the nation's meat, low-income groups the bulk of canned goods. Now meat would soon be shared & shared alike--and even beans ("the poor man's food") now had high point values. Precious few foods (examples: olives, mincemeat, popcorn) remained unrationed. Cook books, vegetable gardens and a knowledge of dietetics became more highly to be prized than can openers or rubies.

But the food situation was still less critical in the grocery than on the farm--where labor and machine shortages presaged greater troubles to come.

Direst of all were the words of mild-mannered Paul S. Willis, head of the Grocery Manufacturers of America: "The food predicament in this country is worse than terrifying. The Army is taking care of military food needs. The Agriculture Department is taking care of Lend-Lease. But no one is taking care of the 125 million home folks."

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