THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506020210
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANK ROBERTS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
The booklet cover shows a lovely, jeans-clad bumpkin hoeing her little plot of land.
``Food will win the war'' it notes. ``Buy carefully.''
We had no choice. It was World War II. Food, fuel and some clothes were rationed.
The publication was a ration book, filled with stamps you had to have to buy what you could.
A cover ad helped defray its publication cost. Locally, it featured H.I. Jaffe Clothing Stores in Portsmouth, Newport News and at 167-69 E. Washington St., Suffolk.
On the back was a calendar for 1943-44. Those were the war years - the years of rationing - that began shortly after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
There had been some rationing during World War I, but the government controlled only wheat, flour and sugar.
World War II was a different story. The Office of Price Administration was formed and it worked well, preventing price spiraling, rising costs of living, profiteering and inflation.
The government officials were, of course, doing their watchdog duties, but for the most part volunteers joined community ration boards to make sure their friends stayed honest.
They were also empowered to make decisions about who should be entitled to more stamps than the average Joe - based on need, which was often based on their jobs (more gas, for instance) or the need for extra food per family.
If you could prove a special need for gas, tires or the car using them, you were issued certificates proving you were a privileged character.
The stamp system worked like this: You got your booklets filled with red and blue stamps, using the red for such things as meat, butter, fats, cheese, canned milk and canned fish and the blue for items like canned fruits or vegetables.
You went to the store, shopped carefully, the store clerk tore the necessary numbers of stamps from your book. Those stamps were good for a certain time period - outta stamps, outta luck.
The stamps worked like dominoes, passing from consumer to retailer to wholesaler to producer to ration authorities. Your name was oft bandied about.
If you are in the over-55 set and can recall rationing, you might remember that the first items to be rationed - it seems obvious - were tires. Next came sugar, then gasoline.
Buses and car pools suddenly became popular. So did walking. Incidentally, shoes were the only articles of clothes on the ration list.
The lists were put away, rationing became history when the Japanese surrendered, in August, 1945.
It had not hurt us a bit - most post-war Americans were in decent shape, physically.
And, we had reason to be proud. The black market was merely a minor annoyance. The federal government had handled only 280,000 complaints about violators.
Virginia Doughty, a Mount Zion Elementary School second-grade teacher, loaned me some copies of War Ration Books One and Two, most of them signed by issuing officer, Rosa Everett.
The instructions in the booklet noted, among other things - ``if you don't need it, don't buy it.''
As for the gal with the hoe - that was to let us know we could go beyond rationing by caring for a victory garden, growing our own.
Our family had a plot of land about the size of a beach towel. We worked hard, hard, hard and managed, over the years, to grow a tomato or two.
We felt good. We felt patriotic. ILLUSTRATION: The Office of Price Administration issued ration books during
WWII.
by CNB