From the archives of The Memory Hole

Anti-war Propaganda: War on the Home Front

Author, James J. Martin, comments on the actualities and intentions of wartime rationing in American during the Second World War. These comments originally appeared in the 1986 issue of The Memory Hole, No. 13; the so-called “Last Issue” published by The Libertarian Revisionist History Amateur Press Association which was apparently a collaboration of Victor Koman and Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3).

A Letter from James J. Martin

May 22,1986
Dear Vic:

I want to thank you for sending me the latest 2 numbers of THE MEMORY HOLE, received today, and to apologize for my bad manners in not acknowledging the previous numbers, on one of which, #9, I intended to comment re the front cover, that memorable OPA notice of November, 1942 on wartime rubber rationing.
I graduated from the University of New Hampshire in May 1942 and enrolled for my first stint of graduate work in history at the University of Arizona in June. The USA had been at war for 6 months by then, and a lot of things were happening to the domestic economy already, though we had not seen anything in the looney department such as was to transpire in the next 4 years (actually some aspects of wartime rationing and price controls went on into 1947 and in Britain into the end of the 50's.)
While in Tucson I became aware of a casual practice in 1942 which went on for some time. Even though controls and rationing of rubber, especially tires, went into effect almost with pearl Harbor. I never knew anyone who went without tires other than occasional high school boy drivers, and that did not last long. In Tucson one simply put on a set of worn tires, drove into Mexico anywhere, bought a new set and left the old ones behind, and came home. This routine was repeated the next weekend, and on and on and on. Everyone seemed to have new tires, and plenty of gas after the rationing of that began; every box canyon in Arizona had a gas tank, the old hydraulic type that did not need electricity to operate. One pumped by muscle the gas into a glass reservoir at the top of the tank then released it into one's auto gas tank and it simply flowed down by gravity. Even after rationing, which limited the ordinary citizen to a coupon allowing only 8 gallons a month, gas could be found anywhere in any amounts. In 1943 I taught high school in New Hampshire and the same conditions obtained there. One could get one's needs in Canada which never rationed gasoline or tires. The corruption of the gas business was legendary, and many millionaires came out of evasions of this; between counterfeiting of the stamps or the stealing of them in vast caches from post offices, criminals did very well (if you read the Valachi Papers, you will recall Joe Valachi made his bundle in the gas rationing evasions and he protested that he was just a little guy. As the famed organized crime buster Ralph Salerno said, "World War Two come as a godsend to the Mafia.") The government admitted that 5% of all gas used came out of black market transactions but the more realistic observers thought it was a least thrice that.
If you read that OPA bulletin you printed you may notice that it said nothing about Japanese sequestering the rubber of Indo-China (Vietnam) and Thailand, so their control was of an immense amount, far more than they could possibly use. In the final 2 years of the war there were repeated rumors that this Asian rubber was reaching the USA in quantities anyway, via neutral traders such as Argentina, for example. Blatherskites such as the radio+newspaper commentator Drew Pearson repeatedly tried to stir up an 'investigation' of this but I do not remember anything came of it, and I spent every day of WW2 on the home front, after failing Army physicals, due to a weakened condition resulting from a near-fatal illness in 1939.
Speaking of that rubber rationing, the citizenry were cajoled into giving over to the government all their spare tires except one, many going along with this gambit. These were almost never used, but accumulated in mountainous piles all over the country and spent the war rotting in these junk yards instead of helping to "win the war." All kinds of other rubber articles were also accumulated by the government rubber-collectors. A man named William Jeffers became Rubber Director in September, 1944, and he was largely in charge of the drive to start production of synthetic rubber, a woefully mismanaged program, which in some ways rivaled the Hog Island shipyard affair of 1917-19; most of the production did not show until after the war ended. In 1946 US synthetic rubber plants were scheduled to produce more rubber than the entire world production combined in 1940. The main result was a postwar collapse of natural rubber prices and a serious endangerment of the whole business as investors a rubber production panicked.
The government even got the citizenry to turn over all kinds of other items made out of rubber such as auto floor mats. But many speculators bought up this stuff and the people then bought the old rubber made into new products such as they had given up for free, but much higher in price and lower in quality. This was common throughout the rationing/price control racket involving the recycling program. Waste paper was accumulated into staggering piles everywhere but eventually was mainly burned.
This 'report' could go on for pages, but I thought you might be amused by an account from someone who watched it all while it happened. All a all, the whole sorry mess had little economic reason or achievement behind it, and seemed to me and many others as ploys to make the civilian aware there was a war going on and enlist him physically since the fighting fronts were so many thousands of miles away. From my observations however it was only the most pious, timid and reverent citizens who went without anything despite this rats' maze of controls, stamps, 'points,' and other hullabaloo: it was a paradise of sorts for many who ran these programs; don't forget that Milton Friedman and Richard M. Nixon had employment at some time with the OPA, among others. The tire rationing nightmare was originally attributed to John Kenneth Galbraith by contemporaries, by the way; he was an OPA biggie at the very start.
Some day some revisionist will get to work on a decent economic history of WW2; there is none to my knowledge, though someone in the academic lupanar may have produced one and I was unaware of it. But this is one area where the drunken supper club blather of what one is 'gonna' do some day might give way to actual production.
Once again, my thanks for your kindness and considerateness.


[And thank you Jim, for a great look at the truth behind the propaganda. This should be a pretty good lesson for those of us who were born after WWII and fear that Reagan's "dirty little war(s)" will lead to strict economic controls. So what? As SEK3 has pointed out it doesn't matter what laws are on the books--are those laws enforced? Can they be enforced? Is anyone knuckling under to them or is everyone looking for ways to evade, avoid, and circumvent? That's where you'll find Anarchy in Action!]

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