I was watching one of them old movies from the 1940s and they had the subject of gas rationing. Of course everyone in the movie was very patriotic.
I asked some older gentlemen that always gather in the park about how it worked. The indicated to me that there was plenty of gas during World War II and it was propaganda.
One of the men said “the real reason” for the gas rationing was to save rubber NOT to save gas. He said “there was always plenty of gasoline.”
First of all is this true and if so didn’t we have synthetic rubber then?
No cite but from what i have heard it is true. I believe they had a “Victory Speed” posted on roads, that was bassicly a speed limit designed to save rubber, as well as i am sure save gas.
There’s a lame joke from the time period, which wouldn’t make sense unless you understood gas rationing, ration stickers, and tires, etc. It goes something like this: A man and his wife are on a road trip in rural Maine during the war and get turned around/lost in the sticks, and getting low on fuel. Finally they pull into a remote service station. They ask for 5 gallons and hand their ration card to the attendant. “What’s this?” he asks. “Our ration card, of course.” “Ration card!? For what?”
“You know, the War.” “What war?” “You know, Adolf Hitler…” “Who is Adolf Hitler?”
“Never mind that, just fill 'er up, and we need 4 new tires…”
There were different stamps for different amounts of gas that you were permitted to buy, and a select few job categories were allowed unlimited purchases. My mother told me about a cartoon that appeared during the war, which showed a road with only two cars on it, and the motorists greeting each other, with the caption: “Hi doc” and “How you doing, reverend?”
The problem was producing a synthetic with properties good enough to use for tires, which have to take a lot of punishment. And then there was the problem of having enough production capacity in the middle of a war, where not only was the military demand bottomless but resources to build and expand plant had to be allocated. So there was synthetic rubber but it was still in short enough supply that civilian rationing was indispensable.
My father said that during WWII, he and other members of his family would take the farm’s tractor into town to buy things since the tractor was exempt from gas rationing. He said he did not take out any girls on dates using the tractor however.
We did have plenty of gas, too. With half today’s population living mostly pre-suburban lifestyles, we produced more petroleum domestically than we needed.
Cecil says that any tires in excess of five were confiscated by the government. What did they do with the tires? I thought that once rubber had been vulcanized, it was useless for making new rubber products.
I really have my doubts about this. I don’t remember it happening and I can only find one reference on the web. That’s Yahoo! Ansewers so the only backup for Cecil’s statement is a posting from some unknown individual on a message board. Who knows, maybe that person got their info from Cecil.