Interesting. And did it work? People going short when they didn’t actually need to be, that really helped morale? Because I’d have thought any rationing would be harmful to morale, especially if it wasn’t actually needed.
So you felt like you were helping the war effort.
My maternal family had 3 boys and 1 remaining girl [my aunt and grandmother died shortly before WW2 in a kitchen fire caused by a kerosene lantern] were Amish and had a farm - the group as a whole were conchies though my Mom and one uncle rumspringa’d, my uncle Georg into the army and my mom to an aircraft factory. My other 2 uncles were exempt as farm workers [well all 3 technically were] and their farm produced not just produce and grain, but cows and pigs and kept chickens for meat and eggs, and had several bee hives. Other than coffee, some herbs and spices and salt, they produced pretty much everything they ate. I remember my uncles talking about being allowed to keep a percentage of everything they produced with everything else going to the rationing board. I do know that they were paying tax ‘in kind’ until they ended up selling the farm when my grandfather passed [the family took heat because they stayed in full contact with my mom and uncle, though I don’t remember meeting my grandfather, he died while I was still a toddler.]
My paternal family was different, my grandfather owned a series of fabric mills, that produced blankets, socks, gloves and uniforms [depending on the particular product line for that mill] and at home my younger uncles Bill and John kept bees and chickens and had a large garden and my mom’s cook canned the produce and dried herbs for use. We kept up the garden until we finally sold off the summer house when my grandmother died in 1979, I remember pitching in and planting, weeding and picking the stuff, and learning to pickle dry and can the produce. Mom, being a depression era farm girl was into making sure we had enough food to make it through winter snicker though obviously Dad’s family wasn’t short of funds to shop for food =) I do know my grandmother’s cook didn’t do roast or fried chicken often because the boys would complain about eating enough chicken when growing up that they thought they would turn into one =)
There was often a sort of divide between retail products and DIY stuff.
E.g., civilian radio receiver production stopped during the war. But you could buy a kit and solder one yourself. By father built two such kits in electronics school during the war and gave them to relatives.
Rationing was more necessary because of price controls. No rationing and you’d have hoarding, which was bad for morale.
Two rationing stories my mother told. She was a teenager on a dairy farm in Vermont during most of the war.
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In the fall of 1942 a neighbor went to the local ration board and asked for more sugar for canning. (A normal request) It was a small community where everyone knew everyone else back 5 generations, so my grandfather suggested that the guy just use some of the sugar he still had hoarded from the First World War.
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In the summer of 1943 one of their pigs died suddenly. The meat was supposed to be declared somehow, but instead my grandfather and his friends quickly disassembled and processed everything before the authorities got wind. My mother hated rendering the lard on a very hot day, but fats were used to make explosives, and so were hard to come by. I don’t know if the sugar hoarder got any of the contraband pork.
Yes, the newest nylon used for the sheer stockings was taken for other uses during the war. So only older versions of stockings were available. They were indeed durable, because they were thicker – but lacked the ‘sheer’ visibility of the nylon ones.
Much of the nylon was used for rope for the Navy. Previous rope used materials from the Philippines area, but Japan held that then, so nylon rope was substituted. The government also encouraged US farmers to plant hemp, for use in making rope. You still sometimes see it growing today (but mostly for a different market).
I wish I could find the B. Kliban cartoon ‘Grouse Pincing On The Moors’.
I don’t think ammunition was actually rationed during WW2, I’ve never seen mention of it. It wouldn’t make that much difference to hunting, because you don’t need a lot of ammunition for hunting (an average of like 2 bullets per game animal including the ones used to sight in a rifle at the start of a season) and lots of hunting rifles used calibers the military didn’t. Ammunition is also easy to hoard since it doesn’t go bad, lots of rural hunters reload their own ammunition, and is easy to smuggle around the system since you only need relatively small quantities at long intervals (you need meet at least weekly, but only a few boxes of ammunition per year). Also there were a lot of marksmanship training drives and semi-civilian defense organizations, and it would be easy for some ammunition earmarked for those to make it’s way to other hands.
Most hunting ammo isn’t going to be military calibers anyway. Yes, there are .30-06 hunting rifles, which is what the US rifles used (and British lend-lease rifles), but I doubt that would have been a problem. Likely production of other caliber ammo would have been sharply curtailed, but I expect any hunters who didn’t expect to get drafted (old men, women) would likely have stocked up before the war.
Hunting was also very likely down sharply with a lot of the hunters being drafted or moving to cities to work in the factories. I know that my paternal grandfather moved from a farm in upstate Minnesota to Seattle to work in a shipyard during the war.
What book is that?
A data point.