I wish I had asked my Grandmother more about the war. Two sons in the army, and Grandfather was a landscaper.
And in 1941, what percentage of vegetables were being home/small farm grown? (Lots - my Nor’Dakota grandparents had a “garden” bigger than some hobby farms; even my cityfolk grands had a back yard garden of size.) I think you might be misunderestimating how common it was in that era, especially post-Depression.
That’s not to say that there weren’t some who had the ability and the land to start growing more, or raising larger flocks/herds - but like all the other stateside programs, the Victory Garden effort was not an overall success, not in terms of significantly increasing the number and production of home/small truck gardens.
At least in folklore of the time, most people wanted to do their part for the war effort, and the ones who didn’t were under severe pressure. Even if all those home-front measures were of limited tangible value, they did have some, and did give people a way to contribute however they could. Morale does matter, and not only for people in uniform.
It was also intended as a buffer against wartime shortages which never really materialized in the US in any significant way. If they had, though, they might have been invaluable. A safety plan/backup that isn’t utilized isn’t a failure, it’s just not used.
I wouldn’t disagree, and it’s important not to judge the activities outside of the era’s sensibilities. However, from this great remove, a lot of the home-front programs look a lot more like morale boosters, patriotic shows of force, civic-order gambits and general solidarity/feelgood efforts than anything that even could have been truly useful.
The 1940s equivalent of mailing in pull tabs instead of recycling the whole can.
I (very mildly) challenge anyone to come up with a stateside WWII program that was an unqualified success with markedly positive results. I can’t think of one - not in rationing, not in defense/lookout efforts, not in security/safety, not in “backup plans” - the immense wealth and productivity of the US, and the lack of the war to come anywhere near it,* ended up meaning that the home front could well have continued life and business as usual with no net change in the outcome.
- The sinking of some Eastern seaboard shipping being almost the only exception.
I once read that by 1945, most of the gas rationing stickers in NYC were counterfeit. As i said, there was no shortage of gasoline at any time during the war. My mother recalls that tires were almost impossible to get, though.
I think the big success of rationing was that it prevented hoarding-based scarcities. You’re right that there were very few real shortages. But people don’t always behave rationally. Consumers might have bought up stocks of some products out of the fear that they might become unavailable. And it would have been a self-fulfilling fear - that hoarding could have created shortages.
Let’s use sugar as an example. Let’s say the average person bought two pounds of sugar. And there is enough sugar for everyone to buy their usual two pounds. But some people start worrying that there will be a shortage so they decide to stock up and buy twenty pounds and stick it in their closet. If enough people do that the store will run out and some people won’t be able to buy the two pounds they actually want to use. Rationing prevents this by limiting everyone to just two pounds.
Reading some of the point values assigned to various canned goods, it must have been impossible to get a Bloody Mary anywhere during the war, what with tomato juice going for so many points.
The horror!
Britain’s War Machine makes the same argument. Families were limited to what the average family used, so the wealthy could not cause a shortage by stocking up. I think the author is far too positive, but he did the research, not I. 
If a bunch of people hoarded a commodity the price would go up in cost and more of that commodity would be produced. If there was not an actual shortage of the commodity at some point the hoarded goods would be put back up for sale and the prices would plummet. Thus rationing seems like causing a permanent shortage to prevent a temporary shortage.
I wouldn’t disagree. Brinkley tells the story of a car going home from the grocery store (this would be right after PH) so loaded with canned goods and the like that the tires were making black smoke against the fenders. He dryly points out that the driver would have been better off saving the tires, which would be almost unobtainable while food was never in any overall short supply.
So yes, rationing overall probably helped stabilize food prices and availability.
It must have been pretty stiff, since the guy Grandmother let loose on didn’t have sugar for his grapefruit.
This would apply only if there was the potential for increased production. During wartime there likely isn’t.
Intelligent rationing doesn’t create shortages. It imposes rationality on the marketplace by prohibiting people from the kind of irrational buying and selling you described.
That only works if it is POSSIBLE to increase production of said commodity. That doesn’t always work, or it doesn’t always work fast enough.
In regards to food, there’s quite some lead time required to produce the product, and the lead time is typically longer than people will survive without food. Increasing production is pretty useless if your customers all starve to death before the harvest.
In wartime, if you have a shortage of manpower, or if your crops are destroyed by bombs/invaders/whatever they you’re really screwed unless you have a reserve of preserved foods on hand.
In other words - the “free market” isn’t perfect, and relying on it won’t always save your bacon in regards to food supply.
Prices were controlled too, although nothing prevents a black market from popping up.
Just an afterthought, I haven’t seen any, but I understand the newspaper classifieds were full of used car ads - from prospective buyers, not sellers.
I found the newspaper clipping of Grandmother’s letter to the editor. The sugar guy’s letter is there, too.
In Poplar Bluff, MO, 1942, they were rationed to 8 oz of sugar. I don’t know if it is per month or week. The grapefruit guy mentions that the government is using sugar to make alcohol, which in turn is used to make smokeless gunpowder.
Bill Mauldin’s postwar book, Coming Home, has long tales about cigarette and car shortages, including the endless smarmy ways dealers got around price controls. The usual gimmick was that the car sold for the limited price, but it had a “special radio” or some such that added a few hundred.
You paid up, or you got a worn-out sh*tbox.
Yeah, the auto industry production lines were given over to producing machines like airplanes and tanks for the military. If I recall, there were several years with no new cars produced so I have no doubt the demand for used ones skyrocketed.
They didn’t have to be salesmen directly after the war. They just called the next guy on the list, and he didn’t even ask what color it was.