Rationing and recycling was the responsibility of the Office of Price Administration (OPA). This site gives an overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Price_Administration
1941-1945: When There Was No Room for Jell-O.
Yes, there were extensive wage and price controls. (Among other things, that’s how we got our current mess of health insurance being entangled with employment – forbidden to offer higher pay, employers competed on benefits instead.)
I have some books of rationing stamps that were in my grandparents stuff. I’ll have to dig them up and see what they are for.
If you look at the attempted assassination scene in THE GODFATHER, you will notice that Don Vito had a ration sticker-were the Mafia’s actvities judged as essential to the war effort? What sort of gasoline ration did the Mafia usually get?
Yes, wartime gasoline rationing was definately about conserving rubber-my mother told me that tires were almost unobtainable-unless you had “contacts”.
I would imagine he used his influence to get a C card. I’m certain that if one knew the right government official, offered the right amount of money and made the right threat, one could have obtained a C card.
Well, Don Vito had a number of prominent politicians in his pocket, and leaned on them for favors semi-regularly.
Remember the flashback scene at the end of “The Godfather Part 2,” where Mike reveals that he’s enlisted in the armed forces? Tom Hagen immediately reminds Mike of all the strings Vito had to pull to get Michael a draft deferment.
Presumably, a man with the pull to get a draft deferment for his son could also get preferential treatment when it came to getting gasoline.
And while Mario Puzo never mentioned this, as far as I can remember, there were a number of real-life Mafia hoods who helped the U.S. armed forces by using their contacts in Sicily to get intelligence. (Lucky Luciano did this, which is one reason he felt betrayed when the feds later had him deported.) If Don Vito were doing such a thing, he could have traded his favors for some special privileges.
Yes, the Mafia played a significant role in helping the US invasion of Sicily go far smoother than it otherwise could have been. Which is a tad ironic - the Fascist regime hated the Sicilian Mafia and practically eradicated them. The US invasion had the unforseen consequence of putting them right back into power.
I also recall some deal made during WWII that had the Mafia keep the Eastern Seaboard docks clear of German agents/saboteurs, but I can’t seem to find a cite.
Are you sure that we had plenty of gas? According the the Jan. 16, 1943, issue of the New Yorker, “The oil situation in the eastern seaboard is admittedly grave. The danger is that we may run out of fuel before we run out of winter.”
The Mafia’s involvement in the Allied invasion of Sicily is the basis of the James R. Benn novel, “Blood Alone”.
Another victim of the war rationing was the green packages for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Apparently green coloring was needed for the war effort, so Lucky Strike switched to white packets. They used the change in the advertising: “Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War”.
There were certainly wage and price controls during the war. My father’s boss wanted to give him and two others who worked on a secret process (not secret from the Germans, in fact it was to replace things no longer available from Germany, but secret from the competition since they chose not to patent it) and the three men took turns coming in Saturday and Sunday mornings and punching all three time cards and returning in the evening to punch them out. They got 1.5 times for Saturday and double pay for Sundays. The boss knew this of course. But he needed the time cards properly punched in case he was audited.
Snopes and other sites say this is a myth.
According to Woody Woodpecker:
A is for apple, that goes into pie.
B is for butter, but it’s hard to buy.
C is for cuff, which is what you can put this gas on,
Bub.