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From Labor Action, Vol. 7 No. 1, 4 January 1943, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
With great fanfare and after much delay, the Department of Agriculture and the OPA have announced the rationing of 200 processed foods – in cans, in bottles and dried – to be followed by the rationing of meat, dairy products and other foods.
Every rational person will go one better than Mr. Henderson, retiring OPA chief, and agree that it is not only “desirable” but absolutely imperative “to institute rationing that we may share and share alike.”
For many months Labor Action has been demanding rationing as the only democratic way of meeting the alarming food shortage, not in the middle of February and later – but right now.
There is, however, the kind of serious rationing under which all could really “share and share alike” – and then again there is the kind that won’t have that desired result because it can’t.
Is the rationing of canned foods scheduled for February – which will later apply to meat and which will in fact be the model for all rationing – the effective or the ineffective kind?
No fault is found with the points system of rationing. That method could be made to work – provided it is mixed with other altogether indispensable ingredients. These missing essentials are:
Without the above, rationing will be a farce. However, neither Secretary of Agriculture Wickard nor Elmer Davis nor Leon Henderson – all of whom spoke on the radio on Sunday – has the remotest intention of supplying, these missing parts for a rationing program that will work.
On the subject of price control, Mr. Wickard’s speech gives cause for deep suspicion as to the seriousness of his rationing program. He is quite complacent on the subject of prices. He said: “Already we have acted to see that food prices, along with other prices, don’t get too high. So we do not have rationing through higher prices.”
This is maddening irresponsibility on Mr. Wickard’s part. He flies in the face of a truth the grimness of which every working class housewife understands. Food prices are too high – AND THERE HAS BEEN RATIONING THROUGH HIGH PRICES.
Even before the butter shortage developed, many a working class family could not buy it because of its price. Many a working class child does not get even one egg a week because of the price of eggs. On account of the excessive cost of meat and poultry, low income groups don’t get any share at all of these commodities but throw out their hard-earned money for fat-laden sausage meats or cuts so inferior that they are full of fat, bone and stringy tissue. To these groups even canned soups have become a rationed luxury because of the mounting price.
Mr. Wickard and his kind speak from the depths of their own contentment with life and not from the point of view of the struggling working class. Therefore neither he nor Mr. Henderson saw fit to say anything about the label-posters who are gayly price-profiteering under the OPA policy that everything is in a name – never mind what’s in the can.
Nor did either of these contented gentlemen deign to mention the little deal between the Administration and the powerful farm bloc under which deal will be permitted “moderate increases in ceiling prices on farm products.” CERTAINLY INCREASED FARM PRICES ARE CLOSELY CONNECTED WITH THE MATTER OF RATIONING CANNED, BOTTLED AND DRIED FARM PRODUCTS. How much of the rationed food will the working class housewife be able to buy if the prices are allowed to climb beyond her reach?
That is exactly where they are going – if workers and housewives do not themselves rise to the emergency and take matters in hand.
On the subject of increasing wages to meet the cost of living and thus enable the working-class family to get its rightful and legal share of rationed food, Mr. Wickard was as silent as Mr. Henderson and Mr. Henderson as silent as Mr. Davis. That subject – along with other military secrets – must not be discussed. Indirectly, however, Mr. Wickard very summarily dismissed the whole subject of wages in typical bureaucratic manner. He said: “Malnutrition is not altogether a matter of poverty. Sometimes it is a matter of ignorance!”
Could Mr. Wickard – with all his knowledge of proper nutrition – keep himself and family from suffering malnutrition on an income of less than SIXTEEN DOLLARS A WEEK?
There are 16,000,000 workers in this country who get for their labor less than $16 a week. Rationing alone will not enable these underpaid workers to “share and share alike.” Their wages have to be doubled, even trebled, to put them abreast of the cost of living.
Donald Montgomery, who has just resigned as consumers’ counsel in Secretary Wickard’s Department of Agriculture, reveals that THIRTY-EIGHT PER CENT of the people of this country will not be able to buy all the meat to which they will be entitled when meat rationing comes. MORE WAGES IS WHAT THIS THIRTY-EIGHT PER CENT OF THE POPULATION MUST HAVE.
Even the better-paid workers are getting a pretty raw deal. According to the figures of the CIO, the cost of living index has far exceeded the 15 per cent formula established by the WLB. Wage increases are long overdue. The constantly rising cost of living daily makes the position of the workers worse. Rationing alone will not help. Workers must have the money with which to buy the rationed foods. THEY MUST BE PAID MORE FOR THEIR LABOR.
On the third essential point, namely, who will carry out the rationing program; the plan is of course, that the government will do it, probably through the OPA.
The workers have had experience with the OPA’s way of “enforcing” price ceilings. There are more holes in OPA ceilings than in Swiss cheese, with chiselers and profiteers constantly boring more holes.
That is not the kind of rationing the working people want, thank you. But under the OPA or any government agency – operating bureaucratically and closely connected with private interests seeking only their own aggrandizement – rationing will have the same fate as price control of consumer goods.
Black market operations are bound to develop and further reduce the supply of goods available to the working people. Already a black market is sprouting for rationed fuel oil and gasoline and for still unrationed meat. In England, rationing has been in effect for several years – and for as many years the black market has been cutting big slices out of the supplies of rationed goods.
Workers haven’t the means to patronize the black market, which reserves the choicest of everything for the rich. The black market menace must be fought by the working people through committees of workers, farmers and housewives. Only such committees have the power to prevent rationing from becoming a farce.
To summarize and impress these points on the mind of the reader, it must be emphasized that rationing is urgent – to be effective, however, it must be fortified by:
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Last updated: 30 January 2015