Americans are famous for coming up with catchy propaganda slogans to define a moment. During World War II, War Department posters reminded people that “Loose Lips Sink Ships” and “We Can Do It.” “Rosie the Riveter” celebrated muscle-flexed women working in defense factories and Uncle Sam posters stirred young men’s patriotic blood with a finger pointed at them, saying “I Want You.”
Folks on the home front juggled their lives with everything rationed from sugar to car tires. Rationing offices across the nation reminded people that “Rationing Means a Fair Share for All,” “Do with Less so They’ll Have Enough,” “Plant a Victory Garden – Our Food is Fighting,” and “Save Waste Fats for Explosives!”
Seen in this March 1943 photograph are New Orleanians lined up to receive ration books at 523 Gravier St. The photo was taken by Minnesota born John Vachon, a member of the New Deal era Farm Security Administration, or FSA, team of photographers who documented rural America during the Great Depression. When the U.S. entered the war, the FSA photographers moved over to the Office of War Information.
In 1940 and early 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, knowing it was a matter of time before the United States would enter the war in Europe, began preparing Americans for the inevitable shortages in food and other important consumer goods once the war came. Shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt’s Office of Price Administration, or OPA, quickly got into action, launching a complex but comprehensive rationing program that would affect almost every aspect of American life.
Beginning in May 1942, the OPA issued rationing books 1 through 4 that covered essential consumer items such as sugar, gasoline, tires, meat, canned fish, cooking fat, butter, canned and fresh vegetables, coffee, fruit, flour, clothing and shoes. Ration stamps within each book were color coded, numbered and decorated with pictures of weapons of war or other relevant images. Rationing continued throughout the war, ending, except for sugar, in 1945 with victory in Europe and Pacific. Sugar rations ended in 1947.
As in every other crucial time, the war and rationing brought out the worst and best in people. When black marketeers tried to forge rationing stamps, OPA officials urged merchants to accept only those stamps that they themselves tore from the ration books. Some beef-loving Americans, wrote University of Maryland historian Megan Springate, were “willing to go to unpatriotic means to get” it on the black market.
On the brighter side, thousands of Americans stepped up to help. Various histories claim over 100,000 volunteers staffed 5,600 rationing boards across the country. And that doesn’t include men, women and children who planted victory gardens and collected scrap metal for the war effort.
Most Americans willingly lived up to the motto, “Do with Less so They’ll Have Enough.”
