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Updated: May 14, 2025
The rationing was done about as badly as it could be done. It was arranged in such a fashion as to produce plenty in some places and dearth in others. It was done so that wealthy men made fortunes and poor men were made still poorer. The inordinate greed and lack of real patriotism on the part of influential parties in both Germany and Austria-Hungary have added to the bad state of affairs.
It depends upon constant importations for fifty per cent of its general food needs and seventy-five per cent of its needed food-grains. The ring of steel about Belgium, then, if not promptly broken, plainly meant starvation. The imprisoned Belgians saw, with the passing days, their little piles of stored food supplies get lower. They had immediately begun rationing themselves.
The system of rationing, which is to be applied to luxuries, will leave many men with fewer luxuries than they might desire. It will give opportunities for peculation by those who are in control of the public stores, and it will leave the possibility of appropriating such valuable objects of art as would naturally be preserved in public museums.
If we have a serious shortage, I will not hesitate to impose mandatory gasoline rationing immediately. The single biggest factor in the inflation rate last year, the increase in the inflation rate last year, was from one cause: the skyrocketing prices of OPEC oil. We must take whatever actions are necessary to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and at the same time reduce inflation.
There were not barracks for housing the soldiers; there were neither uniforms, nor arms, nor ammunition. There was no system for rationing the men. All of these things had to be provided, and they were provided through a natural evolution of practical processes, crystallizing into form, tested by the duties of the day.
Instead of conserving natural wealth, rationing it and thus extending its use to succeeding generations, western man has burnt it up in the firestorms deliberately kindled during the seven disaster years from 1939 to 1945.
Let us do everything we can to avoid gasoline rationing in the United States of America. Last week, I sent to the Congress a comprehensive special message setting forth our energy situation, recommending the legislative measures which are necessary to a program for meeting our needs. If the embargo is lifted, this will ease the crisis, but it will not mean an end to the energy shortage in America.
For several months we have been losing fewer ships by sinkings, and we have been destroying more and more U-boats. We hope this will continue. But we cannot be sure. We must not lower our guard for one single instant. One tangible result of our great increase in merchant shipping which I think will be good news to civilians at home is that tonight we are able to terminate the rationing of coffee.
When rationing came, one could eat the greater part of the week's beef allowance at a single meal in the home, but in a restaurant one could get four excellent meat meals in some restaurants even eight excellent meals in return for a week's coupons. There were, no doubt, parts of the country in which the housewife was hardly more restricted than the diner-out in restaurants.
On the pure merits of the question, I think that the working men have reason on their side. They know clearly what they want to make sorties and to endeavour to destroy the enemy's works; if this fails to make provisions last as long as possible by a system of rationing and then to destroy Paris rather than surrender it.
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