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NAME: General Witt Daymin AGE: 47 HOMETOWN: Kickapoo, Illinois SCHOOL ATTENDED:Kikapoo High BIRTHDAY: March 14, 1922 LISTED AS: Unmarried Soldier INCOME: $1,500 per year OCCUPATION: Army General



America experienced rationing for the first time in World War II. In 1939, a national register set up and identity card hand outs were issued. By 1946, the rationing system had spun out of control and rationed most necessary products for American families ("Rationing System 3). The rationing system was set up in order to establish fixed allotments of goods essential for the military (Danzer et al. 568). The rationing system effected most of America in many different ways. However, food rationing had one of the biggest effects on people (Cotati 1). Butter, bacon and sugar were the first goods to be rationed in January 1940. They were then followed by meat in March 1940, tea, margarine, and cooking fats in July 1940 and cheese in 1941. These items were rationed by weight and the relevent coupons entitled the customer to buy a given weight ("Rationing System" 1). Each American was issued a book of ration cupons each month. Rationed goods were assigned a price and point value. Families were not restricted to certain quantities of rationed goods. But once their cupons were used up, they could not buy rationed goods until the next month (Cotati 1). Things like shoes, coffee, sugar, gasoline, fuel oil, and tires were rationed and were obtained by coupons from the book of ration coupons (Cornell 2). As times traveled things like rice, canned fruit, condensed milk, breakfast cereals, biscuits, jam, and cornflakes were also added to the ration list ("Rationing System" 1). Those who lived in the West had a rough time with the gas rations because of the distances need to be traveled (Danzer et. al 568). Even though I had troubles with rations, so did my family back at home. My family had to carpool and ride bicycles for an alternative to using up gas coupons. Sadly my children had to cope with the insufficient amount of toys (Danzer et al. 568). Inevitably, something that was created in response to this rationing system was the black market. The black market was a buying of rationed of items at illegal prices without coupons while prices were inflated (Danzer et al. 568). As more and more products became rationed, the amount of them stolen off the shelves increased as well. As a result of this, the rationing system became stricter and the stolen items were lessly heard of ("Rationing System" 3). The rationing system was basically a dual-currency system. Rationed goods carried two prices in stores; one price in dollars and one in "ration points". In order to purchase rationed goods a consumer had to have both the cash and the necessary amount of points to exchange for the goods. Retailers then used the points collected from consumers to buy more for resale ("Food Rationing Stamps" 1).





__Works Cited__

Cornell, Gordon L. "Ration Reminders." __Rationing during World War II.__ 26 May. 2001. 24 Oct. 2007. http://www.rootsweb.com/~nyfulton/Salute/WWIIrations.html.

Cotati, Rudi. "Clothes Rationing during World War II." __Historical Boy's Clothing.__ 24 Jul. 2002. 24 Oct. 2007. http://www.histclo.com/mat/rat/rat-ww2.html.

Danzer, Gerlad A. Et al. __The Americans: Reconstruction to the 21st Century.__ Evanston, IL: McDougal Littel, 2003.

"Food Rationing Stamps." __Food Rationing__. 24 Oct. 2007. http://www.coba.usf.edu/satterfield/warstuff/ration_stamps.htm.

"Rationing System." __Food Rationing (Part 2).__ 2003. 24 Oct. 2007. http://www.worldwar2exraf.co.uk/Online%20Museum/Museum%20Docs/foodrationpage2.html.

__Picture Citations__

www.amsacs.org

www.j-sainsbury.co.uk

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