Lumps With the Coffee

Coffee rationing was a painful topic in Washington. In doling out sugar and gasoline, the War Production Board and Office of Price Administration had done fairly neat jobs. Now, on their third try, they had fallen flat on their faces.

Because of shipping shortages, coffee rationing has been in the cards for months. But WPB tried to forestall the inevitable by cutting purchases at the source: roastings were curtailed to 75% of last year's, then 65%. Any housewife could have foretold the result: No Coffee signs in grocery windows, long queues in front of stores which had a supply. A buying panic was on.

With a quick change of heart, WPB ordered OPA to start rationing--at once. But OPA was caught flatfooted: it had no rationing forms ready for wholesalers and retailers to use. The best it could do was a promise to start Nov. 29.

OPAdministrator Leon Henderson then sadly misjudged mass psychology. He announced the rationing a month in advance to forestall "even more confusion and hysteria," got confusion confounded.

Panic buying and hoarding promptly hit a new high last week. In New Orleans one retailer said: "The customers have gone coffee-mad and now they're driving my clerks crazy too." In Manhattan, the Brazilian Consulate (representing the largest coffee-growing nation in the world) had to plead with a wholesaler for two pounds.

Leon Henderson tried desperately to pour oil on troubled waters: he pointed out that normal consumption is 13 Ib. a year, argued that a ration of one pound every five weeks would not be so bad. (He did not point out that his statistics were based on total population, including adults who do not drink coffee and children under 15, who will get none under rationing.) But every coffee drinker knew that one cup a day represented a drastic cut. The panic buying went on, with no signs of stopping until shelves were bare. In some places anti-hoarders even began picketing the coffee queues--quite in vain (see cut).

The big question now was whether retailers would have enough stocks left by Nov. 29 to supply holders of ration tickets. To many a grocer, it looked as if WPB would have to abandon its 65% roasting ceiling for a while--something that WPB has thus far flatly refused to do. Certainly something must give: if the start of rationing finds many citizens unable to use their ration tickets, the coffee comedy will cease to be funny. Such a failure might endanger the whole principle of rationing--which the people have accepted wholeheartedly thus far.

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