No End to Rationing

WPB relaxed shoemaking restrictions on color and styling of many civilian shoes. Henceforth manufacturers may:

P:Make high heeled shoes and evening slippers for women, patent leather shoes and sandals for men, and use scrap leather bows as decorations.

P:Use any color leather. (Previously permitted: black, white, Army russet, town brown, natural colors.) Still barred: two-tone leather shoes.

The order meant little actual relief for the U.S. The restrictions had been a WPB effort to prevent rationing by making shoes less attractive. In lifting the restrictions, WPB's motive is to protect dealers by giving them fresh merchandise so they will not be caught with shelves full of drab wartime shoes when rationing ends.

The end of shoe rationing is not in sight.

The military program, already taking about a third of the available leather, calls for more leather goods during the last half of 1944 than during the first half. And the leather supply is getting tighter: this year the U.S. will have only between 23 million and 24 million hides for both civilians and armed forces, as against 19 million in 1939 for civilians alone. Shoe rationing may continue long after the end of the German war.

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