The Bottom of the Pot

Since rationing first began, during the war, one item after another has been plucked from the British stewpot until only a mess of boiled potatoes remained. Britons had been eating an average of five to six pounds of potatoes a week, but last week the bottom of the stewpot was beginning to show. Potatoes themselves, the No. 1 staple in the British diet, were rationed--three pounds per week per Briton. "If we'd done nothing," said Food Minister John Strachey, "some time in the spring potatoes would have run out, which would have been a catastrophe." Some British housewives felt the catastrophe had happened. "Many of my customers," said Brixton Greengrocer George Kingston, "went away crying when they saw their three-pound ration."

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