Word: bootleg
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Tires are far & away the biggest bootlegged item. Most local OPA or rationing board officials assert that there is little or no tire bootlegging in their district, harp on the fact that 80% of all new tires on the loose last December now rest in manufacturers' warehouses. But the remaining 20% is enough to support a brisk bootleg trade. Thus, of 3,500 tire dealers checked in the New York-New Jersey area, OPA itself found that at least 1% were actual violators. Of 1,575 dealers in five Western States, at least 60 were exposed as law breakers...
...Capone-model bootleg rings have been uncovered. Most bootleggers are independent operators from petty rackets (like pinball machines), race tracks, dance-halls; many are once-legitimate tire dealers. Whether in Maine or Utah the procedure is the same: the motorist makes contact through his own filling station, is shunted into a cozy nearby bar to haggle price and delivery with the bootlegger or his agent. Some tires are stolen. Others come from pre-Pearl Harbor stocks of crooked dealers who did not list them on OPA's inventory forms, hid them in cellars, attics or backwoods garages. Prices...
...hotbed of tire bootlegging is Los Angeles. Reasons: 1) the city has a poor transportation system, rambles over 450 square miles; 2) Angelinos are cash-rich and conscience-poor. Last week one cinemactress laid out $800 for eight tires, had them hijacked out of her garage the very next night. And barflies bandied the story of a film writer who bought five complete sets of tires. Month ago police nabbed tire dealer Guy O. Bryan, were flabbergasted when he freely admitted selling $28,000 worth of new tires since Pearl Harbor. Gloomed an OPA official: "There is an uncontrolled reservoir...
...smelters who hold no priorities, almost any kind of steel scrap is worth almost any price. No. 1 bootleg method is to "upgrade" a load of low-grade scrap with a thin top layer of good scrap, sell the whole thing at the top limit for good stuff, exchange winks with the buyer...
...supply. The techniques--priorities, rationing, and price fixing--have worked and will continue to work in individual cases like rubber, gas, and sugar, but the economists from Hansen to Keynes are united in believing this one-sided attack inadequate to control, an entire price structure. Temptations to the bootleg "black market" are too severe; enforcement difficulties are overwhelming. Henderson himself has publicly recognized price control to be an interim measure, a temporary substitute for taxes that hurt...