Word: ration
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Loopy? Absurd? " 'You get the feeling over there that people are tired, drained of feeling'. . . . A business executive was walking on cardboard-patched soles for lack of a ration coupon. . .A tiny girl asked, when given a bit of coveted chocolate: 'Do I lick or do I bite?'. . . Factory workers faint around 11 a.m. for lack of adequate breakfasts. . . . 'In two weeks I never saw a piece of meat'. . . Seventy-five pounds of food she brought over prolonged the lives of ten persons...
...British motorists, the Government's ending of the "basic petrol ration" last fall had seemed the last heartbreaking straw in the load of enforced joylessness. Except for business and in hardship cases, they would not get one drop of gas for their cars. Even "basic" had been skimpy. The driver of a 30-miles-to-the-gallon Austin could go only 270 miles a month. With the end of "basic" he had nothing for a drive to the station, an occasional shopping trip, or a weekend spin in the country with the family...
Religious Revival. Nevertheless, Sir Stafford Cripps last week frostily informed Britons that "basic" would not be restored. "Politically it would be far easier and much more pleasant to give way to the clamor and reintroduce some basic ration," he said, "but it would from the point of view of the whole population of this country be quite definitely wrong. . . . There are no indications at present that basic may come back this year...
...Birmingham, businessmen have been arranging conferences in hotels at night; by a happy coincidence, they and their wives would find that there was a dance in the hotel the same evening. Since farmers are allowed a gas ration for agricultural errands, many a car parked outside a roadside pub has a trailer holding a bewildered sheep or pig. If the owner, inside drinking beer and playing darts, is challenged by the police, he says that he has just broken his necessary journey...
Only a few welcomed the end of "basic." Exulted T. C. Foley, secretary of the Pedestrians' Association: "The economic saving to the country in avoided accidents by the abolition of the basic ration might amount in a full year to as much as ?10 million, apart from the saving in human life, suffering and bereavement...