Gas Rationing: It Worked Before and It Can Work Again

...Five years since OPEC quadrupled the price of petroleum...

...The allocation of rations on the basis of need was handled by more than 5,600 local boards of volunteers...

...There’s not much disagreement among politicians, economists, energy Nicholas Burnett is a Washington wrifer...

...Chester Bowles describes how the system worked after a car owner had his coupons: “A motorist would go to agas station and request, let us say, ten gallons of gasoline...

...Higher prices may make industrial and residential consumers cut back on electricity use...

...The scheme was simple...

...Of course, they aren’t going to raise prices now, because there is a shortterm glut of oil...

...Gasoline rationing worked in World War 11...

...The average consumption per passenger car fell from 607 gallons a year in 1941 to 416 in 1943...

...The heat of the pressure groups was intense...

...Even after the committee reported that rationing was essential and even after its recommendation was put into effect, most people and most congressmen opposed it at first...

...Coming to Accept It In general, however, people came to accept rationing once they saw that it was necessary...

...But oil imports are a real problem right now-we can’t wait decades...

...The OPA was in continuous conflict with the Petroleum Administration for War, which was effectively run by a Standard Oil of California executive and dedicated to the principle that the oil industry in wartime should function as much as possible like the oil industry in peacetime...

...By the time you read this, it will probably have been released for a 90-day comment period with hearings around the country...

...foreign policy...

...The imports caused a $30-billion trade deficit in 1977 and put continuous pressure on the dollar, as we have seen in the last few months...

...After that, a final proposal will be drawn up and sent to Congress for approval...

...The actual amount of an individual’s B allocation depended on the distance he needed to travel...

...The OPA was extremely fierce in enforcing the law against counterfeiters, black marketeers, and the gas stations that cooperated with them...

...This would have the side benefit of freeing our foreign policy options from oil-import-imposed constraints...

...First, we went to great lengths to explain it to the public, and second, everyone recognized that thedecisionin regard to his ration was made not by some bureaucrat in Washington but by members of his own community who served on the local volunteer board...

...The boards were set up wherever there was a need: in factories, in rural areas where the board might travel around, and in the cities...

...higher prices have not had any effect on automobile gas consumption...

...And there is always the danger of another embargo...

...The Carter administration’s short-term policy involves using higher prices to check demand...

...The price ofgas at service stations has doubled since 1973...

...By putting an A sticker on our window, we would be putting ourselves back into the driver’s seat again...

...We have Saudi Arabia, one of our OPEC friends, complaining that our energy habits are undisciplined...

...As Paul O’Leary, the OPA’s deputy administrator for rationing wrote just after the war: “Americans are not a docile people...

...Concern with these details seems to have blinded the administration to the potential uses of a rationing program...

...David Ginsburg, who was OPA’s general counsel, ascribes the success of the gas rationing program in particular to three factors: “there was a war on, there was a genuine need, and the government was totally committed to the program...

...Wartime experience shows that some minor abuse is inevitable but that, as long as the public is cooperative, it will be insignificant compared to the effect of the whole program...

...Every car owner got an A ration to cover his minimum needs-shopping, household emergencies, and perhaps a little pleasure driving, but not to travel to and from work...

...What would happen to their economies if America stopped buying their oil...

...They gave large amounts of time to board work...

...Hundreds of thousands of defense workers, for instance, who had given up their prewarjobs in towns and rural areas, were driving40,50 and even 60 miles, six days a week, to urban defense plants...

...Even if the government were totally committed to a new energy policy, and it clearly isn’t, it would take years, decades, to develop safe new sources of energy...

...But as far as gasoline is concerned this policy is out of touch with the realities of Americans’ long love affair with the automobile...

...Five years since we realized that we were dependent on what we’d thought of as fairly minor powers...

...They wanted to help their country and so they managed with less gasoline and served by the thousands on local boards...

...While OPA set the broad guidelines for the rationing of gasoline and other products in its central headquarters in Washington and in its nine regional offices, the actual administration of the program depended on thousands of volunteers...

...The wholesaler in turn could replenish his own supply only by presenting the requisite number of ration coupons, which he had collected from his customers, to his wholesale supplier...

...Its opponents usually advance two reasons why they think it wouldn’t...

...There’s something else about gas rationing that proves it’s our most sensible option: Unbelievable as it may sound to those who have lost all faith in government’s ability to do anything right, we have done it before...

...Gas rationing, set up ina manner that would systematically c u t i n t o America’s foreign oil imports, would satisfy all these concerns...

...Other bursts of black market activity and of counterfeitingcame and went during the war...

...People who had touse their cars in the performance of their jobs, like doctors and maintenance men, got C rations, even larger allocations that were tied to need, like B ones...

...In addition to paying the dealer the controlled price for the gas, he would also give him ration coupons for the ten gallons...

...We’re still just talking about the energy crisis, not doing anything...

...In December 1942, rationing was imposed on the whole country...

...Shortages arose because many tankers had been loaned or assigned to supply oil to the British war effort and because German submarines were picking off an embarrassingly large number of tankers along the East Coast...

...But black market and counterfeit problems were minor compared to the difficulty of getting people to accept gas rationing in the first place...

...They have also put serious constraints on U.S...

...A look back at how it worked then should be all the proof we need that rationing can work again...

...Our Western European allies are dismayed that Carter’s energy plan has been bogged down in Congress...

...Papa in Washington could decree what he liked but Papa couldn’t enforce it without the local administration...

...This slows our economic growth, lowers the value of the dollar overseas, and aggravates, unemployment and inflation at home...

...Solutions are discussed, but in complex and deliberate fashionwithout any sense of urgency...

...The reason for the price rise, according to Kuwait’s oil minister, was the declining value of the dollar...

...Short Supplies Rationing was first introduced in the East in May 1942...

...total private auto consumption went down from 18 billion gallons a year to 10.8 billion...

...Supplies of gasoline were short...

...And contemplate the discomfort of the oil companies if we actually took all their pious advertisements seriously and really did something about conservingenergy...

...There were three rationcategories...

...The administration is only considering rationing as a policy for periods of severe oil shortage-if, fpr instance, there is another interrupticrh of imports...

...Besides prevehting a repeat of the nearpanic of 1974, rationing would solve some immediate problems too...

...John Hamm, a senior official of OPA in its early days, recalls that the initial reaction everywhere was that rationing “couldn’t work for us because we have special needs...

...Local b o a r d s , as in the war, would demonstrate to the public that the rationing system was fair, that any request for extra gas would be ruled upon by people familiar with the applicant’s community and not by a faceless bureaucrat in Washington...

...Indeed, a recent survey of business executives showed that prices could go as high as $2 a gallon without curtailing the urge to drive...

...Thomas Emerson, head of OPA’s Enforcement Division, and later a leading constitutional-law scholar at Yale, had it use every device available: publicity, close inspection, civil actions, criminal proceedings, and the cutting of gas supplies to service stations that were involved in the black market...

...They, too, see us as energy gluttons, driving up inflation on a world-wide scale...

...About 300,000 volunteers served on the boards, administering rationing programs for gasoline and 17 other products...

...The resulting excess of coupons led to the emergence of a black market...

...The plan’s architects appear to be obsessed with the need to eliminate potential abuses like black markets...

...John Hamm believes that these “committees of neighbors,” as Baruch called them, were the key to successful implementation: “Local community boards were essential...

...The Cartet administration does have an emergency gasoline rationing plan that the Department of Energy has been going to make public “next week”since late April...

...People believed in the need for rationing...

...There was at least one board in each of the 3,200 counties in the United States...

...These were mainly oil-producing states, and many of their residents cheated the rationing boards throughout the war...

...Let’s let the energy conglomerates moan...

...Pipelines from Texas and Oklahoma were not yet completed and petroleum had to be sent east by sea tankers and by rail...

...they have gone to elaborate lengths to establish a “white market”mechanism so that people with allocations larger than their needs will be able to sell their excess coupons...

...Continuous Conflict Rationing ran into problems, of course...

...Just receritly, Kuwait announced that it would seek an ail price hikein the next OPECconference...

...In general,” he says, “unless people thought that others were complying with the law, the thing would have broken down...

...All the President has to do is show the people the connection between rationing and the control of inflation...

...Once a ration allocation had been made by a board, theactual distribution of gas coupons was handled by the banks, which were reimbursed by OPA for the costs they incurred...

...Could It Work Today...

...When he wished to replenish his own gasoline supply, he would pass the card with the coupons on to his wholesaler, who then authorized the replacement of the appropriate number of gallons in the dealer’s tanks...

...The public would accept gasoline rationing, because, as poll after poll demonstrates, its number-one concern is inflation...

...If more inflation is just what you think we need now, read no f u r t h e r . Otherwise, we suggest you consider gas rationing...

...How lovely it would be to turn the tables on OPEC...

...They threaten to raise prices because of a loss of value of the dollar that has been caused primarily by their past price increases...

...And for most Americans, gas rationing would force some real energy conserving for the first time since 1974...

...In 1942, 1943, and 1944 the use of gasoline and fuel oil was cut by about 50percentinthefaceofthe vastly increased need for motor transport...

...Rationing would not require a large bureaucracy...

...If people were initially difficult to persuade everywhere, there were some areas where they were never convinced...

...Chester Bowles agrees: “The program worked for two reasons...

...The station owner would then paste these coupons on a card which he was given for the purpose...

...That’s the way to cut imports...

...The board members were representatives of the local community-businessmen, labor officials, teachers, farmers, shopkeepers, and so on...

...And it worked...

...We need right now, or in the very near future, to devise a systematic, intelligent plan that will force Americans to drive less...

...Could it work today...

...But in a few years we are sure to be confronted again by OPEC’s insane ldgic...

...But they are reasonably cooperative when they see reasonable grounds for being asked to make sacrifices...

...Remarkable, isn’t it...

...But why not use rationing to make us immune from that threat altogether...

...First, the public wouldn’t accept rationing and wouldn’t cooperate...

...Five years since we started talking about the energy crisis...

...Everyday we see the truth of that statement...

...The gasoline rationing program worked phenomenally well,” wrote Chester Bowles, who became head of OPA in 1943, in his book of memoirs, Promises to Keep...

...evidently, many Americans thought the use of their cars even more vital to happiness than food,” wrote Harvey Mansfield in his official history of OPA...

...The idea is so simple and so basic, yet somehow it has gotten lost in theshuffle that is our energy arguments...

...Second, its administration would require a vast gdvernment agency that would quickly become yet another bureaucratic disaster...

...But today we get almost half (47 per cent in 1977) of our oil from abroad, compared to only 36 per cent in 1973...

...The Office of Defense Transportation, which controlled commercial vehicles, was much too generous at first in issuing “certificates of war necessity,” which could be turned in for ration coupons...

...In fact, the only thing higher prices are sure to do is produce more inflation...

...In the summer of 1942, before the introduction of gasoline rationing throughout the country, President Roosevelt appointed a blueribbon committee, headed by Bernard Baruch, to examine the case forit...

...many boards had more members than ever met at any one time in order to permit them to operate in virtually continuous shifts...

...OPA never had more thaii 60,000, paid employees after 1943, and gas rationing was only, one of the 18 rationing programs that it ran...

...It would put OPEC on notice that we now have a mechanism to deal with another boycott...

...The events of 1973-74 ought to have been enough to make us do something about oil imports...

...It would buy the time needed to develop the new energy sources and techniques we’ll have to have in the next century...

...Despite administration and congressionaldenials, doesanyone really doubt that one reason for selling those F-15s to Saudi Arabia is the fear that King Khalid might turn off the oil if he doesn’t get his planes...

...Gas Rationing: It Worked Before and It Can Work Again by Nicholas Burnett It will be five years this fall...

...PAW always objected to the idea that oil should be allocated and distributed on the basis of need...

...Let’s ration gas...

...As Jimmy Carter said in January, “Everyday we spend more than $ I20 million ?or foreign oil...

...Let’s let the sheiks suffer for a change...

...Americans have become so wedded to their automobiles that it isn’t clearif any price would make them drive much less...

...experts, and the like that America needs to reduce its huge petroleum import bill (over $40 billion last year, compared to $3.7 billion in 1970...

...Those who couldn’t take public transportation to get to their jobs were entitled to more gasoline, the B ration...

...Gas rationing would give them the same kind of scare their embargo gave us...

...Thus the ration ticket stream flowed from the motorist to the dealer to the distributor to the supplier...

...It isn’t hard to understand why urgency is needed-just think back to the panic of that winter five years ago, the feeling of helplessness, the high inflation, the fear...

...The time was World War I1 and the program was run by the Office of Price Administration (OPA...

...demand is no lower...