A STUDY IN GREY AND BLACK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 434, 17 October 1947, Page 7

A STUDY IN GREY AND BLACK

| Forty Tons of Ration Books

received our seventh series ration-book and admired its close resemblance to a. chequebook. And the simple act of standing in a post office queue, or getting somebody else to do it for us, will have been an annoying, but probably the smallest part of the huge job of organisation that the Rationing Office and Post and Telegraph Department undertake every October. As the couponbook must be part of the personal property of everyone who wants to eat meat and drink tea, The Listener asked K. G. Gunn, of the Rationing Control Office, to say something about the new issue. Explaining the differénce between last year’s book and the new one, She said that this year’s was printed on a special grey paper with a fleck in it. Last year the coupons were inscribed on manila wrapping paper, tinted green. "How much paper do you use?" "Including the covers, about 40 tons." "And is there any one printing firm here large enough to do the job as well as its ordinary work?" "No; this year the books are ‘being printed in Wellington, Levin and Gisborne. Special paper is made for the job by the mills at Mataura." "Of course precautions are taken against illegal possession of a rationbdok; but what’s -to gic leakage from stocks?" "The quantities of paper held are known exactly, kept under lock and key, and constantly checked. What is not used is re-pulped." The idea of having an, oblong book this year instead of the almost square book like that used in England, was to save paper and labour, Mr. Gunn explained. Paper was saved by having as small a margin as possible. B: now many of us will have The Customer is Sometimes Wrong Mr. Gunn described some of the queer customers his office has encountered. When rationing first started with sugar and stockings, he met people of independent mind who refused to ‘use the books at all. But that species

of consumer is extinct now. Occasionally someone from the _ back-country who has never had a book because he had no need of it comes along. And then there are the keen ones who want to strike a bargain-"We will give you all’ our meat coupons if you will let us have more sugar," they say. These usually turn out to be vegetarians. But bargaining is not allowed. Diabetic patients who want more butter must give up their sugar coupons. Books are lost at the rate of thousands a month. Generally they are left on shop counters, and the usual excuse is that they have been burnt while clearing out rubbish. Eventually they find their way to the Rationing Office and in an extraordinary number of cases they bear no names or addresses; either _ they have become obliterated or have never been inserted. Guarding Against Abuse "We try to make it as easy as possible to replace the books in genuine cases of loss, but we take the greatest care to ensure that our system is not epen to abuse," said Mr. Gunn. "A person seeking a new book has to wait a fortnight and part with half-a-crown." "Do you know of many people having two or more books?" "Sometimes a book is reported lost; another is issued, and the original retained. We can’t search people’s houses to check up. Then there are the people who die or leave the country, which can sometimes account for the possession of two books by somebody else. We have written to England and elsewhere to see if there is a way of ensuring that nobody can have an extra book, but so far no watertight scheme has been devised." But the greedy ones are generally caught out. When a person says he has lost his book, gets a new one, and then tries to get butter from his grocer on the old one, the Ration Office hears about it in the end. Illegal use of a ration-book carries a penalty of £100. plus £10 for each continuing day of the offence, or three months in gaol. One of the chief worries is that the really unscrupulous person may get

away with it for a while. There has been only one case of counterfeiting coupons-hosiery, in this instance. The grocery trade, says Mr. Gunn, : helps the Rationing Office a lot by reporting irregularities. "How do the tradesmen look on rationing?" "They are the people who get nothing out of it but, hard work and the public can be inconsiderate to them. Customers put on pressure. ‘If you don’t give me extra butter,’ some are fond of saying, ‘Tl transfer my custom down the road.’ The butchers have the same bother. After all these years one would -think people would have more consideration. Then there is the customer who rushes in on the last day of the period-every fourth Friday-and demands all the rations." "How could the general public help the Rationing Office and, incidentally, the tradespeople?" Lost on Day of Issue "First by handing ir their old book when getting the new one. Then they could be sure to insert their names and addresses plainly. It would probably surprise you to know that scores of people lose their books on the day of issue-in the post office itself, as a matter of fact." "Does all this give you a poor idea of human nature?" "Oh no; most people are perfectly honest. Most lost books are returned to us, and if they bear a name an ‘address they are, as often as not, returned direct to the owner. But we can’t help being amused at the little tricks some people get up to."