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Show News ,T- BEHMft- By PaulMalloIqB Released by Western Newspaper Union. POLITICS ENTERS INTO RATION NEWS WASHINGTON. No point values have been placed on government excuses ex-cuses for restoring point values on basic foods-, and a widely assorted choice of excuses is available some with no point to them and little value behind them. The facts are these: Last spring when OPA removed food rationing restrictions, I reported re-ported to you the stocks of food supplies sup-plies available did not warrant the removal, that it was done for election elec-tion purposes, and was dangerous even if we had bumper 1944 crops, and restrictions would have to be restored immediately after election in any event. Now the government is concocting con-cocting minor truths to cover up the political motive behind be-hind its "mistake" last spring (it is officially called a mistake now), and furnishing sound reasons rea-sons for its latest step which was inevitable anyhow. They say, for Instance, prolongation pro-longation of the war in Europe upset up-set their calculations; that people are eating more than they expected. You can wrap all this kind up and put them aside in any analysis of conditions. They are publicity excuses and pointless because the main one would have required this return to rationing anyway, and actually the administration fared better from unexpected un-expected circumstances than they had reason to expect because the 1944 crop was better than it anticipated antici-pated last spring at planting time. Excuses Given. Another excuse is that too many points had accumulated in the hands of the people for the amount of food now available. People just would not spend 80 points for pineapple juice and 40 or 50 for a bottle of ketchup. These unspent points in reserve had to be killed or the new rationing ration-ing restrictions would not have been effective. So this excuse is true also, though secondary to the main inevitable in-evitable considerations. There is a story going arouni that the left wingers in OPA put this new order over on the alert, clear-eyed Mr. Bowles. There are left-wingers in OPA and they do want always to crack down on everyone, and rub the public pub-lic nose in the dirt. That is their established way of doing things (which I will handle in a later column) . But not much is put over on Mr. Bowles, except by Mrs. Roosevelt, who was unprecedentedly quoted as saying his speeches were "dull" (a criticism, the gratuitousness of which suggested Mr. Bowles is being be-ing steered to play goat for the "mistake" of easing rationing and thus having aided reelection of Mr.' Roosevelt). At any rate, if you accept OPA figures on food, which have been announced in very limited quantities, quanti-ties, you must accept the soundness of restored rationing. Figures Lacking, Of course there are no other figures, fig-ures, and government officials have taken so many conflicting positions and changed them so often that, on the face of the public record, you would appear justified in reaching the conclusion that either they did not know what they were doing or had something deep or disastrous behind all this. The War Food administration, for example, just before election, announced an-nounced ample supplies of food available, and it should know if any-one any-one does. However, a few days later the chief of the bureau, of agricultural agricul-tural economics. Mr. Tolley, who also should know, said the opposite. Some army officials have been saying the armed services have unbelievable un-believable quantities of food in storage, stor-age, but an officer of the quartermaster quarter-master general's office told a Victory Vic-tory garden club in New York last week that all the surplus of the army would not keep the whole country going for a week. This suggests rather plainly no one even yet knows how much food we have (the army does not let the navy know and vice versa, and both consider such information validly enough as military secrets). By its own conflicting acts, therefore, the government has cast eternal suspicion sus-picion on its own statistics and pronouncements. pro-nouncements. There is no ground for beefing about it now. Unqnestionably, however, tight situations exist in butter, aneats, sugar and processed foods and the Bowles figures now at least hare shed the political necessities of Mr. Roosevelt's reelection. Therefore, I would say to the housewife the sparse sound evidence, evi-dence, behind the noise and confusion con-fusion being dinned into her ears, shows the government merely took a long chance for election purposes and escaped better than it eould have, due to the great crops, and large accumulated supplies, bui must ration food more strictly. |