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Old 10-10-2020, 09:28 AM   #20
alexiskai
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Default Re: Scrap Drives May Have Trashed Cars, But Were the Drives Necessary?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry, NJ View Post
One thing that always rankled me was the "Gun drives" that they had. The Govt told gun owners they should donate their privately owned rifles, shotguns, pistols etc. to the British so their people could resist the coming German invasion. We donated thousands of guns, which the Brits never returned. They used them to reinforce concrete sidewalks, etc after the war, and we never saw them again.
Terry
There was a similar thing with the cooking fat drives. The public perception was that the cooking fat was needed for glycerin to make ammo, but in fact the gov't had no trouble sourcing enough glycerin. Rockoff writes:
"Munitions makers operating on cost-plus contracts with the government could easily outbid rivals for what they needed. Rather, the fat salvage drive was undertaken for the soap makers who organized and financed the drive. Soap production was high during the war by prewar standards, and fat supplies were also relatively abundant, especially later in the war. By January of 1944, lard was so abundant that the government was having storage difficulties. But price controls meant that there was excess demand for soap. Early in the war (organizational meetings for the fat salvage campaign began in April 1942), soap makers feared that if soap were rationed, some of the consumers forced to cut their use of soap during the war would learn that they could do with less. Rationing, in other words, would spoil postwar markets. As far as the soap producers were concerned, anything that would avoid the need to ration soap was worth doing."

The fact that all these drives were "public-private partnerships," with the affected industry absorbing a lot of the publicity costs, gives you a different sense of whose interests were being served.
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