We need to understand what is required of us, too, because we must reverse attitudes and habits to which we have been accustomed in the past. Although stores are still full of goods that were produced in 1940 and 1941 when more things were made for civilians than in any previous two years, many shelves will be bare as soon as present stocks are gone. It is not only a matter of the refrigerators, automobiles, electric toasters and other products whose production was stopped or cut to the bone in the spring of 1942. Shoes and blankets for our soldiers, food for our fighting forces and our allies demand a large part of our national ability to produce. We can no longer deal with shortages one by one.
Every new shortage creates ten or a hundred others and thus sends ripples through the whole economy.
For substitutes in turn become short. Abridgement of pp.