The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-12-23

V the other win be, for even if it knew 1t wouldn't be wise to give that ad- vance warning to the stores or the customers, Book No, 3 will be con. Siderably thicker than Book No. 2, meaning 1t will be good for more than two commodities, Books { and $ may be Still thicker,
 The routine for getting Ration Book No, ? has been Simplified as much as possible, All you will have to do is produce your Ration Book No, l, now used for sugar and cof- fee, The data on the cover of Book No, will be copied of on Book No, ,, YouM sign your name, The ration board clerk will tear one specified stamp out of, Book No, l as a receipt for having issued you Book No, 2, X VAST TASK
 The amount of sweat toll and tears that 90 into one of these ra- tioning programs is almost un- believahle, There is considerable beefing now because rationing of meat is not yet in effect, though the shortage is actually here. But the only reason compulsory meat ra- tioning is not yet in effect is that the OpA boys haven't been able to figure out all the angles,
 Planning the meat raioning pro- gram has been in charge of John J, Madigan, University of Colorado boy who learned the meat business the hard way, That Is, he went to work for Armour in Chicago after he had graduated from the Harvard School Of Business Administration and done three years extra re- search work which won him doc tors degree in commercial science, But for the last eight or nine years he has been running slaughter houses and stockyards and meat distribution centerS from St, Joseph, Mo, to New York, so he knows his butchering
 Meat rationing was first ofi1clally mentioned out loud last August 3i when the Department of Agricul- ture said it would be set up in about four months. That was an optimis- tic guess. It will take at least five months to get everybody set, maybe longer. No one is mentioning any specific date as yet. nor is there any assurance that the two-and-a half pounds per person per week will be the fixed ration.
 Department of Agriculture cut quotas of beef to 80 per cent, then 70 per cent of civilian consumption in l94l for the three months period ending December S1. Butchers and consumers bought ahead. figuring the cut was meaningless and that they'd be given more when the quota ran out. They're finding out now how wrong they were.
 THE CHICAGO METHOD
 Butchering technique has had to be standardized on what's known as the Chicago method, with l9 primal cuts for wholesalers. This won't af- feet the cuts which the consumer buys. except that the armed services will get the best primal cuts. Price ceilings had to be worked out for all the meats to be rationed, beef, veal pork. mutton and lamb.
 Printing Ration Book No. 2 has been the worlds biggest printing job. To provide one book for l34 million people. l50 million books had to be printed. It took a month to make the safety paper and an- other month to print. Practically every press capable of handling a piece of the job was put to work on 24-hour basis. The books would fill three 40-car trains.
 The point system had to be work ed out. with assigned point values for every cut of meat. And finally. the ration banking system tried in the Albany area had to be perfect ed and spread to the entire country so that the retailers would have some medium of exchange for the 26. 6.264 900 900 coupons theyll collect from Book No. alone.
 This should give you an idea of , the headaches involved.