配给供应是先进国家在困难时期采取的一项对全体人民负责的措施 (图)

这就是没有粮票的国家。朱自清饿死不吃美国面粉的故事大家都知道。

当时美国人是不是面粉太多了？非也，美国正在实行面包配给供应制。

Bread rationing from July 21st


From our Food Correspondent
Friday 28 June 1946
guardian.co.uk

The introduction of bread and flour rationing from July 21 was announced by the Food Minister in the House of Commons yesterday.
The ration will be on a varying scale for differing types of workers and children of different ages. For the ordinary adult it will be nine ounces of bread per day, part of which may be taken in flour or cakes.

The Food Minister\'s announcement was described as one of the gravest I have ever heard in time of peace by Mr. Churchill, who demanded that figures of stocks and movements of cereals should be produced by the Government to justify this extreme measure.

Mr. Strachey announced that the meat ration would be increased by 2d. a week from the same date.

A complicated system

The bread and flour rationing scheme which comes into force on July 21 provides for seven different categories of consumers, and their bread unit coupons will have to cover bread, flour, cakes, buns, and scones - all flour products, indeed, which are not already covered by the points system.

Allowances to catering establishments will be restricted, but there will be special provision for industrial canteens and for the packed-meal schemes for workers on heavy manual jobs. Agricultural workers getting the extra cheese ration will be able to get extra coupons.

Bread units

The ration is to be measured in bread units in the most complicated system which our rationing schemes have ever imposed.

The bread units for each week are the same figures as the daily ration in ounces. Thus the ordinary adult can have nine ounces of bread a day and his bread units per week are also nine, which he spends by the use of coupons of varying values from the ordinary ration book.

Bread rationing

The decision to ration bread is an historic one for this country. We were near to rationing in the spring of 1918; the plan was ready and the spares in the ration card prepared. We came near to it during the late war, especially when the submarine attacks were at their worst. It is profound irony that it should be in the year of peace and recovery that we have to accept this new hardship. But it is a thing to be taken philosophically and without passion. It stands to reason that no British Government, especially one as anxious to keep popular support as the Labour Government, would needlessly run its head into such fresh difficulties. Nor is it as though we alone were going to be inconvenienced. The United States, flowing with milk and honey and the rest, also is rather short of bread. And from the same causes. Yesterday President Truman was telling American housewives that if they often find it hard to buy a loaf of bread they ought to be pleased because the loaf of bread and the bag of flour they do not buy means that much more for hungry children abroad. Indeed, if we read some of the accounts of the way the American public has been behaving in the last few weeks we should be glad that the Government is going to even out distribution by rationing. We shall not have bodyguards round bakers\' vans to prevent attacks from angry housewives. We shall manage things, we may hope, more decently and fairly.

The essence of the plan is to make our supplies go round until in a few months we get the advantage of the next harvest, which, from all accounts will in general be good. The Government must realise that, besides the unscrupulous political twist which some Conservatives and their papers are giving to the food problem, there is genuine bewilderment among large sections of the people. They understand the grave shortages in Germany and Austria and in India and are ready to help. They are less clear about the shortages in some European countries where black-marketing seems to be a principal industry and where there is at least suspicion that U.N.R.R.A. supplies are being politically manipulated. We shall have to see how the scheme works out. But the Government must be prepared for a more critical public than that on which Lord Woolton avuncularly bestowed the nation\'s food as it were a personal gift. The bedside manner will no longer suffice.