CHAPTER TWO

UNITY AND TENSION
ON THE HOME FRONT

“They went out for a holiday and found war.”¹ Sunday, December 7, 1941, was “children’s afternoon” on Wisconsin Avenue. The day was sunny. After church thousands of Milwaukee families strolled the avenue, admiring Christmas displays in shop windows, listening to Christmas chimes over the loudspeakers, laughing with Santa Claus. There were only fourteen shopping days before Christmas. “Sergeant York” was drawing crowds to the movie theater. Radios carried music, football, learned discussion, and the first news of war into homes and automobiles. As news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor slowly spread, people reacted with shock and surprise. By late afternoon, newsboys heralded war.

Small groups discussed the news in taverns and hotels. Although many people found the reports hard to believe, they viewed the outcome as certain. Edwin Hellmich, a local cab driver, typified the prevailing mood when he told a Milwaukee Journal reporter, “There’s no question but that the United States, with unlimited resources, will win.” Margaret Felch, who told a reporter that she worked as a “demonstrator,” commented, “The war is a shame and it’s too bad, but how beautiful we’re going to beat those Japanese. We’ll wipe them out. I stayed up until 1:45 A.M. listening to the radio. I have a son and three sons-in-law who will be ready to go if they’re needed.”

The same certitude was expressed in Milwaukee’s small Chinese community. With American involvement in the war, the cause of supporting their former homeland against an invader merged with the interests of their new home. When news of the attack on Pearl Harbor arrived, a meeting to discuss aid to the poor in China and the purchase of United States defense bonds was already in progress at Jack King Wong’s importing house. The group immediately turned to the radio for news. “We decided to offer ourselves to the United States,” Jack Wong announced to a reporter. “All of us promise to do everything we can, financially and physically, to help. We want Uncle Sam to take any of our boys who can serve in the army and navy. The rest of us will work hard at home.”

The Japanese attack even brought old enemies together. Lansing Hoyt, leader of the Wisconsin chapter of the America First Committee, responded by announcing that Japanese cities should be bombed “to the ground. . . . We have been for defense all along. . . . Now we are for offense. It looks like war against the Axis.” Edmund Shea, president of the Wisconsin Committee to Defend America and a staunch opponent of the isolationist position of America First, urged all Americans to support the defense of the nation.²

For Dorothy Tuchman the evening of December 7 was supposed to be a joyous time. A party was planned as a send-off for a good friend who had been drafted and was leaving for military service. As she recalled, “the whole tenor of the evening changed because all of a sudden we were in the war and it was an entirely different feeling about his leaving. There was much more stress and much more worry. He was the first one that was actually going into the service. So it was a traumatic day.”³

As people began to adapt their lives to the war, city and company officials posted armed guards to protect industries, utilities, and railroad facilities from sabotage. Eager young recruits swamped recruiting offices—the first of many thousands of young men and women who would heed the nation’s call to arms. In all, some 330,000 Wisconsinites would serve in the various branches of the military.⁴

All over the city on December 8, Milwaukeeans listened to the broadcast of President Roosevelt’s address to the joint session of Congress requesting a declaration of war. Pedestrians paused as loudspeakers on Wisconsin Avenue broadcast the President’s words. The day before, these same speakers had played Christmas carols. Elsewhere traffic halted so pedestrians could catch the news broadcast from car radios. Public library patrons lingered in front of a replica of the Declaration of Independence to listen to the radio, as did the customers of Frank Geier’s tavern and Jacob Stockinger in his butcher shop. The district court suspended proceedings so judges, attorneys, court workers, policemen, and prisoners could hear the Presidential address.⁵

In a way few people expected, the attack on Pearl Harbor answered the question of whether America could avoid involvement in another European war. Ironically, conflict in Asia brought the United States into the Second World War. Since 1932 episodes such as the Japanese slaughter of civilians in Shanghai had appalled Americans but did not divert their attention from economic problems at home. When Japan’s aggressive behavior erupted into war in China in 1937, Americans strongly supported the Chinese but still did not favor active involvement. Soon thereafter, events in Europe overshadowed Japanese conquests in Asia.

Since September 1939 American attention had focused with growing apprehension on Germany’s rapid conquest of Europe. When Germany invaded Poland, Americans did not want to enter the war, but they had no sympathy for Germany. Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and mighty France were the next to fall, leaving Great Britain alone in the fight. Although organizations such as America First vocally opposed entry into the war on the side of the British Empire, most Americans favored an Allied victory. Unlike World War I, there was never any meaningful support for the German cause among the American population. By late 1941, with Hitler’s armies at the gates of Moscow and victorious in North Africa, Americans had concluded that war was preferable to German victory.

While Hitler’s forces advanced across Europe, the Japanese army established a strong presence in French Indo-China. By the summer of 1941 they threatened the Dutch East Indies with its rich oil fields, a resource the Emperor’s armed forces needed badly if they were to pursue their war. President Franklin Roosevelt took an increasingly hard line on Japanese aggression and had embargoed oil and scrap metal. In July the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands completed the economic isolation of Japan by freezing that nation’s assets—a virtual act of war. Diplomatic negotiations during the summer and fall failed to resolve the differences between the United States and Japan.

By late November a slight majority of Americans believed the United States would soon be at war with Japan. On the very morning of the day war broke out, the newspapers in Milwaukee reported that 125,000 Japanese troops were massed in Indo-China and a major Japanese fleet was headed toward the Gulf of Siam. President Roosevelt had sent a message directly to Emperor Hirohito, protesting the troop concentrations. The Milwaukee Journal quoted Lieutenant General Teiichi Suzuki, president of the cabinet planning board, as saying: “We Japanese are tensely watching to see whether President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill will commit the epoch making crime of further extending the world upheaval.” Karl H. Von Wiegand, chief foreign correspondent for the Hearst Newspapers, reported: “Completely shut off by America and Britain from the Dutch East Indies, Japan today was grimly confronted by the more immediate question of whether to shed national blood for oil. . . .” The Milwaukee Sentinel titled the article “Von Wiegand Says: Japs Face Choice of ‘Blood for Oil.’ ”⁶

The fact that the United States was finally at war was not what surprised Americans; rather, it was the manner of our entry into the war. Overnight, the devastation in Hawaii made the entire nation seem vulnerable. Suddenly American attention focused on the common purpose of defeating the Axis. Anxiety and outrage over the “day of infamy” were quickly replaced by a national sense of purpose, of participation in a heroic crusade against a common enemy. The sense of purpose engendered by the phrase “national unity” meant that Americans shared a determination to destroy an evil force in the world. Although “national unity” meant many different things to those who stayed on the home front, no other single phrase better described the national mood.

Milwaukeeans greeted the advent of war with the same determination as other Americans. They did not want to be at war, but once the conflict was forced upon them, they acted with patriotic fervor to win it as speedily as possible. Everyone felt the effect of the war, whether through concern for loved ones in danger, longer work hours, consumer shortages, or participation in war service organizations. Everyone worked toward the day when the Axis would be defeated, the killing would end, and society would return to “normal.”

Work, volunteer activities, and financial contributions to wartime agencies provided the basic mechanisms through which most people on the home front participated in the war effort. Popular images of Americans united in an effort to defeat the Axis often include men and women in overalls at factory benches, campaigns for war relief or war bonds, air-raid wardens in steel helmets patrolling darkened streets, and children collecting scrap metal. These activities represented the most obvious and symbolic ways in which civilians supported the war.

Nonetheless, Americans did not share a universal view of the best means by which people on the home front could serve the cause; nor did they possess a common vision of the world of the future and the best way of achieving it. They interpreted the demands of the nation in light of what they perceived as important. Throughout the war people made rational decisions regarding the best way to support the war effort. Whether they served on Office of Price Administration (OPA) ration boards, Red Cross relief committees, civil defense groups, factory fire brigades, or scrap and bond drives, people chose their war work carefully. They avoided projects that held little relevance for their daily lives and supported projects that touched them directly or promised to yield tangible benefits for the war effort. For example, attempts to devise a civil defense system in Milwaukee demonstrated that residents did not blindly respond to the rhetoric of community leaders concerned about the lack of defense preparations. The majority of Milwaukeeans viewed the threat of enemy air attacks as unlikely, and instead they assisted activities such as blood drives and conservation campaigns which had a clear purpose and an immediate impact on their daily lives.

“National unity” masked diverse and sometimes contradictory individual reactions to the war. Americans willingly supported the war effort, but their sense of unity and devotion to that effort could not produce consensus where none existed. At times the sense of national purpose could bring about compromises that helped the war effort, but it could not heal the wounds of prewar industrial conflict, nor could it solve serious social problems that plagued the nation.

For organized labor, the war presented significant opportunities for cooperation with management, but also new venues within which to fight old battles. The success of blood drives and bond drives in Milwaukee clearly illustrated the power of cooperation between labor and business interests in achieving common wartime goals. In contrast, years of conflict between the Milwaukee Industrial Union Council (CIO) and local business leaders lay behind a protracted struggle over CIO participation in local Community-War Chest campaigns. In a corollary to wartime disputes on the factory shop floor, CIO leadership maintained its support for the War Chest and at the same time fought for participation and recognition in the Chest campaigns against business leaders intent on limiting labor influence.

Industrial conflict during the war also must be viewed in the context of the social tensions inherent in wartime life. Americans contributed to winning the war in subtle ways through the sacrifices they made. Rationing, housing shortages, and transportation problems disrupted established patterns of daily living. Rationing made it difficult to buy meat and butter in the quantities many people believed necessary for good health. It sidetracked the American love affair with automobiles and forced workers in cities such as Milwaukee to find alternative means of getting to work. Likewise, the housing shortage, which had developed during the Depression, reached crisis proportions as workers flocked to Milwaukee’s war plants. Although they were often taken for granted and borne with a certain grace and humor, these changes in everyday life added to the inherent tension of wartime society.

The attack on Pearl Harbor and the rapid Japanese advances in the Pacific riveted attention on domestic security as well as the war overseas. Within forty-eight hours of America’s entry into the war, federal, state, and local officials detained forty-nine Germans and one Italian in Wisconsin as enemy aliens. Guards were placed on Milwaukee’s filtration plant and pumping stations. Defense factories began requiring identification badges and were placed under twenty-four-hour guard.⁷ Likewise, the embryonic civil defense network began preparing for air raids. The call went out for thousands of volunteers to act as spotters, wardens, and air patrol pilots. Preliminary plans had already been laid for evacuating parts of the city, caring for the population, establishing a radio communication system, and providing an emergency water supply.⁸

Despite the initial appearance of efficiency, Milwaukee’s civil defense system was seldom able to recruit enough people to fill its needs because relatively few demonstrated sustained interest in this effort. Attempts to mobilize local residents for defense activities largely went unheeded. The county’s defense requirements called for approximately 49,000 auxiliary police, auxiliary firefighters, air-raid wardens, aircraft spotters, rescue personnel, and medical aides; only 7,082 volunteered. (By contrast, 16,266 people enrolled in the salvage and the morale-building committees and in other branches of the welfare services.)⁹

Two and a half months after the war started, Milwaukee had not established an air-raid signal, indeed did not even have a siren system over which to broadcast such a signal. There were only a handful of air-raid wardens and no rescue, bomb, or decontamination squads. Preparations to handle medical problems resulting from an air raid had advanced only a little beyond normal conditions. The police department was training an auxiliary force of 2,100 men, but this was less than half its goal. The fire department made even less progress toward meeting its goal of 2,000 auxiliary firefighters. Not only had few people volunteered, but the department was ill-equipped to teach large numbers of people to fight fires. Their most successful program involved training factory workers, who returned to local companies and created fire brigades. Milwaukee was simply unprepared to deal with an air attack—and seemed not to care.¹⁰

This problem was never completely resolved. The last of four wartime blackouts, on May 27, 1943, demonstrated that the defense council and the public had finally learned how to darken the city; but that was the only major achievement of the protective services. The defense council enrolled a credible force of air-raid wardens and auxiliary police who faithfully enforced blackouts, but the council never brought the city’s inadequate warning system up to code.

The areas in which the civil defense system functioned best were those in which it had always been strong: auxiliary police, medical personnel, and services and supplies. All three of these areas drew their strength from existing organizations. In the first days of the war, the council of defense channeled large numbers of volunteers to the police department, which was prepared to train and utilize them quickly. The strength of the emergency medical service was founded on the organizational work of the county medical society. The supply branch drew its manpower and equipment from the Transport Company, the Yellow Cab Company, the trucking lines, and the public utilities.¹¹

Of the protective services, only the air-raid wardens grew to any appreciable strength without the assistance of some well-organized patron group. Most other civil defense services struggled to secure volunteers. This was not for lack of publicity. Repeatedly officials warned of Milwaukee’s vulnerability to air attack and called for more volunteers.¹² By 1943, as the Allied counteroffensives rolled back the enemy tide worldwide, warnings about Nazi warplanes over Milwaukee took on a decided aura of unreality. They seemed designed to keep American spirits committed to civil defense as the real need for such measures declined. When a German broadcast stated that Washington, Boston, and New York were not safe from attack, James Landis, national director of civilian defense, warned, “The enemy wants pictures of burning American cities to show his people. The enemy will strike wherever the element of surprise is in his favor. WE MUST NOT ASSUME THAT THE THREE CITIES MENTIONED ARE THE ONLY ONES IN DANGER.”

The Civilian Defense News, official bulletin of the Milwaukee County Council of Defense, used Landis’s remarks to demonstrate that Milwaukee was open to attack. Indeed, the defense publication argued, Milwaukee was closer to Norway than was New York, and even more vulnerable to Japanese planes based on Kiska in the Aleutian Islands!¹³

Leon Gurda, Milwaukee’s building inspector and chairman of the civilian defense committee on air-raid shelters and demolition, also pointed to the city’s vulnerability when chastising the citizenry for its failure to take civilian defense seriously. According to Gurda, people seemed to think that air-raid preparations were a joke. He had been informed by military officials that Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit might be bombed during the summer. Gurda intended to act upon the advice and warned, “To do anything else is not common sense. Nor is it logical for civilians who know military strategy to be so cock-sure that ‘it can’t happen here.’ ”¹⁴

As with business and professional organizations, labor unions participated in the protective services in a variety of ways. Labor officials were appointed to state and local defense councils and participated on many of the committees that assisted these organizations.¹⁵ Unions also attempted to mobilize their members to support the protective services. Early in 1942 the women’s auxiliary of UAW-CIO Local 248 at Allis-Chalmers launched a campaign to enlist women in the civil defense effort. In the case of Flat Janitors’ Local 150-B, the entire local joined either the air-raid wardens or the fire wardens, while members of Local 494 of the Electrical Workers’ Union offered their assistance for clearing high voltage wires that might be downed by an air attack. In addition, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union provided first aid instruction for its members, a basic requirement for anyone wishing to serve in the protective services.¹⁶

As widespread as such activity may have been, it had little impact on preparedness. The demolition squads provided a poignant example of the problems faced by the protective services, even when they benefited from strong organizational support. In November 1942 Laborers’ Local 113, Teamsters Local 200, Operating Engineers Local 139, and Iron Workers Local 8 formed a squad of 300 construction experts to deal with air-raid destruction, shore up buildings, clear debris, and help defense work run smoothly. The Labor Press article announcing formation of this group also contained an appeal by Leon Gurda for enrollment of enough construction workers to bring the demolition squadron up to its full strength of 3,000. Four months later Gurda could count only 181 volunteers on the combined rolls of the demolition, rescue, and air-raid shelter crews.¹⁷

Americans were not apathetic, as some bureaucrats charged at the time. Virtually everyone, children as well as adults, was engaged actively in some aspect of the war effort; but most tended to choose activities that directly touched their lives. Thus, a woman might join the workforce to help her brother or husband in the armed forces or to make ends meet, and a storekeeper might subscribe to an extra bond because the neighbor’s son was a prisoner of war. The air-raid warden program successfully recruited volunteers without relying on any preexisting institutional support because it operated at a level with which everyone could identify: the neighborhood.

Similarly, measures to protect factory facilities had a particular impact on the daily lives of most factory workers and met with more success than the defense council’s protective services. The contrasting record of the auxiliary firemen and the factory fire brigades provide the best example of this phenomenon. About a month after Pearl Harbor, 235 employees of Kearney and Trecker began a fire-fighting course offered by the West Allis fire department. The program was purportedly the first such effort in the nation, and 100 workers from other West Allis plants immediately asked to participate. On February 2, 1942, the Milwaukee fire department opened a “fire college” to train auxiliary firemen and factory fire brigade members. By June it had trained 475 industrial workers, 880 auxiliary firemen, and 2,168 employees of the Transport Company, operator of Milwaukee’s bus system.

Although the number of industrial firefighters met with general approval, city fire officials remained concerned over the low auxiliary enrollment. The 880 who had been trained constituted less than one-third of the civil defense requirement, and defense officials were troubled by the high turnover rate among auxiliary firemen. By contrast, many of the industrial trainees were fire brigade leaders who returned to their plants to train fellow workers. By the end of 1942 the number of industrial firemen trained by this program had increased almost fivefold and involved workers from over 130 Milwaukee plants. The seventy-seven auxiliary firemen who graduated from the school in December swelled the county’s auxiliary fire-fighting force to only 450 men. In other words, while participation in the industrial program soared, participation in the auxiliary program fell by nearly 50 percent.¹⁸

The reasons for this dichotomy lay in the fact that factory fire-protection units often garnered the support of unions and management alike. In many cases, companies paid workers a small stipend while they attended training meetings on their own time. More importantly, the threat of a factory fire was well within the realm of possibility, while few Milwaukeeans took the threat of an air raid seriously. Factory workers could identify with a fire-protection squad much more readily than they could with a civil defense demolition squad. A factory fire caused by a stray spark or a careless action could kill fellow workers and cripple a factory’s ability to produce war supplies.

Although the level of industrial preparation for an air raid never satisfied defense officials,¹⁹ the growth of factory protection programs compared favorably with the stagnant civil defense system. This contrast highlighted the problems inherent in trying to form volunteer organizations for which many people saw little need. People participated in the wartime welfare services—blood donation, salvage drives, bond sales, and relief activities—because these activities clearly relieved suffering, saved lives, and furthered the war effort. While defense officials bemoaned the public’s apathy, the citizens of Milwaukee demonstrated their commitment to the war effort through participation in war bond purchases and the community chest campaigns.

Unlike during the First World War, when bond sales were limited to special drives, the publicity to buy bonds during the Second World War was continuous. The federal government advocated the purchase of bonds as a mechanism to reduce the inflationary pressure of consumer spending by encouraging saving. Store window displays, radio programs, and newspaper advertisements constantly urged people to devote a greater portion of their financial resources to the war effort by buying bonds through participation in payroll savings plans or by purchasing them independently.

Virtually everyone on Milwaukee’s home front felt the pressure to buy bonds. Bond drives and payroll savings plans provided a means by which the average person could participate directly and clearly in the war effort. They provided a tangible means of expressing support for friends and relatives on the battle front. Purchasing a bond served as a statement of national unity.²⁰

The success of appeals for war bond purchases or charitable contributions in general depended heavily on the cooperation of companies and unions in Milwaukee. When both the company and the union, two agencies that touched workers’ lives almost every day, issued a cooperative appeal to employees, the results could be astounding. When one factory labor-management committee, established under the auspices of the War Production Board, became concerned over the rate at which workers were curbing their purchases of war bonds through the company payroll savings plan, a joint effort involving the company and the union successfully tackled the problem. The committee interviewed every worker who wanted to cut his or her bond purchases, and attempted to find other ways to meet the employees’ financial difficulties. As a consequence, only 25 percent of the reductions in the payroll savings plan requested by workers in this plant were actually carried out.

Labor-management cooperation could be equally successful when it came to selling bonds. Local 47 of the Fur and Leather Workers teamed with the management of Albert Trostel and Sons to set the pace for the last bond drive of the war. The labor-management committee offered the workers a full-course dinner at noon on Wednesday, March 21, 1945, to kick off the campaign. The drive actually started on March 20, and by the time of the dinner, the workers had already subscribed to the company’s goal of $44,000. Trostel was the first company in Milwaukee to meet its goal for the 7th War Bond Drive. Cooperation in the building trades produced similar results during the seventh war loan drive. With a quota of $1 million, the Joint Committee of the Building Construction Industry in Milwaukee sold nearly three times that amount.²¹

An Office of War Information report issued in the summer of 1943 underscored the significance of labor’s role in the promotion of bond sales. Half of the 27 million workers enrolled in the payroll savings plan, it claimed, came from the ranks of organized labor. For all practical purposes, this meant that virtually every union member in the nation participated in some way in the payroll program. In addition, 70 percent of the $425 million in bonds purchased each month through the payroll savings plan came from the pay envelopes of union members. Although bond purchases never reached the level desired by the government as a curb on inflationary spending, these purchases provided a partial curb on buying power. In 1944, for example, the participation of millions of Americans in the payroll plan siphoned 7.1 percent of the national income after taxes out of purchasing power and into series E bonds.²²

Many other appeals besides the bond drives also bombarded Americans. Appeals went forth for the community chest, the Red Cross fund, and foreign relief. In all of these campaigns the workplace, the company, and the union became focal points for soliciting contributions. In Milwaukee the Federated Trades Council and Industrial Union Council successfully sought support for a wide variety of humanitarian programs, but the cooperation of union locals was equally important. The parent organizations could promote and advertise, but they could achieve little without the active cooperation of local unions. As with the selling of bonds, many of the best examples of organized blood donations came from those factories in which the union and management had a sound working relationship. Thus, at A. O. Smith the company provided workers with transportation to the blood center and assisted in circulating donor cards through the plant. At International Harvester the company and the union were honored with certificates commending their cooperation with the Red Cross. To promote blood donations, United Electrical Workers’ Local 1131 and the Louis Allis Company organized “Louis Allis Buddies Week,” the immediate goal of which was to secure a pint of blood for every employee in the armed forces. Before the drive posters went up throughout the plant and letters went out to all employees. The company provided numbered buttons indicating how many times an employee had donated and attached donor reservation cards to each time card so that workers could indicate the best time to donate. Nearly five hundred workers responded to this cooperative call, and donors were listed on an honor roll that was distributed to company employees in the armed services.²³

Just as in the case of bond drives and blood campaigns, contributions to the Community-War Chest of Milwaukee County illustrated the willingness of Americans to contribute more than their labor to the war effort, and it provided graphic examples of how effectively unions could mobilize their members. In 1942, for example, labor was expected to contribute $850,000 during the War Chest campaign, approximately one-third of the goal of $2.4 million. When the contributions were tallied, 550 AFL locals in Milwaukee County had given $358,728, nearly triple their pledges of the previous year. Employees of approximately ninety factories organized by the CIO contributed $320,092, topped their quota, and quadrupled the previous year’s donation. In other words, workers at factories in Milwaukee County organized by the major labor federations contributed almost 80 percent of labor’s quota for the drive.²⁴

The success of the 1942 Community-War Chest campaign reflected not only the value of labor-management cooperation, but also the power of wartime unity to bring labor and management together despite their conflicts. Relations between the Federated Trades Council and the Community-War Chest were cordial throughout the war. On the surface, the county Industrial Union Council was also on good terms with the charity organization. Beneath the surface, cooperation was threatened by a disagreement between the Milwaukee CIO and major industrial supporters of the Community-War Chest over the role the CIO would play in the 1942 campaign. Nonetheless, no one wanted the conflict to become public, because a public airing of the problem would not have been in the interest of the fund drive or the war effort.

The 1942 problem began when the CIO and the AFL negotiated an agreement with the Community Chests and Councils, Inc. sanctioning a cooperative solicitation program for 1942 and encouraging local groups to reach agreements under which such solicitations could operate. These local agreements were to give organized labor due credit for funds raised. The Milwaukee AFL quickly reached such an understanding based on the standard of soliciting 10 percent of one week’s pay (equivalent to four to five hours annually depending on overtime) as a Community-War Chest pledge. Reaching an agreement on local CIO participation was more difficult, despite the fact that the national CIO was proposing standard pledges of one hour’s pay per month (twelve hours annually). The local CIO insisted that 40 percent of the money raised (four hours) be distributed to the American Red Cross and to international relief agencies, such as Russian War Relief, in which the CIO had an interest. This formula left eight hours’ pay for the local Community-War Chest, almost double the amount per contributor planned by the AFL in Milwaukee.²⁵

The local agreement almost floundered because it recognized CIO interests and clearly identified the CIO as a participant in the solicitation campaign. The day after Milwaukee Community-War Chest officials reached an agreement with local CIO leaders, Edmund Fitzgerald, vice president of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, told Fred Goldstone, “I think we have reason to feel better about the C.I.O. matter but I still have very husky reservations about the reception we will get from employers.” He believed the CIO representatives were too optimistic and that “we may find a number of spots where there will be a definite objection to too much cooperation with them.” He recommended that Goldstone meet with plant captains at Allis-Chalmers, Harnischfeger, Nordberg, Heil Company, Chain Belt, and Phoenix Hosiery as soon as possible to explain the situation and resolve any misunderstandings.²⁶

Fitzgerald’s concerns were well founded. Upon learning of the special arrangement with the CIO, Walter Harnischfeger informed Fred Goldstone that the Harnischfeger Company would not contribute to the Chest that year. Goldstone sympathized with the irate industrialist’s view and acknowledged that several businessmen on the executive committee of the Chest felt the same way. Nonetheless, these other businessmen had accepted the plan “in the interest of the community and the War Chest.” Harnischfeger agreed to think it over for a few days before making any recommendation to his executive committee. Later, Mr. Moorbeck of Nordberg Manufacturing Company called Goldstone about the same issue. After the joint solicitation program was explained, Moorbeck indicated that he thought it would work well. Shortly thereafter, “Buck” Story, vice president of Allis-Chalmers, also called. Although he did not like the situation, Story agreed that the Chest had little choice but to cooperate with the CIO. After these encounters and the lengthy explanations they required, Goldstone told William Coleman of the Bucyrus-Erie Company that “There are 79 CIO plants in Milwaukee and I think probably I should install a public addressograph system in order to reach all of them at once.”²⁷

A second major dispute arose over who should represent the CIO on the Community-War Chest Board of Directors. The Chest required that participating organizations submit at least three nominees for each position on the board of directors, from which the Chest would pick one. The Federated Trades Council followed this requirement,²⁸ but the Industrial Union Council insisted on appointing its own representatives to such organizations. When the matter was discussed in July 1943, CIO leaders emphasized that their nominees were in the best position to carry the campaign back to the members of the CIO in Milwaukee. Nonetheless, Harold Christoffel, president of the Milwaukee Industrial Union Council, suggested a possible compromise. If the Chest would nominate members of the public, trying to achieve a representative cross-section of the city’s population, Christoffel suggested that the Chest might nominate CIO members, and the Industrial Union Council might accept these nominees.

Edmund Fitzgerald recommended privately that the Community Chest accept part of Christoffel’s offer as a solution to the representation problem. Instead of nominating members of the board of directors from a cross-section of the public, Fitzgerald proposed an alternative slate of CIO representatives consisting of Alex Scrobell (Vice President of the Milwaukee County Industrial Union Council), Walter Burke (Secretary-Treasurer of the State CIO), Anthony Carpenter (regional director of the CIO Committee for American and Allied War Relief), and Mel Heinritz (Legislative Representative of the State CIO). “In this way,” Fitzgerald noted, “we avoid any of their nominations, we get men who have had experience in our organization, and we have the Vice President of the Industrial Union Council as a Director.” Apparently nothing ever came of Fitzgerald’s suggestion, for the County Industrial Union Council again proposed its original slate of nominees in December 1943.²⁹

While the CIO maintained its policy of selecting its own representatives, officials of the War Fund believed that they were under legal and ethical obligations as a public agency and as a corporation to maintain ultimate control over the selection of individuals to serve on the board of directors. All other organizations had complied with this policy, and the Chest insisted that the CIO do the same.³⁰

The debate was complicated by the Industrial Union Council’s insistence on Harold Christoffel as its representative. Christoffel was an intelligent, militant unionist who was disliked by much of Milwaukee’s business community. At the same time, he was the logical CIO representative. Christoffel was instrumental in creating the Milwaukee Industrial Union Council, and he had succeeded in building a strong UAW local at Allis-Chalmers despite continuous opposition from the company.

Throughout the dispute, the Industrial Union Council never wavered in its support for the Community-War Chest; but CIO leaders would not relinquish what they perceived to be labor’s prerogatives, nor would businessmen forget old hostilities. Milwaukee’s labor leaders sought community recognition for themselves, their unions, and the workers they represented. When such recognition seemed to strengthen the union movement, as in the case of the CIO and the Community Chest, businessmen resisted this encroachment on what they perceived to be their prerogatives as entrepreneurs and as community leaders. Wartime “unity” had its limits. The dispute between the CIO and the Community-War Chest was a fight among leaders defending their perceived rights and prerogatives. It demonstrated that national unity seldom meant an absence of conflict.

Campaigns for charity asked people for their money; blood drives literally asked for a part of their bodies; welfare services asked for their time. These were public sacrifices, made in the name of the war effort. The war also imposed significant but subtle social costs on Americans. Workers found their freedom to change jobs sharply curtailed by manpower controls, and they underwent the stress and fatigue imposed by expanded working hours. Despite their ability to buy or rent good lodgings, many workers suffered from poor housing conditions for which no remedy existed as long as the war continued. Likewise, they rode transportation systems overburdened by people who, because of wartime shortages and patriotism, no longer used their cars. They endured rationing programs that curtailed the ability to gratify needs and desires deferred because of the Depression and prevented the purchase of meat, sugar, and butter in quantities that many Americans deemed essential. The United States was not ravaged by the war, but its citizens nevertheless made sacrifices for the national cause. These sacrifices helped create a common bond among Americans who were working for victory.

Americans daily made sacrifices to meet demands of the war, but the prosperity of the wartime years and the fact that Americans never suffered from direct attacks at home tend to mask these sacrifices. Compared with the London blitz, the brutality of German occupation, the Holocaust, or the hardships of military life, conditions in the United States were rosy. Nonetheless, such comparisons tend to devalue the role American civilians played in the war effort and to obscure the realities of life on the home front. The war wrought changes—often for the worse—in living conditions and placed stress on the industrial workers who made the “arsenal of democracy” a force for victory.

Few Milwaukeeans suffered for want of food or shelter, but the war forced many people to sacrifice. Rationing facilitated the equitable distribution of most consumer goods, but it also postponed the immediate gratification of many consumer desires. Likewise, use of the family automobile became a luxury, and getting to work could become a challenge, especially for those who did not live close to their place of employment. Despite newfound economic well-being, the housing shortage made it difficult for recently arrived war workers to find a place to live, and it prevented many of those in substandard housing from moving to more adequate quarters.

Wartime population pressures stretched Milwaukee’s housing capability almost to the breaking point. During the Great Depression construction of dwelling units averaged only 722 per year—well behind the average of 2,550 units necessary to keep pace with marriages and population growth. A housing survey conducted in 1935 found a vacancy rate of only 2.5 percent compared with the 4.6 percent rate that city and real estate officials considered necessary for a healthy real estate market. Approximately 4 percent of all city dwelling units contained families who were doubling up because they could not afford adequate single-family accommodations.³¹

Another study four years later concluded that 29 percent of the city’s dwellings were substandard. Of these 48,479 substandard units, almost half lacked permanent heating equipment. In thousands of other cases, families shared toilet facilities or lived in dwellings that lacked flush toilets, running water, or electric lighting. Poverty was the dominant factor preventing most occupants of poor housing from moving to better conditions. The median annual income of families living in substandard housing was between $600 and $799.³²

The war brought little relief. The influx of workers and the rise in personal income created “a tremendous demand for additional dwelling units and . . . relegated many of the families of low income to the least desirable of the many substandard dwellings in the county.”³³ Indeed, by February 1942, only 0.7 percent of the dwelling units in the Milwaukee metropolitan area were “for rent, habitable and with standard facilities.” More than 6,000 rooms were available for rent in already occupied dwellings, but they were of use mainly to single men and women. Milwaukee was suffering from a severe housing shortage—a condition it shared with almost half the major defense areas in the United States, but which provided little comfort for a family trying to find decent shelter.³⁴

A housing committee appointed by Mayor John Bohn presented a bleak picture in May 1942. Since the summer of 1940 Milwaukee industry had received war contracts exceeding $1 billion, and the industrial workforce had grown by 40,000 employees. Employment had increased by 13 percent since early 1941; paychecks had risen 35 percent over the same period. The figures illustrated Milwaukee’s ascent out of the Depression. Approximately one-quarter of this increased workforce was comprised of in-migrants, many of whom were single men; but now employers were hiring increasing numbers of skilled, middle-aged men, many of them with families. The city needed 5,000 units immediately and would need to accommodate 12,000 more workers within the next year. Although the congestion could be relieved by encouraging workers to use mass transit instead of moving nearer their jobs, by inducing residents to rent extra space to war workers, by converting Civilian Conservation Corps and National Youth Administration barracks to worker dormitories, and by acquiring an increased construction allocation, the committee concluded that it would be impossible to solve the housing shortage without damaging war production. Milwaukee would have to live with crowded conditions.³⁵

The city’s rooming houses and light housekeeping units were almost filled to capacity, and industrialists reported a continuing need for in-migrants. When the housing council of the Milwaukee Real Estate Board began registering housing units for rent, it recorded only six apartments, twenty houses, and 150 rooms. Callers who wished to rent property as soon as it was registered hampered the council’s work. The housing register was not meant for individual public referral. Instead, the Real Estate Board intended to provide mimeographed lists to factory personnel officers so that war workers would have the first chance of rental. John Roache, secretary of the Milwaukee Real Estate Board, concluded that the registry program failed because virtually all available housing was already in use.³⁶

Construction of new houses and apartments, and the conversion of existing facilities to use as apartments or duplexes, eased the housing shortage somewhat, but these measures never met the need created when thousands of workers migrated to Milwaukee in search of war jobs. For the war worker seeking a place to live, the housing shortage meant long hours of searching. If the worker was single, a room could be rented without much difficulty. For a married couple the search might take longer, but for a family with children the situation was almost hopeless. Letters pleading for assistance poured into the mayor’s office and into the Milwaukee Journal’s “From the People” column. The writers consistently complained of landlords who would not rent to families with children, of apartments priced out of reach, and of the lack of housing in “decent” neighborhoods.³⁷

A Journal reporter posing as a working man of moderate income with four children discovered that it was indeed almost impossible to find housing. Numerous upstairs apartments existed within the right price range, but landlords were afraid that the children’s noise would disturb the downstairs residents. The duplexes he investigated tended to be in high-rent districts. He found some affordable apartments in other areas of town but they were in such deplorable condition that no one would want to rent them.³⁸

Carl Mucklinsky and his family encountered the same problem after he got a defense job in Milwaukee. In frustration his wife wrote the mayor,

Maybe people like us are supposed to live in one of the ‘hell holes’ of which I hear Milwaukee has quite a few. . . . Can’t apartment house owners be made to understand that just because one has a job in a defense plant, he isn’t making a fortune, that children must live somewhere, and that besides paying rent, we must eat, clothe ourselves, and gain a few permanent possessions such as furniture?³⁹

Families who failed to find adequate shelter faced serious repercussions. In the worst cases, the housing shortage forced parents to break up their family unit. One worker sent his wife and children home to Detroit; other parents distributed children among friends and relatives in Milwaukee. In one week during June 1942 thirty-eight adolescents entered the county home for dependent children because their parents could not find them shelter. Although this was a particularly serious week, the phenomenon was not considered unusual.⁴⁰

An untold number of Milwaukeeans found solutions that provided less than ideal shelter but at least kept their families together. In some cases they moved in with friends or relatives who had a little extra space. In addition, over 1,500 residents of Milwaukee County made their homes in trailer camps. The majority of trailer inhabitants accepted the change in lifestyle as a necessary sacrifice for the duration. Although many of these camps maintained sanitary conditions, the Milwaukee County Health Department fought a running battle to preserve decent living conditions. None of the county camps provided trailer hook-ups to running water. Showers, toilets, and washing machines were located in central service houses, which in some cases were in good condition and in other cases were quite unsanitary. With trailer lots of 1,000 square feet, play space also was limited, and no camp provided community houses, recreation rooms, or playgrounds. Despite the stigma attached to trailer life, the demand for housing kept these facilities full. Building inspectors found it particularly difficult to enforce regulations or to close camps, because their residents had nowhere else to go. Only local regulations and an inadequate supply of trailers limited camp expansion.⁴¹

Most residents of Milwaukee, of course, were not migrants looking for work. Nonetheless, wartime housing conditions had a direct impact on their lives. The mayor received numerous complaints about unreasonable rent increases during the months immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Likewise, the regional OPA received daily complaints of rent increases and evictions.⁴² To help solve the problem, the OPA froze rents in Milwaukee. As of August 1, 1942, the government required landlords to register their property with the OPA and to limit rent to the level charged on March 1, 1942. The OPA would approve rent adjustments if the owner made extensive improvements to the property or if fixed costs such as taxes and utilities rose substantially.⁴³

Rent control succeeded admirably, though never perfectly, in Milwaukee. After nearly two years, rents in the city stood at about the same level as in March 1942. Rent control officials attributed the success to the stiff penalties levied on violators. Tenants could sue for three times the amount of the overcharge or $50, whichever was greater. Two or three damage suits charging rent violations were filed each week in civil court, and conferences with rent officials secured over a thousand voluntary rebates by landlords. Nonetheless, one small survey easily demonstrated the difficulty of enforcing rent regulations. In March 1945 the unions at A. O. Smith and Seaman Body surveyed their members and discovered that approximately 4 percent of the renters were being overcharged, and approximately 9 percent of the landlords had failed to register their rental units with the OPA rent office.⁴⁴

Evictions presented an even more troubling problem, for which no adequate solution was ever found. Although OPA regulations made it difficult to remove a tenant except for nonpayment of rent, creating a nuisance, or to allow owner occupancy, the housing shortage complicated the situation. Workers with surplus income created a house-buying boom as they sought a secure place to live. In many cases they purchased houses that had been rental units, and the evicted tenants faced the problem of finding a new place to live. This problem became particularly acute in the summer of 1944. The number of eviction cases peaked in April, when 486 new owners petitioned the civil court for eviction writs so they could occupy their properties. In June new owners filed 466 petitions, more than double the number submitted during the same month of 1943. On one day, the court heard fifteen eviction cases. Nine of these cases involved owners seeking to occupy their own property. OPA rules required new owners to wait three months while their tenants looked for new quarters. Of the nine families being evicted, only one had found a place to live during the three-month waiting period. That family had purchased a home and was waiting for the tenant to leave. The Milwaukee housing shortage had thus created a vicious circle. People seeking security bought houses, which put other people out on the street. In turn, some of the evicted families decided to buy their own homes, which created a new wave of evictions.⁴⁵

Not only was housing in short supply, but many workers could not afford the housing that was available. Based on requests handled by the Milwaukee housing center, 82 percent of the families seeking housing had children. On average, they were willing to offer $35 a month for a five- or six-room apartment. According to Frank Kirkpatrick, the center’s director, it was “almost impossible to find decent housing in Milwaukee for $35 a month.”⁴⁶

In recognition of the city’s serious housing problem and bowing to political pressure, the Common Council established a housing authority on January 24, 1944. This action sparked a heated debate over the powers to be exercised by the authority and the role of private enterprise in renovating the blighted areas of Milwaukee and providing housing for low-income families. The debate focused on the Sixth Ward (bounded by the Milwaukee River on the east, West State Street on the south, Twelfth Street on the west, and North Avenue on the north), home to almost 83 percent of the city’s African American population and site of some of the oldest housing stock in Milwaukee, where the wartime housing shortage had made a bad situation worse. Although there were other congested areas in the city, the Sixth Ward was one of the most dilapidated. Almost half of its residents were African American, and the number grew by two thousand between April and October 1942. With little chance to live elsewhere and with white residents in surrounding neighborhoods openly hostile to any expansion of minority housing, black workers migrating to Milwaukee for war jobs found themselves limited to living in slums.⁴⁷

Representatives of the Milwaukee Real Estate Board attributed slum conditions to the slovenly habits of the tenants themselves and argued that private enterprise could supply housing as cheaply as the government. Public housing advocates, especially leaders of the CIO and the AFL, responded with indignation to the first charge and incredulity to the second. After almost thirty years, private developers had accomplished little in the Sixth Ward, where housing remained essentially as it was in 1916, when Milwaukee’s health commissioner had warned of slum conditions among the neighborhood’s eastern European population.⁴⁸

When discussing the plight of the Sixth Ward, William Kelley, president of the Milwaukee Urban League, told a Milwaukee Journal reporter that “The average age of the homes occupied by our people is 65 years. In 101 units surveyed recently, 79 were without hot water, 45 without baths of any kind, and many without sufficient sanitary facilities.” Even though prosperity meant that many African American families could afford to pay more for housing, they found it difficult to rent or buy homes in other areas of the city. Thus they were confined to the worst housing district in Milwaukee. At the same time, Kelley suggested that landlords often refused to upgrade their properties because rent ceilings prevented their charging higher rent.⁴⁹

Dr. E. R. Krumbiegel, the city’s health commissioner during World War II, surveyed the Sixth Ward during the fall of 1944 and classified housing in that neighborhood as 45 percent “good,” 25 percent “fair,” 17 percent “poor,” and 13 percent “dilapidated.” When opponents of public housing used these statistics to support their claim that drastic renovation was unnecessary, the Milwaukee Journal immediately pointed out that Krumbiegel’s report offered no such hope. Conditions were much worse than a superficial reading of the commissioner’s report indicated, the Journal argued, because of Krumbiegel’s conservative subjective rating system. The doctor clearly defined “good” as pertaining to structures that were painted and repaired as needed. Everything rated less than “good” had to be considered substandard housing, according to Krumbiegel. Thus, based on a survey the Journal considered too generous, 65 percent of the housing in the Sixth Ward was substandard by December 1944.⁵⁰ Milwaukee made little progress toward solving the housing problem during the war. Even in the Sixth Ward, with all the publicity generated by the debate over urban blight, little was accomplished.⁵¹

The movement of suburban families back into the central city in response to gasoline rationing and overtaxed transportation facilities made the housing problem even worse. During the 1920s American society wedded itself to the automobile. Within two months of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the federal government froze new car sales and imposed tire quotas. Cars, tires, and gasoline were not essential in a city like Milwaukee, but being deprived of their use placed an additional strain on wartime life. Problems arose not because a luxury had been curtailed, but because the city’s transit system was never designed to handle a population without automobiles.⁵²

The war overwhelmed a transit system designed for peacetime operation. The problems of overcrowding, slow service, and inadequate equipment could not be solved while the nation was at war. New, essential services could be implemented only after long delays. Faced with tire and gasoline rationing, workers turned to a mass transit system that was designed primarily to bring people to the center of the city and was built on the assumption that many people would travel by automobile. They began using a transit system that was never designed to carry them from neighborhoods on one side of town to factories on the other side, and they were angered when the system broke down under the weight of their travel.

Spurred by tire rationing and poor weather, the daily passenger load on Milwaukee’s buses and streetcars increased by more than 20,000 riders (8.8 percent) between December 14, 1941, and January 11, 1942.⁵³ The growth in ridership signaled the first phase of a long struggle to maintain an adequate transportation system for the city. The Transport Company, operator of the bus and trolley system, moved from crisis to crisis as the passenger load increased without adequate supplies of equipment to meet the demand, the government rationed gasoline, and labor leaders and local government officials pressured the company to provide service to new factories outside its normal service area.

During January 1942 the mass transit system in Milwaukee carried over 3.9 million passengers a week. To handle the new load, the Transport Company operated virtually all available equipment during rush hour and added new trolleys and buses daily as the equipment arrived. During peak travel periods 60 percent of the buses had at least half their standing room taken. This passenger load left pitifully little room for future expansion.⁵⁴

Summer brought a brief reprieve for the overtaxed system. More people walked to work, the city implemented a staggered work hours program, and drivers began sharing rides. Although carpooling, or “share-the-ride” as it was called during the war, had mixed success,⁵⁵ it was the implementation of staggered hours for government offices, stores, schools, and businesses that provided substantial relief to Milwaukee’s mass transit system. Beginning in July 1942, employees of the city government and of the public utilities came to work at 8:30 A.M. and left at 5:30 P.M., a half-hour later than usual. Most retail stores shifted their hours by a half-hour as well, opening at 10:00 A.M. and closing at 6:00 P.M. Employees of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and students in the city’s business colleges and parochial schools made comparable changes. In addition to affecting approximately 12,000 employees and students, the plan placed shoppers on a delayed schedule and alleviated the burden they placed on the transit system. For the first time in months, rush-hour passengers found empty seats when they boarded the city’s buses, trolleys, and streetcars.⁵⁶

Under normal conditions, the staggered hours program might have sufficed to meet the growing demand for mass transit. By late November the Transport Company carried 25 percent more passengers than at the same time in 1941, but its fleet of trolleys, streetcars, and gasoline buses had grown by only 9 percent. Only through efficiency measures had the transit system been able to keep pace with demand.⁵⁷

The first day of December 1942 brought gas rationing and a winter storm. The passenger load seemed comparable to any other storm day. Over 100,000 new passengers pushed the transit system to its limit, but relatively few serious problems resulted. December 2, the second day of gas rationing, coincided with a cold snap. Swamped with much larger crowds than normal, the transit system bogged down, thirty-five minutes behind schedule on many lines. Snow interfered with electrical equipment, a trolley line broke at West Fond du Lac Avenue and North 32nd Street, and traffic became snarled on the Lisbon-Wisconsin line when a streetcar door froze open, preventing the car from moving. George Kuemmerlein Jr., superintendent of transportation for the city, reported that “The situation was far worse than on Tuesday. . . . There were far fewer automobiles on the streets Wednesday and their owners poured in on us, expecting us to carry them with ease. But it wasn’t that easy.” Boarding buses jammed to capacity became a matter of “survival of the fittest.”

An improvement in weather conditions eased some of the strain on transit facilities, but there was little relief from long waits at bus stops and from standing-room-only on the buses themselves. Record cold and severe storms in January of 1943 caused even more transit delays and underscored the seriousness of the problem.⁵⁸

The problems encountered during the winter of 1942–1943 were replayed in the succeeding winters of 1943–1944 and 1944–1945. The passenger load grew from 28,749,014 in October 1942 to 35,351,927 in October 1943 to 36,124,193 in October 1944. Although the Transport Company faced shortages of equipment, tires, and trained operators, they were able to meet the growing demand through more efficient use of their equipment. Nonetheless, only the end of the war could solve the long-term problems faced by the Milwaukee transit system.⁵⁹

For many workers, reliance on the transit system represented a material alteration in their way of life. Not only were they less mobile, but bus riding often meant hours of waiting, long rides, and crowded conditions. Workers who once drove quickly to their jobs found that use of mass transit required long walks because the existing system failed to meet the needs of wartime society in Milwaukee. The problem was particularly acute for workers at new factories on the city’s outskirts and for West Allis workers who lived in Wauwatosa and the far northwest part of Milwaukee. For all practical purposes, buses remained on their peacetime routes well into 1943. These routes provided excellent service to shoppers headed downtown but poor service to employees at outlying factories. Thousands of workers at the Allis-Chalmers Supercharger plant and at the Pressed Steel Tank Company, for example, relied on their own devices as they traveled to work. Unable to use their cars, employees of West Allis plants had no alternative but to ride downtown, transfer, and ride out to the satellite community. Workers on the night shift or on odd schedules often had long waits to catch a bus home.⁶⁰

The problems that plagued implementation of a new crosstown transit line illustrated the difficulty of improving any form of transportation service during the war. The new transit line required ten new buses and approval from the Office of Defense Transportation (ODT). Neither the Transit Company nor the ODT acted expeditiously, and riders were still waiting for implementation of the new line as winter arrived in 1943.⁶¹

Gasoline and tire rationing affected how workers got to work. Other forms of rationing and economic controls materially altered the way in which Milwaukeeans lived. As soon as war came, the public expressed its uncertainty over wartime controls by engaging in buying sprees. Rumored shortages of woolens, canned goods, nylon and rayon stockings, rugs, and items containing steel, silk, or rubber created a “hoarding boom” during the week ending January 17, 1942, and sent department store sales in Milwaukee to a level 49 percent above the same period in 1941. Nationally, consumer buying increased 45 percent during this period. Likewise, low sugar supplies and the prospect of rationing brought a rush on honey and a 20 percent increase in price.

With a few exceptions, rationing progressively became tighter as the war continued, encompassing products that people not only enjoyed but considered necessities. Rationing of commercially processed fruits and vegetables and of meats touched everyone. In preparation for the beginning of processed fruit and vegetable rationing on March 1, 1943, the federal government issued War Ration Book 2 (Book 1, issued earlier, covered specific commodities such as sugar and coffee) to young and old alike containing blue stamps for fruits and vegetables and red stamps for planned meat rationing. To receive their allotment of ration books, families and single persons completed a form declaring their existing supplies of processed fruits and vegetables. Each person was allowed five cans or jars weighing eight ounces (twenty cans for a family of four). On registration day, stamps were removed from the ration book for supplies in excess of that limit.

A person with five or fewer cans at the time Ration Book 2 was issued was allowed forty-eight points per month (192 points for a family of four). Purchase of processed fruits and vegetables required the exchange not only of money, but of ration stamps. In 1943 purchase of a twenty-ounce can of peas required sixteen points, and a twenty-ounce can of corn required fourteen points. The consumer needed twenty-one ration points to buy a thirty-ounce can of peaches and fifteen points for a quart of grape juice. A purchase required exchange of blue stamps totaling the exact point value for the commodities being purchased. The system made no provision for the grocer to give change in points to the consumer. Rationing complicated every trip to the store, placed a premium on the use of unrationed fresh produce, and gave new meaning to planting a spring victory garden.⁶²

Consumers used the red ration stamps in War Ration Book 2 when the government implemented rationing for beef, pork, lamb, mutton, butter, cheese, and edible fats on March 29, 1943. Families were allocated sixteen points per person per week (sixty-four points per week for a family of four) for these products. The most popular cuts, such as steak, pork chops, veal loin chops, lamb loin chops, sliced ham, and bacon, required eight points per pound. The consumer paid four to six points for stew meat, five points for hamburger (made of scraps), and four points for spare ribs during the initial months of rationing. By buying generally cheaper cuts of meat, the consumer could reach the government’s anticipated weekly consumption level of approximately two pounds of meat, four and a half ounces of butter, and two ounces of cheese per person. Unlike processed fruits and vegetables, red point rationing allowed consumers to receive ration change when their coupons did not match exactly the points required for a purchase. In addition, consumers were allowed to accumulate unused points for up to a month before they expired. As a consequence, the judicious consumer could conserve points for several weeks by buying cheap meat and then splurge at the end of the month. According to Harold B. Rowe, in charge of food rationing for the OPA, “The meat ration probably will be more than many low income families will be able to afford, although less than the average purchasers of middle or high income families.”⁶³

For Americans accustomed to limits based only on buying power, rationing imposed new uncertainties. Each new stage in the control process tended to create a consumer purchasing rush. Only the implementation of canned goods rationing seemed to escape the consumer panic that preceded rationing of butter, coffee, and shoes. During the fall of 1942 many retailers responded to a plea by the local Retail Grocers Association and actively limited consumer purchases of canned goods. One grocer told a Milwaukee Journal reporter that he had been limiting purchases of canned goods to only two cans of a given item at a time. Announcement of canned goods rationing prompted this unnamed grocer to cut his self-imposed limit to only one can per item. Due to such voluntary practices by grocers, consumers may have felt that a last-minute buying spree would provide little in the way of extra supplies. By contrast, the announcement of shoe rationing early in 1943 sparked a run on many apparel products as consumers tried to “outguess the next rationing order.” Sales in many Milwaukee stores briefly doubled the normal rate. Despite an adequate supply, people stocked up on clothing, furniture, mattresses, china, and glassware. Any item made of wool (clothing, rugs, blankets) was considered particularly valuable.

March 1943 brought new orders to ration meat and dairy products, and consumers again rushed to the stores. When they depleted the meat supply, Milwaukeeans hurried to hoard cheese. At the same time, a rumor started a run on soap, which was never in short supply nor scheduled for rationing. The next rush came in late summer, when the government announced its intention to devalue gasoline coupons. A coupon once worth four gallons of gasoline soon would purchase only three gallons, and Milwaukeeans flocked to gas stations to fill their cars and any available canisters with fuel. Nine months later the city witnessed a new kind of buying spree as the government removed most meats from rationing. Heavy buying soon caused scarcity, and many consumers complained that the end of rationing made it harder to buy meat than when the commodity was controlled. The reintroduction of rationing for canned vegetables several weeks later brought another rush, as did the tightening of controls on meats at the end of 1944.⁶⁴

Although few if any Milwaukeeans went unclothed or unfed, this general reaction to rationing symbolized forces that simultaneously brought a sense of participation to the average citizen and reflected the tensions of wartime society. Rationing demanded small, relatively painless sacrifices that gave citizens a common bond with their neighbors and with soldiers on the front. Most people grumbled about rationing but willingly accepted the need for these restrictions. At the same time, debate over what needed to be rationed, how the program should be administered, and how scarce supplies best could be distributed reflected the tensions of wartime society. Nothing brought this into clearer focus than the problems that plagued meat rationing. Despite attempts to encourage use of alternative protein sources, Wisconsinites remained wedded to red meat as a fundamental part of the diet. The supply of red ration points never seemed to stretch far enough to meet consumer perceptions of the amount of meat, cheese, and butter necessary for an adequate diet.

Based on a survey taken at the A. O. Smith plant in the fall of 1943, the Smith Steel Workers union called for a more equitable distribution of red points on items necessary to maintain a healthy diet for workers. The union deplored the fact that purchase of a pound of butter required sixteen points and that both dinner and luncheon meats had to be taken out of red points as well. The union charged that the red point allotment was inadequate for workers engaging in the rigors of war production. Their survey indicated that 63 percent of the workers did not have butter in their lunches, and 43 percent had no meat or cheese. Not only did the union want more red points, it also insisted that the allotment be based on need as well. Presumably, under this proposal, a war production worker would merit more red points than a sedentary file clerk. District 10 of the International Association of Machinists proposed a similar plan.⁶⁵

To make matters worse, consumers had to contend with periodic shortages at the retail level. The problem was particularly severe as the war ended in Europe. In March the government announced a 12 percent cut in the civilian allotment; concurrently, Milwaukee suffered from a severe meat shortage that continued into the summer. As customers clamored for more meat, butchers and grocers tried their best to distribute existing supplies among regular patrons. In some cases, the supply was so short that butchers closed their shops several days a week and took jobs in war plants. By the middle of April, little more than sausage could be found in many Milwaukee shops. Reflecting the situation, Claude Keim, recording secretary for UAW-CIO Local 75, urged Hy Cohen, the local CIO labor coordinator for the OPA, to use his influence to remedy the crisis. Keim emphasized that the problem was much worse than official reports indicated and that the shortage was causing unrest among workers.⁶⁶

The problem was further compounded by the emphasis Americans placed on such commodities as meat and butter. Many Milwaukeeans considered red meat, served twice a day, to be an essential component of a healthy diet. In June 1945 Milwaukee labor representatives warned OPA officials of an impending “hunger strike” if the government failed to provide adequate food supplies for war workers. They complained that workers not only had difficulty getting fresh cuts of meat, but could not even find luncheon meats. George Hanner, chairman of the Smith Steel Workers OPA committee, warned that workers “can’t keep up their strength on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.” Less than a week later the Labor Press editorialized, “America is largely a meat-eating group. When the supply dwindles to a mere pound a week, and most of that liver, brains, pig’s feet and sausage, there is bound to be a reaction.” In concluding its remarks, the paper called for controls to “put meat, and sugar, on our tables, and give workers decent lunches.”⁶⁷

In an attempt to better understand the local situation, the OPA Labor Advisory Committee in Milwaukee began a series of discussions aimed at pinpointing the problem and finding solutions. Labor representatives maintained that the shortage of meat arose, in part, from supplies siphoned off to the black market.⁶⁸

The problem was real. By March 1945 sales above ceiling price or without ration points were on the rise, and Milwaukee officials began a crackdown on local black market meat trading. News of tightening domestic supplies as the government allocated meat to feed liberated Europe went hand in hand with news of six restaurants and meat markets under investigation for illegal sales. Most of the establishments were under suspicion for sale of farm-slaughtered meat that was both uninspected and outside the ration system. By the end of March an additional thirteen establishments were under investigation for OPA ration system violations.⁶⁹

In addition to problems with the black market, the Labor Advisory Committee alleged that packinghouse warehouses contained an adequate supply of meat that was being withheld from the market because of low price ceilings allowed by the government. In response, representatives of the War Food Administration and the OPA asserted that they lacked the authority to force the distribution of supplies. Thus, the advisory committee was left with the frustration of believing that an adequate supply of meat existed although no one seemed to have the power to bring it to the people.⁷⁰

The advisory committee found the ration point system equally frustrating. Members concluded that the United States produced enough meat to allot 3.2 pounds a week to every civilian, after taking military needs into consideration. Nonetheless, the point system allowed only 1.6 pounds a week. With red meat commanding ten points a pound for good cuts, and with the current allotment of fifty points a month, the committee argued that the average consumer could not even buy the government’s minimal allotment. To buy 1.6 pounds of meat would have required sixty-four points a month, based on the labor advisory committee’s figures. Meeting the additional need for cheese and butter would have required ninety-two red points a month, or 84 percent more than the existing allotment of points.

The difficulty of making ration points stretch to cover meat, cheese, and butter was particularly troubling in the Dairy State. The Wisconsin dairy industry promoted butter consumption as a basic part of a nutritional diet. The Dean of the College of Agriculture, Chris L. Christensen, told readers of the 1942 edition of Wisconsin Labor that butter was one of the best natural sources for vitamins A and D. In addition, Dean Christensen reported on the “butterfat growth factor,” a recently discovered substance contained in butter and believed to be critical for normal growth in young animals. The OPA Labor Advisory Committee worried that poor nutrition threatened to produce an entire generation of weak, undernourished, and sickly children. Despite this publicity, military and Allied needs required a cut in the domestic butter supply. Consumers in Wisconsin watched as the ration points needed to purchase a pound of butter steadily rose until a purchase required 24 points early in 1945. For all practical purposes, butter was unavailable to the average purchaser.⁷¹

Despite criticism from labor representatives, organized labor provided the OPA with strong support. Both labor federations accepted rationing as the only reasonable way to allocate scarce consumer goods equitably, and they cooperated as much as possible with rationing’s agent, the OPA. Likewise, they accepted the price ceiling system as an essential part of the fight to control the cost of living.⁷²

Americans adjusted in a variety of different ways to the shortages imposed by the war. Agnes Zeidler, wife of Socialist leader and future Milwaukee Mayor Frank Zeidler, still remembered the shortages years later. She told an interviewer:

Sometimes you couldn’t get eggs. Sometimes you couldn’t get butter. There were all kinds of things that you couldn’t get, that you had to use something else of. What I disliked intensely was the margarine that I had to color in order for it to look as though it was fit to eat. When I was a young girl, I remember that my mother used to render lard and we would help her cut it into cubes and we would spread it on bread and salt it. And it was a treat. But that margarine never looked like that or tasted like it either.⁷³

Rose Kaminski typified many young mothers during the war. She took a war job as a crane operator at Harnischfeger Corporation, maker of heavy equipment. By early 1944 her husband was in the navy and she was raising an infant daughter alone. Having grown up in Milwaukee, she coped with the war effort and rationing through existing neighborhood and kinship relations. She ate her main meal in the factory cafeteria because she could eat without spending ration points. “I always worried about my daughter getting the proper food,” she recalled. She learned from the women’s matron that she could buy leftover soup from the cafeteria at the end of the day.

I would bring home soup for my daughter and, of course, in that quart jar that would be enough for myself and her. We’d have a nice meal out of it and then you’d be saving stamps too. So, you would have stamps for other food. And you never felt that you were depriving anybody because this would be extra, over and above, that they wouldn’t use. It would be wasted otherwise, and it was good. So, I did that. That was very nice and it saved me a lot of time in cooking, too, and it helped.

Living near family also helped Milwaukeeans adjust to wartime rationing. When visiting her mother on weekends, Kaminski and her sisters would pool their meat ration points so the family could have a roast. Within a few blocks of home were her butcher and grocer. These merchants knew Rose Kaminski as a regular customer and would make sure she was well served.

There was the small grocery store and there was a butcher and a drug store on the corner. So you know all those people over the years, personally, and your butcher would know his old customers, and not people that just came because they were trying to get something special from him. He would kind of cater to his regular customers because he knew who was working in the war plants, and the grocery men did too. So that part of it was not too bad. You didn’t always get what you wanted, you had to take what they had on hand.⁷⁴

Dorothy Keating lived on Vliet Street near Shuster’s Department Store and has similar memories of coping with rationing through neighborhood support. She recalled a neighborhood center where people would gather to drink coffee, visit, and trade ration coupons. She also recalled a local butcher who sold horse meat:

It was like hamburger and they were using that during the war in place of hamburger because the beef was going to the service people, to the army. When you’d go in there [to the neighborhood center] they’d say “Oh, so and so is having horse meat today, which would be hamburger. So be careful, tell him you don’t want his horse meat, that you want regular hamburger.” But you had to pay more and then you had to have a [ration] coupon.⁷⁵

In numerous other ways Americans adjusted to the little stresses of life brought on by rationing, housing shortages, transit problems and the constant worry brought by loved ones in harm’s way. The stress of war tempered people’s attitudes about the war effort, and their roles in it. The record of support for bond drives, war relief campaigns, and civil defense in Milwaukee clearly illustrated the rational way in which Americans chose to support the war. Most elected activities that bore a direct relationship to their lives and to the war effort.

Although unity and cooperation characterized one side of home front life, the war carried with it the seeds of social tension. For the sake of the war effort, people in Milwaukee, as in other communities across the country, lived with the daily problems of cramped housing, poor transportation facilities, and rationing. Workers experienced the paradox of unparalleled prosperity combined with shortages that prevented them from exercising their new economic freedom. Many of the most significant home front activities were designed to alleviate these problems, but nothing could remove the tension created as the war imposed changes in living conditions on the people of America.

Likewise, there was no guarantee that the changes would be reversed with the return of world peace. Milwaukee labor could look to a future brightened by economic gains made during the war and by the knowledge that they had played a significant role in making the weapons and matériel that won the war. Nonetheless, many workers, and their labor leaders, must have reflected that they had played the same role during the First World War—only to be disappointed by renewed employer hostility in the 1920s. Would the end of the war bring prosperity or a return to industrial strife and widespread unemployment? No one knew the answer.