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Promoting a Culture of Driving: Rationing, Car Sharing, and Propaganda in World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2012

SARAH FROHARDT-LANE
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Abstract

World War II, some scholars have argued, interrupted Americans’ “love affair” with the automobile. According to this school of thought, gasoline rationing temporarily curtailed car driving and suspended car culture before both surged in the postwar era. This essay argues that World War II strengthened, rather than interrupted, Americans’ attachment to the automobile and solidified driving as a fundamental part of American culture. Ration boards distinguished between “essential” and “nonessential” driving and justified gasoline rationing as the only method to preserve civilian driving when supplies of gasoline were low. Thus at the same time as government and private industry were encouraging Americans to limit their driving, they were sending a strong message that Americans needed to drive and that foregoing driving whenever one wanted was a true, if temporary, hardship. Advertisements and government propaganda conflated car ownership with citizenship and portrayed driving as integral to the American way of life. But this mode of citizenship was not available to all: posters, pamphlets, and advertisements portrayed the American driver almost exclusively as white and most often as male. Such depictions implied that the mobility and independence that driving afforded were the sole domain of white American men.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 2: Special Issue on Oil Cultures , May 2012 , pp. 337 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

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30 Ellipsis in original. Office of Price Administration, Department of Information, “The Facts about the Need for Car Pooling,” p. 3, File “Gas Rationing and Car Sharing, Office of War Information,” Record Group 208, Entry 69, Box 221, National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.

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41 “Information Campaign for the Car Sharing Program,” File “Government Campaign Materials: Car Sharing–Mileage–Tires–Transportation,” Record Group 208, Entry 141, Box 751, National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD, underlining in original.

42 Ibid. Underlining in original.

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51 Before the campaign, only 48% of Americans in these areas thought gasoline rationing necessary. Office of War Information, Surveys Division, Memorandum No. 42, “Public Opinion after Two Weeks of Nationwide Gasoline Rationing,” 5 Jan. 1943.

52 In September 1943, when asked what problem they would like to discuss with their Congressmen, “gasoline rationing” was mentioned more frequently than any other problem except for “high cost of living.” By contrast, no other rationing concerns were in the top ten listed. Gallup Poll, “Important Problems,” 3 Sept. 1943.

53 Memorandum No. 42, “Public Opinion After Two Weeks of Nationwide Gasoline Rationing.”

54 Ibid., 4.

55 Ibid., 9.

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