Your Sugar Ration Is 2 lbs. per Month (1918), the Food Administration's "voluntary ration" card

A 1918 U.S. Food Administration shop card sets four sacks of sugar side by side, labeled America's voluntary ration of 2 lbs. a month against the compulsory rations of England, France and Italy. Its top line says the store is pledged to conform to the agency's sugar regulations.

What the card says

Four sacks of sugar shrink from left to right. Under each is a country and a kind of ration. The text above and below explains the comparison.

THIS STORE IS PLEDGED TO CONFORM TO THE

SUGAR REGULATIONS OF THE U.S. FOOD ADMINISTRATION

Your Sugar Ration

is 2 lbs. per month

[…]

AMERICA'S VOLUNTARY RATION

ENGLAND'S COMPULSORY RATION

FRANCE'S COMPULSORY RATION

ITALY'S COMPULSORY RATION

We must confine our consumption of Sugar

to not more than 2 lbs. per person per month

in order to provide a restricted ration

to England, France and Italy.

Who made it

The Food Administration issued the card in 1918; its name is printed on the face. The National Archives copy is in Record Group 4, World War I Posters (series NAID 512439), catalog item 512525, local identifier 4-P-86. It was made to stand in a shop: the first line speaks for the store, the rest to the customer.

How to read it

The card makes an honest comparison and draws a fair conclusion from it. Americans were asked to hold to 2 lbs. a month, and the Allied rations printed beside that figure are smaller. FRAME tags it card stacking and bandwagon: one contrast, voluntary here and compulsory there, is chosen as the whole reason to comply.

The vocabulary is the interesting part. The word for the household is "voluntary." The word for the store is "regulations," and the store is "pledged to conform." The same card speaks two languages to two readers. For the customer, saving sugar is a choice. For the merchant who sells it, the card is a notice of rules. Other sheets in the same file are blunter: a 1918 cartoon in the archive, Uncle Sam: The Lid's Down! Obey Orders!, shows the government's hand pressing down the family sugar bowl, and the We Violated the Regulations card shows one penalty a business could face for not conforming.

Credit belongs where it is due. Hoover's agency asked households for a voluntary ration rather than imposing a compulsory one, and it said so on this card. The Wilson administration page records his later account that the Allies had wanted a compulsory ration and his office bet on the voluntary kind. Measured against the compulsory rations printed on this very card, that was the freer choice.

Both halves belong in the reading. Asking a family to save is persuasion. Regulating what a grocer may sell, and posting his pledge to obey, is control, even when the customer's part is called voluntary.