In somewhat of a hectoring October 11, 1942 radio address in which he addressed scrap metal collection, tin can collection, food prices and gambling, among other topics, Mayor LaGuardia officially kicked off Meatless Tuesdays.
Mayor LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
“There has been a great deal of talk about a meatless day. Let’s have less talk about this and let’s do something about it.… I now officially request hotels, restaurants and all eating places to make Tuesday the meatless day, and, of course, in the homes we will follow that too and then we’ll have a real saving in meat.”
In a game attempt to ward off resistance, he tackled the notion that Friday should be the official meatless day. “Now all this talk about having Friday as a meatless day really doesn’t sound as if it were on the level. Friday is a traditional fish day and to make Friday your official meatless day sort of smacks of the slicker, doesn’t it? Now let’s do things real here in New York City. We don’t want to be hypocritical about this, let us give the example to the rest of the country.”
Mayor LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Sounds simple. Fish Fridays. Meatless Tuesdays. But quickly there were requests for clarification—what was considered meat? There were complaints. And there was pushback.
First up on October 13, 1942: Harry Spector, from the Latin Quarter “would like some clarification on the Mayor’s Sunday speech… they of course want to cooperate to the fullest extent and want to know whether the Mayor wishes to include veal, lamb, poultry, etc. since they were under the impression that the shortage was merely with beef.”
On October 14th an anonymous restaurant owner wanted to know if Meatless Tuesdays includes poultry (chicken, ducks) as well as liver?
The President of Nedicks weighed in. The hotdog purveyor wrote that the company employed 1000 New Yorkers and sold four tons of frankfurters daily in the City. He was not pleased and suggested that the Mayor must not have meant to include the humble hot dog in Meatless Tuesdays.
The October 14th New York Mirror reported that representatives from the hotel and restaurant industries met with the Secretary of Agriculture. The Herald Tribune reported that the Department of Agriculture was not sponsoring meatless days. Meatless days, such as those in New York City were considered voluntary.
To clarify, the Mayor said hot dog and hamburger stands were part of the Meatless Tuesday effort and sent letters informing business owners they could serve fish, poultry, liver, kidneys, sweetbreads and heart on Tuesdays. Sausage was not permitted.
The clarification apparently proved insufficient because the Mayor addressed the proposed meatless days in the next two radio shows. On October 18, a week after the initial announcement, LaGuardia devoted a good portion of the radio address to meat rationing. Declaiming that the Secretary of Agriculture was enthusiastic about the hotel/restaurant response, the Mayor said, “We again are setting the pace for the rest of the country.”
Mayor LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Claiming that the listening public would be happy about the splendid response to the Meatless Tuesday appeal, the Mayor offered additional clarification on the hot dog situation. He had conferred with the Quartermaster General for the Army who reported that frankfurters “are served as meat in Army messes at least three times a month.” That led to somewhat of a compromise. Nedicks would not serve hamburgers on the meatless days. Stores that only sold hamburgers would do their best to substitute foods. Delicatessens were instructed “not to serve any of the meats that are now under ration on Tuesday. There is such a variety of things, Mr. Delicatessen Store Keeper, that you can serve on Tuesday, that I’m sure you will not feel the difference.”
He went on to provide details on the quantity of meat required by the armed forces (6.5 billion pounds) and civilians (21 billion pounds) for the year compared to the estimated meat production (24 billion pounds). The 3.5 billion pound deficit in meat production needed to be addressed. “In order to do this the formula is to ration meat, but all the necessary preliminary arrangements and the printing of the coupons cannot possibly be completed before January 1st. If we permit these 10 weeks to go by without doing anything about it, then the amount originally intended to be rationed must be reduced, and therefore, our government calls upon us voluntarily to put into action now the same formula that we will be required to meet when the rationing preparations are completed. Do I make that clear? We must reduce the amount and in order to reduce the amount, the meat must be rationed, but we cannot get our ration coupons until around January 1st.
Under the wartime rationing program that began six months later, adults would be allocated 2.5 pounds of meat weekly, children over age 6 would receive 1.5 pounds while those under age 6 would receive ¾ of a pound. Concerned that New Yorkers would complain about the quantities, the Mayor said, “Please don’t get the idea that this is a great sacrifice. Our formula allows 40 ounces per week for each adult. Britain has but 30 ounces per week, Italy 3 ½ to 4 ½ ounces per week, Holland 9 ounces per week, Belgium 5 ounces per week, Germany 5 ounces per week. You see, that after all, we haven’t very much of a cut to make and if properly managed, and with the meat not included in the rationed amount it is no effort at all to comply.”
And so began the compulsory voluntary Meatless Tuesday program.
The Association of Food Shop Owners pledged to recommend to all 152 member diners “that they comply voluntarily and concienciously (sic)” with the request for the duration of the war.
There were protests, to be sure. One mother of two enlisted sons wrote from Islip to urge that Friday’s be the meatless day, noting that Catholics were making a double sacrifice, “just as so many mothers have to sacrifice their sons while others are working in defense plants and getting deferred month after month.” Never mind that as an Islip resident she was not a bound by City’s program.
Catholics complained of discrimination for being required to forego meat twice weekly—three times during Lent. Kosher butchers complained that Tuesday was among their busiest days so a voluntary prohibition on sales was problematic. They suggested meatless Saturdays and Sundays.
The Daily News queried “What’s Happening to Our Democracy” in an editorial opposing meatless Tuesdays. Noting that this was not required by any law or regulation from the nation, city or state, it complained that “the Mayor pulled the notion out of his hat.” Instead the paper suggested that this be postponed until the enactment of uniform national regulations. “National meatless day regulations would produce real meat conservation; isolated local fish-and-chips gestures cannot.” The editorial also weighed in on Friday being a better day to go meatless due to the large Catholic population who would be deprived of meat twice weekly.
A letter to the Mayor from the proprietor of Prentzel and Arne, a meat broker and self-proclaimed “meat man,” wrote “it is rather interesting to me that I now find myself defending you in a meat matter, whereas in the past I have so often been in active opposition to some of your views pertaining to meat matters, i.e. grading.” The attachment to the letter, which was intended as a response to The Daily News, discussed issues with the distribution/transportation of meat and continued, “Now getting back to the “Meat” of your editorial, New York is the largest population center in the U.S. and a start here, if successful in voluntary rationing, should have considerable influence on the rest of the country.”
Mayor LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
The Department of Sanitation, which operated an employee cafeteria at its main 125 Worth Street office published a menu listing roast lamb with two vegetables for forty cents and a roast beef sandwich for twenty cents. A note at the bottom of the mimeographed menu stated, “In cooperation with the Mayor’s request—no meat will be served on Tuesdays—starting with Tuesday—October 20th, 1942. The files also contain a communique from the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections titled Dried Beans, Peas, Lentils, and Peanuts. It included recipes for bean loaf, bean soufflé, bean croquette, rice and lentil loaf. Another Corrections handout included cheese and egg recipes along with “timely suggestions” for stretching meat.
Not everyone was upset. One radio listener wrote that he thought it was “swell.”
The associate editor of The American Vegetarian sent the Mayor a copy of the paper and offered to have a staffer walk around with a sandwich board stating
Observe Meatless Days
Learn how by reading the
AMERICAN VEGETARIAN
Ask man for copy—10 cents
In his October 25 radio address, after discussing the prior week’s air raid drill, the Mayor returned to the topic of Meatless Tuesday. “Meatless Tuesday last week was most successful and attracted the admiration of the entire country. Citizens in other cities are asking why they can’t do as much. Oh, there’s been a little undercurrent around among certain individuals who are more anxious to sell meat and get big prices than they are to help the government. I’m not going to mention any names. I just want to say that the government expects full and complete cooperation.”
A letter from the Society of Restauranteurs informed the Mayor that the Governor of California designated Meatless Tuesdays for the duration of the war. A Connecticut official sent a telegram asking for information and the Mayor instructed Secretary Lester Stone to provide the full data.
Mayor LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Many people wrote the Mayor to report on stores and restaurants serving meat on Tuesdays. Someone reported the Hotel Taft restaurants were violating the ban. A note in the call folder instructs staff to call representatives from the Hotel Association. “Tell them to tell the Taft that they better obey the “Meatless Tuesdays” or else, violations, etc. Apparently the message got through because the Taft Hotel Manager wrote to assure the Mayor’s secretary of their cooperation and included menus showing the Meatless Tuesday offerings.
Mayor LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
The Ladies Club of the Kingslawn United Presbyterian Church wrote the Mayor for his opinion on whether their annual dinner scheduled for a Tuesday, for which tickets had been sold and food ordered should go ahead. The Mayor granted a dispensation for the annual dinner and suggested that the attendees should “refrain from eating meat on Wednesday” to compensate.
Mayor LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
The Interborough Delicatessen Dealers Association, based in Brooklyn resolved to close their Kosher Delicatessens on Tuesdays. Their attorney wrote to the Mayor that only two or three of the three hundred stores still opened on Tuesdays. This had led to picketing at one of the offending stores in Brooklyn. And, in turn, that led to the arrest of six picketers and an eventual review by The Police Commissioner of the City, Lewis Valentine.
By early November, Mayor LaGuardia’s exasperation with New Yorkers is evidenced in his reply to the proprietor of Ruppel’s Market in Elmhurst. “So many people have sent in letters suggesting different days of the week for a meatless day that were each of these letters taken into consideration, there would be no meatless day or every day would be a meatless day.”
LaGuardia’s attempt to quash demands for meatless Fridays fell flat. For the duration of the meatless days between October 1942 and September 1945, he received extensive pushback, particularly from Catholics. In 1943, the City Council enacted a bill to name either Wednesday or Friday the meatless day in order to spare Catholics from three meatless days. Each Holy Name Society in the Diocese of Brooklyn was asked to communicate with the Mayor to encourage him to sign the bill into law. The Mayor was unmoved, responding to the letter-writers that he had consulted the “highest Ecclesiastical officials” in setting meatless day on Tuesday. Despite the Council’s efforts, Meatless Tuesdays continued.
Mayor LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
In March, 1943, as LaGuardia had foretold six months earlier, the shortfall in meat production led to the national rationing of meat. The federal Office of Price Administration officially began issuing ration stamps for meat. Each family was required to register its size in order to obtain the appropriate quantity of ration stamps. To purchase meat, or other rationed products, the buyer presented the required number of stamps for the item which qualified the person to pay the asking price for it. Stamps were distributed on a monthly basis and were required to be used within the month.
The federal rationing program altered the City’s enforcement approach. In response to a letter from an attorney who reported roast beef sandwiches were being served at a restaurant, the Mayor replied that after the rationing system was deployed the City no longer required restaurants to comply with meatless Tuesdays. He went on to note, ‘the better number of restaurants have voluntarily continued their program of not serving meat on this day.”
There is a gap in the Meatless Tuesday files between mid-1943 and January 1945 presumably because the rationing program was functioning. But, on January 21, 1945 the Mayor again addressed WNYC radio listeners and noted the shortage of meat because the “Army needs more and the Army is going to get all that it needs.” He announced the only way to deal with the shortage was to return to the official meatless days in the City. And this time, there were to be two meatless days—Tuesday and Friday, beginning the next week. The Mayor listed ten restaurant associations and six food chains with which he had conferred, including the Café Owners Guild that operated night clubs, and praised all of them for being helpful. He then focused on un-named steak houses, calling them chiselers who “cater to the sort of gluttons and loud mouths, and fellows who are earning the big money now, who go there and brag about eating meat, black market meat, and paying $4 and $6 for a steak.” And he promised a crackdown in cooperation of the Office of Price Administration.
Mayor LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
In his radio address the next week, he tackled subjects that had bedeviled the initial roll out in 1942: hot dogs and poultry. “Tuesdays and Fridays are meatless days, and it means just that—meatless days—no meat or any meat that comes from four-legged animals. Nothing coming from a four-legged animal should be used on Tuesdays of Fridays. That means poultry, turkey, fish and game may be used… For the present we will compromise on frankfurters-dogs you know- on Tuesdays and Fridays.” The unstated compromise was that hot dogs were okay. The Mayor also ordered butcher shops to close on Mondays (Saturdays for Kosher shops) and to only operate five days a week. Enforcement was initially to be undertaken by the various restaurant and hotel associations. But, the OPA and City’s Department of Markets also were engaged in these efforts.
This go-round the Mayor’s Office forwarded all correspondence questioning what could be served to the Department of Markets. Was corn beef hash legit? Could liver be banned on Meatless Tuesdays? Could White Castle operate on the meatless days? Reporters from Room 9 (the press room) asked about the status of liverwurst. And more. New Yorkers’ reports of meat being served meatless days—Gramercy Tavern, Danbe’s Steakhouse, Tessie’s Old Vienna, Civic Square Foods (not very civic minded—all were referred to Commissioner Henry Brundage at Markets.
Reliably, the Catholics again wrote to urge Meatless Wednesdays, not Tuesdays. But that did not gain much traction.
World War II ended on September 2, 1945 as did the rationing of meat and other products. On September 16, Mayor LaGuardia went on the air to announce the end of the Meatless Days and praise the reputable hotels and restaurants for their cooperation during the crisis.