PANIC BUYING FEVER

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 116, 19 May 1942, Page 5

PANIC BUYING FEVER

EIGHTH DAY IN SYDNEY

SYDNEY, May 18

Clothing stores on the eighth day of panic buying sold out their quotas within an hour. Crowds remain as large as ever, though the "fever of the early days is dying down," according to store, executives.

All the newspapers continue to castigate panic buyers, describing their actions as "blind, unthinking, and shameful." • ■

The Prices Commission has issued a warning that heavy penalties will be imposed for "black market" selling of goods bought in a rush by hoarders and' intending exploiters.

"Many people have been buying quantities of clothing out of all proportion to any individual needs," says an official of the commission. "A reasonable assumption is that they are calculating hoarders who may have in mind plans of setting up their own petty 'black markets' and selling from house to house."

A Sydney newspaper has designed a medal for panic buyers. It features an inverted "V" over a snake, and is inscribed: "Others do their bit, I do my neighbour." The medal is awarded, with citations, for sabotaging Australia's war effort and economy to such

people as the woman who paid £83 for 23 pairs of shoes, the woman who bought £28 worth of toilet soap, the man who bought 10 hats, and the man who ordered eight suits from a tailor.

Some stores have instituted their own rationing systems. Queued-up shoppers are issued with dockets entitling them to buy minimum requirements of rationed lines. As only docket holders are served, most of the strenuous shopping competition is averted.

One American correspondent cabled his newspaper about the "Dedman Stakes," as the panic buying is being called, as follows: "It is the damnedest thing in the way of a human rush that I have seen since a few million Dutch. Belgian, and French civilians tried to keep ahead of the German army in May and June, 1940."

Following an announcement that men's clothing was likely to be standardised, it is now. stated that no similar move is contemplated at present in women's clothing styles.