"You Can Get Something"

This Christmas more men will get more neckties they don't want than ever before. For neckties are one of the few traditional accoutrements of the holiday spirit that are really plentiful.

In all U.S. stores things had come to such a pass last week that even the most inspired shopper, armed with a long list of just-what-Harry-really-wants, was carrying home whatever-there-was-left-on-the-shelves--and no gift wrappings either. As one harried storekeeper put it: "Remember, it is the specific things you want that you can't get. You can get something."

The Shortages. Tops on the list of things that most shoppers cannot get are dependable toys. Cracked a Newark merchant, of the wood and cardboard substitutes for metal trains, wagons and toys: "They won't last until Christmas . . . and probably not long after Christmas either." Also missing from most counters: pajamas, children's clothes, cribs, playpens and even rattles, watches, and--above all --good whiskeys. When a Washington D.C. liquor store advertised that it actually had 8,000 bottles of real rye, bourbon and Scotch for sale, a mob that made a football crowd seem tame waited outside through ten freezing hours for a chance to carry away a bottle.

On the scarce list were also a good many cosmetics (especially the alcohol-consuming colognes), good leather handbags and gloves, books (at least the ones people asked for, including a surprising demand for scarce encyclopedias and dictionaries). "Decent" lingerie--in both senses of the word--was also hard to get.

The Stampedes. Nonetheless the U.S. public responded to the shortages with 1) extreme patience; 2) a dogged determination to buy something--for a good deal more money than usual--come hell or no help in the nation's overcrowded stores. In Manhattan, swank Saks Fifth Avenue stayed open three Thursday nights in a row, "practically by request," and reported that customers packing breathlessly into their usually roomy elevators had been heard to exclaim: "Gee, this is just like Macy's." But Macy's, which seemed to contain most of Greater New York's population, calmly took on 11,000 extra employes, calmly took full-page ads to plug itself as "a late shopper's paradise."

Chicago's State Street mobs were literally a danger to life & limb: one shopper clocked the time it took her to navigate a twelve-foot vestibule leading into Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Result: 25 minutes flat. According to one description of Marshall Field & Co.'s escalators: "They look like the overhead chute at the stockyards during a heavy run of cattle." And the stampede was mostly for high-priced goods: furs, jewelry, $300-and-up sets of china, antiques, fine furniture, draperies and rugs.

In Dallas, for example, the five largest shops reported fur sales 149% above last year's, and the average retail sale in all stores was $10 v. $2 in 1942. In shipbuilding San Francisco, where application blanks for clerks went into monthly bills, the report from all retailers was: "price means nothing." San Francisco also reported an unusual number of gift certificates bought by shoppers who gave up trying to find the perfect present. For once, it was easier to shop in bargain basements than in the snootier departments upstairs.

The Public. But the people were not entirely sheep. A few shoppers' strikes turned up. Sample: New York and Boston dealers, expecting to clean up on the well ballyhooed Christmas-tree shortage (they are not ceiling-priced), were stuck with a tree surplus when they had hoped to stick the citizenry.

Still to come was the usual day-after-Christmas flood of exchanging nothing for something. That was the moment that storekeepers really dreaded.

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