Honor System

Suspicion, wheedling, indignation, and the haunting eyes of the tobaccoless have hounded the nation's cigaret retailers since the coming of the great famine. This week, because OPA could not or would not, the tobaccomen grimly moved to their own defense.

Their plan (adopted at a conference of the National Association of Tobacco Distributors in Chicago): voluntary rationing. Retailers will issue as many numbered ration cards to their customers as their stocks permit, and punch once for every pack sold. Dealers will honor only cards signed by themselves. To get cards, customers will have to sign declarations swearing they will hold no other dealer's card.

Thus, reasoned NATD, cigaret-hoarders may be lured back to one source of supply where they can expect a steady though meager ration (NATD anticipated a daily supply of 15 cigarets per person for 1945). NATO's 1,200,000-odd U.S. retailers (except those serving transients only) will follow the plan--or they won't get cigarets. The rest will depend on the conscience of the nation's smokers.

That dependence, NATD agreed forebodingly, would need quite a bit of conscience.

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