Rush to Buy

As U.S. shortages have mounted, more & more Detroit shoppers have been crossing over to Windsor to buy goods that are plentiful and unrationed in Canada. Last week they threatened to sweep the shops bare.

They bought dress goods, rubbers and overshoes, canned goods, cosmetics. They bought Canadian cigarets at 35-c- a pack. But most of all they wanted meat. With arms laden with bacon, beef, ham, canned meats, chicken, and even rabbit, they headed back to the U.S. On the Detroit side of the Detroit River, they filled the U.S. customs office to overflowing.

At last the crush was so bad that customs officers asked Windsor police to detain U.S. shoppers until the jam on the Detroit side cleared. Then they were released in groups of 50 aboard the Detroit-Windsor tunnel bus. On the U.S. side, shoppers had to stand in line while customs men opened all packages, weighed the meat, collected ration points and duty. In one day last week 17,500 U.S. shoppers were examined, 1,200 had to surrender 39,000 ration points and $1,400 in duty. U.S. Customs Collector Martin Bradley had to add 15 men to his staff.

Windsor shopkeepers could not complain about the buying spree; a sale is a sale, and in normal times they rely heavily on Detroiters as purchasers of jewelry, furs, woolen clothing and blankets, imported china. Windsor housewives wailed that Americans were not only greedy but "pushy." But customs men claimed that more & more Canadian women go into the U.S. for such goods as infants' wear, towels, women's underwear (all scarce in Canada), that they frequently evade Canadian customs rules by wearing their purchases home.

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