Quote:
Originally Posted by J Franklin
Maybe the soap industry was worried people would keep their grease and make their own soap, a fairly easy process.
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There's evidence from industry memos that they were mostly concerned that, if soap were to be rationed, people would realize they didn't need as much soap as they'd been buying before the war. By creating a program to donate cooking fats "for the troops," the soap industry actually guaranteed itself a supply of free raw materials. This allowed them to continue producing more than enough soap to meet demand - thus soap was never rationed during the war.
The soap campaign was probably the most illusory of all the recycling drives; almost none of the material collected went "to the war" in any meaningful sense, nor did it, e.g., allow the industry to direct any output to the war effort.