Jim Bradshaw: Don't blame the chicken for the 30-cent breakfast

Enough was enough when a Baton Rouge hotel charged a state legislator 30 cents for his breakfast in June 1942.
He stormed back to the capitol and filed a bill to keep hotels and restaurants from raising prices during football weekends, Mardi Gras, and when the legislature was in session.
Rep. Henry Sevier complained that “when you go to [Baton Rouge or New Orleans] during a football game or Mardi Gras or racing season, room prices suddenly jump from their regular rates of $2.50 [a night] to $10,” and that “if you don’t tip the porter four bits he’ll never come back when you ring the buzzer.”
As for the price of breakfast, he grumbled that “we country boys would get rich if we could charge thirty cents for one egg.”
His fellow legislators took up the cause and passed the bill by an overwhelming majority.
It required hotels and cafes to provide the Public Service Commission with a schedule of prices and forbade them from charging more during special events.
The businesses complained that they may have pushed prices up now and then, but they were not gouging as much as legislators thought — and they may have had a point.
If you can still find your old copy of Bulletin No. 799 of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, you’ll see that the hotels and restaurants had themselves seen big jumps in the prices of eggs and practically everything else.
According to that report on grocery prices, “The first 18 months after the attack on Pearl Harbor were marked by a spiral of rising prices. By May 1943 retail food costs had climbed more than 26 percent. …
"Not since World War I had consumers witnessed such rapid increases in food prices.” 
And those prices applied only if the groceries could be found, which often wasn’t the case.
“These were years of record crop and livestock production, but large military and export requirements reduced the total civilian food supply by 12 percent in 1942 and by 25 percent in 1943. Transportation difficulties, abnormal population concentrations in defense areas, and differentials in ceiling prices, sometimes resulting in the maldistribution of remaining supplies, all contributed to local shortages,” the report said
 Enemy submarines in the Atlantic made things even worse, as they “seriously cut the supply of such items as coffee, sugar, cocoa, and bananas; while the Pacific war affected tea, sugar, copra, spices, and pineapple stocks.”
I don’t know if they were too pricey or too scarce here, but eggs weren’t even listed in grocery ads in south Louisiana in June 1942.
The Big Star in Franklin did have coffee for 79 cents a pound and a new supply of watermelons for $1.19 each, but no butter or eggs.
The Capitol store in Crowley offered scarce pineapple slices for 25 cents a can and promised “fresh fruits and vegetables every day,” but, again, no butter or eggs.
Mervine Kahn’s in Rayne did advertise butter at 44 cents a pound and had a special on dill pickles at just 30 cents for a big jar, but no eggs. Mayeaux’s  store in Abbeville had butter in a jar for 39 cents, but no eggs were advertised.
The story was the same in ads for stores large and small across the area.
That may have been partly because a lot of people in south Louisiana had a yard full of  hens and had their own eggs. They kept some to eat, but they also used them to barter for other things, particularly in the little country stores.
It’s probably an exaggeration, but according to some accounts I’ve heard, some merchants took in more eggs than  hard money in those long, lean months between harvests.
Some years ago, a reader from  Cecilia recalled that in his youth two eggs was the price of a pouch of decent tobacco.
In Church Point, according to another remembrance, many were taken to Alsace Sonnier’s store on Main Street, where an egg could be exchanged for a nickel’s worth of other stuff.
That was a good deal in those long-gone days when a nickel would actually buy something.
It could even have been that a hotel egg was actually worth a dime in June 1942, by the time it was transported to the hotel and the cook and waitress and dishwasher were paid.
If the egg was properly cooked in butter and served with toast and a cup of coffee made from beans that were sneaked past enemy submarines, a 30-cent breakfast might not have been as bad as our legislators thought
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.