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to the general public to eat less, while simultaneously stimulating them to eat more by arbitrarily lowering prices where—as in the case of sugar-it has had the power to do so, and by raising the wages of vast numbers of fairly prosperous people. Moreover at the end of its career the late Government was clearly leaning towards a general policy of restricting prices by legislative or administrative action.

That has been the policy of the German Government since the early stages of the war, and it has hopelessly failed. On the one hand, the German peasant-farmers have hidden their stocks rather than sell at the official price; on the other hand, wealthy consumers have surreptitiously paid five or six times the price fixed by authority. If these things are done in a closed country like Germany, where administrative machinery is all-pervading and the respect for authority is inbred in the people, it is easy to imagine the collapse that must attend any attempt on the part of the British Government to fix maximum prices for a population which draws its supplies from every part of the globe, and has a traditional dislike of government interference. So far as imported articles are concerned, if we refuse to pay the top market price the commodities we want will be sent to other countries or remain to be consumed in the country of origin; so far as home-grown foods are concerned the attempt to fix maximum prices will only operate to limit production, and thus to diminish future supplies. We cannot begin to deal with the problem of food prices until we recognise that the solution of the problem can only be retarded by any attempt to fix maximum prices. A high market price is in fact the best of all remedies for the diseases of which it is the symptom. On the one hand, it tempts producers all over the world to increase to the uttermost their output; on the other hand, it checks consumption and so makes the available supplies go farther.

To this reasoning there is one plausible answer-namely, that high food prices though they are only a moderate inconvenience to the well-to-do involve cruel suffering for the very poor. That is perfectly true; but the fact of the present suffering of the poor is not an argument for taking foolish measures which will ultimately make that suffering worse. Even for the very poor it is better that food prices should rise than that the nation should be left without food at all.

The truth of the matter is that the problem of the very poor

is one which ought to be dealt with by special measures directed to the relief of extreme poverty. In one respect this has been done. The late Government decided to increase old-age pensions from 5s. to 7s. 6d. in cases of need. The principle of that decision was perfectly sound; but on administrative grounds it would have been far better if, instead of placing a new burden upon the National Government, the local authorities had been authorised to supplement old-age pensions out of the rates wherever the need existed and to the full extent necessary. Apart from this administrative question the principle of helping the very poor, as represented by old-age pensioners, to meet the increased cost of food in a national emergency is both just and humane.

The principle is capable of very wide extension, and in many cases could be applied without any administrative difficulty. The Government is at the present time the employer of a very large proportion of the population. When food prices began to rise seriously, the obvious course was to deal specially with the worst paid employees. Everywhere the lowest wage ought to have received the largest increase. In the case of the Civil Service this principle was to some extent adopted. In June 1916 a general bonus was granted to all the less well paid grades of civil servants, including postal servants. This scheme gave a bonus of 4s. a week to male civil servants earning up to 40s. a week, and 3s. a week to men earning between 40s. and 60s., half these rates to women, and 2s. a week to young persons of either sex under eighteen. On the other hand, the railway servants of all grades have been given two successive bonuses of 5s. a week all round, the well-paid man thus receiving the same grant as the really poor man.

Broadly speaking, the poorer a man is the greater will be the proportion of his income spent upon food; therefore, a measure designed to relieve the hardships caused by high food prices should give the largest grant to the poorest man. Workmen earning wages which bring them well above the poverty line ought to receive no allowance at all on account of the increased cost of food. It is in the national interest that they should be compelled to economise in food as in other forms of expenditure. Yet the late Government by giving men in this category an increase of wages on the ground that food prices had risen was virtually bribing them to go on spending as freely as before to the injury of the poorer members

of the community. The comfortable classes, whether manualworkers or brain-workers, ought to be willing to meet the inconvenience of high prices out of their own resources. It is only when real poverty exists that the State is justified in incurring expenditure out of public funds to assist private

consumers.

But while it may be necessary to make further provision for meeting the hardships of the very poor the most urgent matter at the present moment is to diminish the general average of food consumption and to increase the supply of food-stuffs. Instead of attempting to limit prices the primary duty of the Government is to increase taxation so as to reduce the spending power of those who are well above the poverty line. Tea, sugar, cocoa, coffee, wine, beer, spirits, tobacco, matches, dogs, motor-cars, petrol, postage rates, male and female domestic servants may be mentioned as a few of the items of private expenditure which the State could further restrict, or alternatively obtain revenue from, by means of taxation. With the possible exception of alcoholic drinks, where the hours of sale can be restricted without serious administrative difficulties, it is in every case better to check consumption by means of taxation than by an official restriction of supplies. This is a point which is constantly overlooked. On the surface it seems as if a tax on an article of popular consumption, such as sugar, must be more onerous to the poorer classes than a restriction of supplies based upon the theory that the restriction is to apply to all classes alike. The answer is that in practice these official restrictions never do apply to all classes equally; they fall most severely on the very poor. This general truth has been amply illustrated by the way in which the late Government handled the sugar problem. As soon as a serious shortage of sugar was threatened the Treasury, which had acquired control of the whole supply of sugar entering the country, instead of raising prices to check demand, adopted the policy of restricting supplies. Dealers and grocers were allowed to have a percentage of the supply which they had been in the habit of requiring. This regulation ignored the insuperable difficulty that a grocer who is short of supplies of such an essential article as sugar will consider first the requirements of his best customers. The consequence is that as soon as the shortage began to be felt, the poor found that they could buy no sugar at all, while

the rich had but little difficulty in getting as much as they wanted-and in getting it at the arbitrary low prices fixed by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer. A poor woman would certainly prefer to pay even a shilling a pound for a small quantity of sugar than to be turned away from the shop, prevented by the supreme wisdom of Cabinet ministers from obtaining a single ounce. At the same time, all the confectioners' shops in London and provincial towns were doing a roaring trade in expensive sweetmeats. If Mr. McKenna had followed the common-sense course of increasing the price of sugar sold by the Government-or what amounts to the same thing, increasing the tax upon sugar-there would have been considerable economy in total consumption, the extravagant would have been compelled to pay more for their luxuries, while the poor would at any rate have obtained some sugar.

It may be argued that the hardships of the very poor could have been avoided by a more scientific system of rationing, giving each individual the right to draw a specified quantity of sugar each day or each week. People who talk light-heartedly about rationing have apparently never paused to reflect upon the hardships which all classes would suffer if a strict system of rationing were attempted. In a country which is in a state of siege like Germany these hardships may be inevitable. But a country which is able to import in one month, as we did in the month of December 1916, food, raw materials, and manufactured articles to the aggregate value of £75,000,000 is not in a state of siege, and it would be sheer madness voluntarily to inflict upon ourselves the hardships which the British Navy and the German bureaucracy are together inflicting upon the German people. The mere economic waste of the German system is alone appalling to contemplate -long queues of people who ought to be at work waiting instead for hour after hour for the chance of receiving some minute ration of food. The attempt to establish any real system of rationing in the United Kingdom at the present time would certainly provoke dangerous rioting in all the principal centres of population.

In a community enjoying a high average of prosperity and traditionally disinclined to submit to official regulations the only workable way of limiting the consumption of staple commodities is to raise prices. If market conditions do not

themselves operate sufficiently in this direction it is the duty of the Government to aid the market by imposing heavy taxation so as to compel-as far as possible-all classes to cut down their current consumption of commodities, which may in the future be even scarcer than at present. At the same time pecuniary assistance ought to be given to the really poor, so that they may be able to procure the necessaries of life. By this double operation demand is reduced and revenue gathered in, without the infliction of excessive hardship on any class.

The question of increasing supplies is more difficult. In view of the activity of German submarines we must anticipate still further difficulties in the importation of food-stuffs from abroad, and some writers have rather hastily jumped to the conclusion that we must therefore concentrate all our efforts on increasing the supply of home-grown food. Taken by itself that would be a counsel of despair. It is quite impossible to produce within the British Isles the whole of the food necessary to feed our present population. Therefore, measures for facilitating the importation of food are quite as important as measures for increasing home production: both are essential. The question of imports is to a very large extent a problem for the Navy. It may be assumed that our naval officers are doing their utmost to hunt down German submarines by every available method. But our losses in ships are admittedly heavy, and therefore we are compelled to build new ships as rapidly as possible. Very wisely the new Government has set to work upon the construction of standardised steamers which can be turned out rapidly and at a reduced cost. The difficulty here, as in almost every direction, is the labour problem. So many men have been absorbed by the needs of the Army that it is not easy to find enough skilled engineers to build the ships required.

The same difficulty arises in a more extensive form in connexion with the work which ought to be undertaken at once for the increase of our supply of home-grown food. Here the problem is not to get skilled labour but to get a sufficiency of unskilled labour. A very great deal of the work which has to be done on the land is work which any man or woman or child can learn in a few hours. It may not be out of place here to record an experiment made last year in planting twenty acres of land with potatoes. Small schoolgirls, who had never

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