Food rationing

“ The survey was completed within three days and the War Cabinet was told that if there was any risk of shortage, the public would definitely favour immediate rationing. But the War Cabinet still hesitated to authorise action which would trammel the customary liberties of selling and buying food. Not until nearly two months after the outbreak of war did it agree at last to the rationing of butter and bacon, of which there were already spot shortages; and it still remained unconvinced that meat and sugar rationing were necessary. ”

“ The third great advantage of the British food controllers was that, by securing adequate tonnage for cereals, they were able to avoid the rationing of bread stuffs, and the elaborate and contentious system of graduated rations for different classes of workers which would otherwise have been inevitable. So long as rationing is confined to articles other than bread, a flat scale of rations for all adults, whether engaged in sedentary or in severe physical work, is possible ”

“ It does not and where, under voluntary rationing, people go round and find other food and get along with the supplies there are, under compulsory rationing there would always be a tendency to demand their ration and to make trouble about the lack of any one commodity in it. ”

“ In this respect the British system of food rationing had for the reasons mentioned below a relatively high measure of success and is therefore described here in some detail. The modified system adopted in the United States is dealt with in a final section. Besides food and feeding stuffs for animals, fuel and light were rationed in the United Kingdom, and both these and many other things, such as clothing, tobacco, matches and housing accommodation, were rationed in various enemy and neutral countries in Europe. ”

“ The preparations of the rationing machinery, while throwing up more knotty problems for immediate resolution than that of the commodity controls, nevertheless made rather better progress, partly because there was not the same need for outside consultation, partly because it leant even more heavily on previous experience, as summarised in the work of Sir William Beveridge's Sub-Committee on rationing. That experience prescribed a national rationing system based a consumer-retailer tie and hence the establishment of a network of divisional and local food offices. ”

“ Even though a complete equality of food rationing with the other foreigners should be aspired to, this new measure, whose enforcement is imminent, will counteract the intestinal diseases and swelling of the stomach, as well as the sending of bread from relatives in the Ukraine, which can not be hindered on political grounds. ”

“ Compulsory rationing to be workable must be a simple scheme, and no overhead ration of bread, for example, is just. The needs of workers vary and so do the needs of individuals, and bread is the staple food of our poorer classes. They have less variety of foods and need more bread than the better-off people. Compulsory rationing may have to come, but most of us are determined it will not come till it is really unavoidable and we are appealing to our people [pg 208] to prevent that, and masses of them are economizing and saving in a manner worthy of the greatest praise. ”

“ In the overall stocks position of the Ministry of Supply, the graph show first a steep decline and then a wide, deep trough. The Ministry of Food, thanks to the tenacity with which it defended its 20 million tons import programme and to the success from December onwards, of its rationing policies, had more comforting graphs to contemplate: even before the fall of France, it was improving its stocks position and thereby gaining elbow room for the more balanced food policy it subsequently adopted. ”

“ Permanently to counter the difficulties of food supplies by lowering the standard of living and by rationing is impossible in a continent which had developed an approximately equivalent standard of living. As the solving of the unemployment problem has brought into effect the complete power of consumption, some small corrections in our agricultural home production will be possible, but not a wholesale alteration of the standard of food consumption. Consequently autarchy becomes impossible, specifically in the sphere of food supplies as well as generally. ”

“ We arranged meetings for the maids of households in big groups to explain the need and meaning of economy in food with great success. Every head of a household knows that the maids [pg 209] can make or mar one's efforts to save food, and we have found many of ours admirable, and willing to do wonders in the way of economy and saving.
If compulsory rationing in more than sugar comes as it may, the basis of rationing will, we believe, be worked out with as much consideration as possible of the needs of the workers. ”

“ Food Control—Compulsory Military Service—The Man Power Bill—N.U.R. and Craft Unions—A Libel Action—War Time Problems—Demand for Railway Nationalisation—The Sliding Scale—Death of the President—A Ministry of Labour.
Mr. Runciman had announced the appointment of a Food Controller in November of 1915, and Lord Devonport was the first holder of that office. Meat, bread, and sugar came under strict control, and a voluntary system of rationing was launched, allowing 4 lbs, of bread or flour, 24 lbs, of meat and 3⁄4 lb, of sugar for each person weekly. ”

“ The Council met this morning, and we have appointed a committee to take immediate possession of all foodstuffs and every facility for food production within the entire valley. Beginning tomorrow morning, this committee will begin to accumulate all food supplies into one or more central warehouses where they will be inventoried for rationing.
"All stocks of fresh meat will be salted and cured. Home supplies will be limited to no more than a week's needs of any one item. Hoarders who persist in their unfair activities will be ordered to leave the community. ”

“ An alternative scheme for rationing by means of individual cards, entitling the holder to a fixed quantity and no more, had been submitted to the Cabinet in June 1917 but was rejected, because at that time the Cabinet was not prepared for rationing as such. It seemed doubtful whether the public would submit to compulsory restriction of their food consumption ”

“ But this year, owing to the short crop in the United States, the consequent rise in every market, the scarcity of food throughout Europe, and the demand for tonnage in the United States for the purpose of shipping every pound of spare food to where food was at famine prices,—in consequence of these concurrent visitations, it is computed by the Economist that the manufacturers will have to pay from four to five millions sterling more to the Americans for the short supply of the present year, than for the more abundant one of last. ”

“ We hear now that Government is undertaking an inquiry to discover precisely how long our stock of provisions will last. Matters are managed so carelessly, that I doubt whether the Minister of Commerce himself knows to within ten days the precise date when we shall be starved out. The rations of meat now amount to 1-27th of a pound per diem for each adult. At the fashionable restaurants the supply is unlimited, and the price as unlimited. Two cutlets of donkey cost 18 francs, and everything else in the way of animal food is in proportion. ”

“ The British people have suffered no hardship in the recent reduction of their meat ration.
A British Commission has reported to Parliament that it takes three times as much fodder to produce beef as it does to produce milk or pork of the same food value. Since cows eat chiefly hay and grass and pigs eat grain the cost of the production of a unit value of milk is much less than the cost of the same value in the form of pork. It takes only fifty per cent. more fodder to produce veal than to produce pork. ”

“ They will find a readier sale, and at better prices, for their wheat, flour, rice, Indian corn, beef, pork, lard, butter, cheese, and other articles which they produce. The home market alone is inadequate to enable them to dispose of the immense surplus of food and other articles which they are capable of producing, even at the most reduced prices, for the manifest reason that they can not be consumed in the country. The United States can from their immense surplus supply not only the home demand, but the deficiencies of food required by the whole world. ”

“ Many a dollar is foolishly spent for delicatessen foods. The retail cost of ready prepared foods includes a fraction of the salary of the cook and the fuel, as well as the regular percentage of profit. The food, also, is not so nourishing or flavorsome as if freshly cooked in the home kitchen.
Buying perishable foods in larger quantities than can be used immediately. Too frequently meats, fish, eggs, vegetables, milk and cream are purchased in quantities larger than needed for immediate consumption, and lack of knowledge of use of left-overs causes what is not eaten to be discarded. ”

“ A most interesting and important phase of indirect price-fixing activities lay in the attempts to restrain prices by controlling consumption, as in the cases of tin, platinum, coal, sugar, wheat and meat. These efforts culminated in rationing in the case of sugar and the requirement of purchase of substitutes in the case of wheat or flour. Steps were taken, also, to prevent waste and to improve methods of production, for example, cleaner threshing of wheat. Most of such “conservation” measures are to be approved without reserve. ”

“ If bread as well as meat, fats and sugar are rationed this individual adjustment of consumption, according to the physical energy required, becomes impossible. The rationing system itself must provide differentiated rations for men doing varying kinds of physical labour or doing little or no physical work at all. ”

“ The importation of flour instead of wheat must obviously ruin the milling industry, and since wheat offals form no inconsiderable item in the list of feeding stuffs available for stock keepers, a decline of the milling industry 79 restricts the supply of food for his stock, and thus indirectly affects the farmer. At the same time the preference shown by the public for bread made from fine white imported flour, to some extent depreciated the value of home grown wheat. ”

“ By February 1937 four detailed schemes for the storage of a balanced group of foodstuffs were ready, ranging from Plan I, an emergency scheme for feeding London for month, to Plan IV which would provide together with normal trade stocks, for months’ supply of wheat, four months’ supply of oilseeds, three months’ supply of sugar, a large supply of whale oil (for cooking fat and margarine) and quantities of canned meat, canned milk and cheese, together with no less than six months’ supply of feeding grains for animals. ”

“ Not one of them, they say, entertains the expectation that the next year's potato crop will put an end to the difficulties of the country, by supplying sufficient food for the population: "the question is not now of the distribution but of the production of food. We have not to relieve a temporary distress, but to make provision for the food of a people." To buy food in foreign markets with money paid for unproductive labour at home, they of course, designate as it deserved. The true and permanent remedy is only to be found in the employment of additional capital and labour on the land. ”

“ For ordinary use we want all this brought to a general outlook of the value, and comparative value, of such ordinary food as bread, oatmeal, eggs, and beef; not only as to suitable proportions in our diet and to methods of cooking, but also as a help in providing suitable substitutes for a particular commodity in time of scarcity. Beyond the inevitable victims of the Irish potato famine, many suffered quite unnecessarily for want of ability to replace the familiar potato by a possible substitute; and to-day we are little more intelligent in our catering. ”

“ On the contrary, when a pound of flour or maize is purchased, the price of which is perhaps only one-eighth that of meat, the whole of it is edible. Thus, from the mere point of economy as well as of nutrition the superiority of cereals and other vegetable products is at once evident. On the one hand, a cereal is almost a complete food containing all the elements necessary to nutrition, and it costs only a few cents a pound. On the other hand, a steak or roast is only a partial food and it costs much more than cereals. ”

“ Economy of Production.—Animal foods can never compete in cheapness of the nutrients with cereals and vegetables, as it takes six to eight pounds or more of a cereal, together with forage crops, to make a pound of meat. Hence the returns in food value are very much larger from the direct use of the cereals as human food, than from the feeding of cereals to cattle and the use of the meat. As the population of a country increases, and foods necessarily become more expensive, cereals are destined to replace animal foods to a great extent, solely as a matter of economy. ”

“ The coarser and more nutritious parts of beef and mutton and good sound pork can be bought at retail at an average of eight cents a pound—often much less. The man’s meat, therefore, will cost him twelve cents a day or less. Good flour can be had at about two cents a pound. The man’s bread will, therefore, cost him about three cents a day, making the total cost of his food about fifteen cents a day, or less than fifty-five dollars a year.”
“But it costs something to cook it,” said Phil. ”