Rationing

“ 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. ”

“ The process of rationing, therefore, has two sides negative and positive: the negative side of preventing any individual from obtaining, by purchase or otherwise, more than the authorized quantity of the rationed article, and the positive side of making it possible for each individual in fact to obtain that quantity. It is thus a problem both of restriction and of distribution, and the success of any rationing system may be judged even more by the degree to which the positive side is carried out, than by the completeness with which the prohibition upon excessive consumption is enforced. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A number of luxuries and subsidiary foods—fruit, canned fish, sweets, etc.—have been cut off. The supply of essential foods, though reduced as a whole, has been sufficient for all because it has been fairly distributed among rich and poor.”
The Ministry of Food in the United Kingdom accomplished, with a reasonable minimum of mistakes, the work for which it was established. The rationing system adopted is dealt with separately under Rationing. ”

“ If goods are rationed out, this rationing will not be accompanied by exploitation; as rationing can then be due only to a deficiency in personal or social production, and not to the spoliation which the wage-system implies, a system under which overproduction, far from being favorable to the satisfaction of the demand of the working-class for articles of consumption, results for them in loss of employment and starvation diet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As he confessed, however, that he had deliberately made "a disagreeable speech" in Paris in order to get it talked about, the Press will probably consider itself absolved.
Tuesday, November 20th.—Like John Bull, as represented in last week's cartoon, Lord LAMINGTON has arrived at the conclusion that compulsory rationing must come, and the sooner the better. Lord RHONDDA, however, is still hopeful that John will tighten his own belt, and save him the trouble. "More Yapping and Less Biting" should be our motto. But if we fail to live up to it, the machinery for compulsory rationing is all ready. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There should have been a general board of strategy to supervise the entire price-fixing programme and to coördinate it with the Government's fiscal arrangements and with the various steps taken to control the production and consumption through priorities and rationing. Some progress was made in this direction, but it remains true that the price-fixing operations were not sufficiently correlated with taxation and borrowing (inflation) on the one hand, and with rationing and priorities on the other. ”

“ Fifth, every effort is being made to introduce a system of rationing which will insure that the neutrals concerned will import only such quantities of articles as are specified as normally imported for their own consumption. ”

“ In the neighbourhood of a workhouse where work is really done, a manufacturer, while paying to the rate, bitterly feels that he is subscribing the means by which his trade is to be stolen from him. It is adding insult to injury to set up in the faces of rate-payers workhouse manufactures, which are to have a preference in the market to their own. In all these cases, however, the object fails. To all remedies yet tried, the same fundamental objection applies: they all encourage the increase of population, while they sink capital. ”

“ You see, however, that whether these slips of paper would bear the value of 100 francs, depended on the proportion of the assignâts to the purchasable property, and of both to the existing currency, and to the quantity of other commodities.”
“And, probably, the government, like many other governments, altered this proportion continually by new issues of paper money, while there was no corresponding increase of the property it represented?”
“Just so. More estates were confiscated, but the assignâts multiplied at a tenfold rate; driving better money out of the market, but still super-abounding. ”

“ As and when it may be necessary the Bank should raise or lower its rate, maintaining a reserve which is sufficient at all times if it be about one-third of the liabilities. To speculate upon the future, is to attempt to discount influences which may never be felt. To maintain for a day a higher rate than is necessary, is to tax the public for private ends, to reinstate Protection, and to disregard sound economic principles. To illustrate what we mean, take the case of bread famines. ”

“ It may not be uninstructive to consider the effects of a bounty on the production of raw produce and other commodities, with a view to observe the application of the principles which I have been endeavouring to establish, with regard to the profits of stock, the annual produce of the land and labour, and the relative prices of manufactures and raw produce. In the first place, let us suppose that a tax was imposed on all commodities, for the purpose of raising a fund to be employed by Government, in giving a bounty on the production of corn. ”

“ Your concern is about how much of bread and other things you get in return for your labour, and not how many shillings. Shillings are of no value to you but for what they buy. If half the money in the kingdom were to be carried off by fairies this night, so that you could have only half your present nominal wages, you would be no worse off than at present. The same quantity of food and clothing would be in the market, and you would get as much for sixpence as you now get for a shilling. ”

“ Or, as, leaving the connecting link, the price of wheat, to inference, we say that the price of flour depends upon the character of the seasons, wars, etc., so may we put the law of interest in a form which directly connects it with the law of rent, by saying that the general rate of interest will be determined by the return to capital upon the poorest land to which capital is freely applied—that is to say, upon the best land open to it without the payment of rent. ”

“ This accomplished, the Government should establish Postal Savings Banks in every city having a population of two thousand or more, where the people could deposit their surplus money, until needed, in perfect safety, paying a small per cent. just as they do for insuring their buildings.
There is always a ratio existing between the total volume of money, free to flow in the channels of trade, and all things on the market for sale, including labor. This ratio is called—price. Statistics show that we had our largest volume of money at the close of the Civil War. ”

“ If there were less money in the hands of the community, and the same amount of goods to be sold, less money altogether would be given for them, and they would be sold at lower prices; lower, too, in the precise ratio in which the money was diminished. So that the value of money, other things being the same, varies inversely as its quantity; every increase of quantity lowering the value, and every diminution raising it, in a ratio exactly equivalent. ”

“ For, since the distribution of wealth is a division, in ascertaining what fixes the share of the produce that goes as rent, we ascertain also what fixes the share that is left for wages, where there is no cooperation of capital; and what fixes the joint share that is left for wages and interest, where capital does cooperate in production. ”

“ That a considerable margin is necessary to cover the legitimate costs of, and profits on, distribution is obvious. The only direction of inquiry is how they can be legitimately minimized. These margins, starting from the unduly high expense of a faulty system, have increased not only legitimately, due to increased transportation, labor, rent, taxes, and increased interest upon the large capital required, but they have, except during the period of control, increased unduly beyond these necessities. ”

“ Would the labour be bestowed freely by that party? If not, by whom?
“Why should we expect,” asked Ernest, “that any one should undertake so troublesome an office without reward? I know it is expected of governments, and I think unreasonably, that they should issue money from the mint without charge for coining it; unreasonably, because, supposing the supply to be restricted, it is exposing the state to too great hazard of a deficiency, and the government to the danger of an incessant drain, to make, by arbitrary means, the exchangeable value of coin equal with that of bullion ”

“ If we cannot ascertain the extent in which we have cultivated the capacity of currency to transfer property, because it is impossible to discover how much has been transferred by its depreciation, we can yet compute it with considerable accuracy, so far as this capacity is exercised by taxation, State and Federal, by dividends paid to bankers, and by bounties paid to capitalists. ”

“ Sometimes complaints were made against the largeness of their profits, when the fact was that they gave precisely the same proportion of their produce to their workmen as before, but there were more workmen to divide this proportion; which was no fault of their masters. With these few variations, the family continued to prosper, being for the most part content with the ordinary rate of profits, and making up by continual accumulation for their gradual fall;—that fall which must take place wherever the supply of food is restricted. ”

“ It is for want of capital that the land is subdivided too far. If revenue is so far absorbed by a poor-rate as to check its conversion into capital, this subdivision will go on.”
“Undoubtedly such would be the effect in our agricultural districts; and in the manufacturing towns the case would be as bad. Our linen-weavers would be a burden upon the rates in slack times, and their masters must encroach upon their wages-fund to support them; and thus the masters would be brought lower and lower, to the permanent injury of their men.” ”

“ They are distraining for the rate.”
“Aye, that is the way, Effingham. Thus is our pauper list swelled, year by year. It grows at both ends. Paupers multiply their own numbers as fast as they can, and rate-payers sink down into rate-receivers. This will probably be Dale’s fate, as it has been that of many little farmers before him. And if it is, he will only anticipate by a few years the fate of others besides small farmers, of shopkeepers, manufacturers, merchants, and agriculturists of every class; always providing that some radical amendment of the system does not take place.” ”

“ It is not, however, as broad a field as it otherwise would be because both bench and bar, together with the growth of legal learning, have followed the bent of certain narrow developments of modern life. Its most complicated and involved processes of ratiocination and its most elaborately established principles concern the acquisition, ownership and transfer of property, and they are, therefore, of comparatively minor importance. In the long run it is of little moment which of two men secures the moneys in dispute. ”

“ They knew that the grand point they must aim at, for the sake of all, was to keep their capital entire; for the less capital they laid out, the less labour they could employ, and the less iron they would send into the market, and their gross and neat revenue would dwindle away year by year.
It was evident that their fixed capital must be left as it was. Whenever any change was made in that department, it must be to add to it; not by building more furnaces, but by substituting machinery,—hoarded labour,—for the labour which demanded wages ”

“ The wages of the men and the salaries of the managers were to be put at the minimum rate, and both parties were to draw two-thirds of this sum weekly. At the end of the year, the profits on labor and capital were to be evenly divided; one half apportioned to the capital, the other half divided pro rata; but only half of this sum to be drawn out yearly, the other turned over to the capital stock, and placed to each man's credit. If any operative should become dissatisfied, and leave, his share of the profits was to be forfeited to a fund for sick or disabled workmen. ”