THE MECHANISM OF FOOD CONTROL IN GERMANY.
[CosimuxicarED.1 THE most contradictory reports regarding the food position in Germany have appeared. We hear some- times that food is exceedingly dear and scarce, and sometimes that it is very cheap and plentiful. Even the German Government has published irreconcilable accounts. It has officially complained that England was starving to death the German women and children, and it has also asserted that Germany could not be starved into surrender because the productivity of her agriculture made starvation impossible, and because she had devised a food organiza- tion for the duration of the war which made that country practically independent of imported supplies. The true position of the German food question is not realized in this country because the public has been mis- informed, not only by the Germans, but by neutral and British correspondents and journalists as well. In the natural desire to cheer up this country the newspapers have, since the beginning of the blockade, printed information according to which the food position in Germany was very serious. However, they have taken a very one-sided view. They have supplied us with instances of scarcity and of dearness, but they have failed to show us the other side. While English papers have month by month told us that food in Germany was scarce and dear, the advertisement columns of those German papers which reach England indicate that food is very cheap. If we turn for information to the Board of Trade Labour Gazette, which is supposed to be a well- informed and perfectly impartial organ, we are apt to be deceived. In the April number of that official publication lists of retail prices of foodstuffs in the United Kingdom and in Germany are published, but as the prices are expressed, not in shillings and pence, but in abstract percentages, it is, of course, impossible for the reader to compare prices in Germany and the United Kingdom. According to the Labour Gazette, retail prices of food have, since the beginning of the war, risen by 85-6 per cent. in Germany, and by only 49 per cent. in the United Kingdom. Apparently the rise has not been very much greater in Germany than over here. The difference is certainly not great enough to justify the belief that the blockade has produced widespread distress in Germany. However, if we look a little more closely into the figures supplied by the Board of Trade, it appears that the summary statement given is scarcely trustworthy. The staple foods of the German people are, in order of their importance, potatoes, bread, and sugar. The price of potatoes had remained unchanged, that of wheat bread had risen by 27-7 per cent., and that of rye bread by 42-9 per cent., whereas bread prices in the United Kingdom had increased by 52 per cent. Lastly, sugar had increased by 28 per cent. in Germany, and by no less than 128 per cent. in this country. As a matter of fact, potatoes, bread, and sugar have during the whole duration of the war been very much cheaper in Germany than over here. If the Board of Trade had made its comparison with a better knowledge of German conditions, it would not have published the figures given, which are quite misleading. Broadly speaking, food has been very cheap in Germany during the whole of the war, although some comparatively less important items have been dear. Germany produces about eight times as much potatoes as this country. The average German is as great a potato consumer as the average Irishman in the West and the South. Now, whereas potatoes have cost retail during the war about three-halfpence a pound in this country, they have cost only about a halfpenny a pound in Germany. In other words, they are three times as dear in this country as in blockaded Germany.. The German Government has recently proclaimed that food was cheap and plentiful in Germany. It has no doubt been cheap, but it seems questionable whether it has been plentiful. We have lately read about sanguinary food riots in many parts of Germany. We have become familiarized with the fact that housewives have to wait for hours, and sometimes all night long, to get certain foods under the ticket system, and in the Times of May 23rd the following Reuter telegram from Amsterdam was published :— "The Berlin Municipal Council issued new regulations on Saturday evening for the distribution of meat and fat. Every bread-ticket holder is now entitled to half-a-pound of meat or fat a week, £0 long as there are sufficient supplies. These regulations are to come into force im- mediately. Citizens are advised to put down their names at their butcher's without delay. Whether these rations will be increased, and if so, when, depends on the available supplies which, it is expected, will speedily be regulated by the Food Dictator,' who has not vet been appointed. The same rations have been allotted to the population at Charlottenburg."
Half-a-pound of meat is equivalent only to a very amen steak. How small that quantity per week must appear to the German masses may be obvious if we bear in mind that the German soldier's ration consists of three-quarters of a pound of meat per day, or of five and a quarter pounds per week. However, even this miserable half-pound of meat per week is not a certainty, but merely a possibility. It is the maximum to which a full-grown man is entitled. Apparently- food in Germany is at the same time cheap and scarce. This seems a contradiction, but the correctness of this view will presently appear.
Germany's power of organization has been the admiration and the envy of the world. Her organization and regulation of the food supply have evoked particular admiration in many quarters, and some British politicians have advocated copying the German system . em bloc and putting the nation on rations. Comilla° events may sober the views of the uncritical admirers of Germany. It seems by no means impossible that Germany by over-organizing and over-regu- lating the economic life of the nation has organized herself into ruin and regulated herself into defeat. - Immediately on the outbreak of war representatives of the Socialist Party, which had polled 4,250,000 votes at the last election, demanded that the regulation of food prices should not be left to rapacious " food usurers," that the State should fix low maximum prices, and ensure an equitable distribution of foodstuffs to all. In other words, the German Socialists demanded that the law of supply and demand should be abolished for the duration of the war. It is almost as danger- ous to disregard that fundamental economic law as to disregard the law of gravity. The food problem of blOckided'Germany was a simple one. As the country produces only about two-thirds of the food which is regularly consumed, consump- tion and production could be harmonized only by decreasing the former and increasing the latter. If the law of supply and demand had been allowed free play, prices would have risen considerably, and the greatly enhanced prices would have induced the masses to eat less, and would at the same time have caused the farmers to produce as much as possible, for German farmers like to take advantage of exceptiondi opportunities of making profits. Consumption of food in Germany could easily have been restricted, because the German masses suffer from habitual over-eating. That accounts for the well-known corpulence of the people. The very poor might of course have suffered by increased prices, but these might have been helped by the State and by the local authorities so as to tide them over. • Instead of allowing supply and demand to be regulated by natural means, by the means whereby they have been harmonized since the creation of things, the German Government chose to embark upon the most gigantie Socialistic experiment which the world has seen. In frantic haste it published hundreds of emergency laws, orders, and regulations, the bulk of which were designed to regulate the economic life of the country. A law was passed in the begin- ning of the war which empowered the Government to fix maximum wholesale and retail prices for all commodities, and to expropriate the owners of these commodities at the prices determined upon. At the same time, it authorized the State to undertake the distribution of these commodities.
Socialist doctrinaires have claimed since the time of Plato that the State should equitably regulate production., distribution, and consumption. A bureaucracy can do many things, but it cannot alter human nature. That fact is often overlooked by the dreamers of economic dreams. 'A powerful bureaucracy can easily seize all the existing supplies of meat, bread, potatoes, &c., and distribute them more or less equitably ; but it cannot very easily regulate production and consumption. Men like the Germans, who are used to over-eating and over-drinking, will continue eating and drinking in excess unless necessity compels them to alter their habits, and as it is impossible to regulate the food eaten by each individual by means of Government inspectors, a reduc- tion in the food consumed can be effected only by. the pressure of necessity, by high prices. The ablest bureaucracy also cannot compel retailers to continue in their business if it does not yield them an adequate profit, and least of all can it force millions of peasant farmers to produce meat, bread, corn, and potatoes in large quantities if the maximum prices fixed by the Government are not sufficiently attractive. By fixing maximum prices very low both for wholesale and retail transactions the German Government has seemingly suc- ceeded in reducing production and in considerably in- creasing consumption. Germany suffers from a general shortage of food. The Government has distributed sparingly certain foodstuffs and has made others dear. However, as other food could be obtained cheaply, the people apparently merely changed their diet, and continued their fatal inroad upon the insufficient and shrinking food stores of the country. The anxiety of the German Government regarding the food position may be plainly seen from the extravagant and ridicu- lous regulations made. Maximum prices, wholesale and retail, have been fixed for the most trivial items, such as pheasants, carp, tench, pike, red-eye, Sco. It is difficult to know exactly what has happened, because the German news- papers, though devoting columns to the food problem, do not give those details which alone will enable one to gauge the position correctly. It must not be forgotten that the entire German Press is edited by the General Staff. However, a few stray items of only local significance seem to indicate that low prices have caused the peasants to neglect cultivation, that they have allowed their cattle and pigs to eat bread corn before it was ripe, and to consume much of the potatoes intended for human consumption. The maximum price of Potatoes was fixed at 55 marks per ton, which is equal to about three pounds for a penny. Peasants who find that they cannot make a sufficient profit by selling their produce to the Government at the low official maximum prices, and who do not care to have their produce seized by the authorities, will produce little, will conceal much, and will raise food principally for their own consumption. That insufficient numbers of cattle and pigs are -coming to the markets is either due to the fact that the animals have been eaten during the period of low prices, or to the fact that the owners refuse to part with them, and that the Government is afraid to con- fiscate them.
As a rule low prices indicate plenty and high prices scarcity. Had the German Government allowed supply and demand to regulate themselves, there would have been high prices but a sufficiency. It seems possible that by keeping prices at an unnaturally low level the German authorities have created a fatal scarcity throughout the country. Herr Delbriick, the late German Vice-Chancellor, who has been responsible for the regulation of prices and the whole food policy of the Government, resigned recently "for reasons of health," and according to report the German Minister of Agriculture, who presumably acted as his principal adviser, will follow him into retirement. The food position in Germany is no doubt serious, and for all we know it may be desperate. That may account for Germany's desire for an early peace. Still, the new harvest is ripening, and the German people may bear much in the hope of early relief. Therefore the military efforts of the Allies must not be allowed to slacken.
Previous page
