October, 1916, marked the high water of the Central European
public-subsistence problems. Misery had reached the limits of human
endurance. For the next seven months the strain caused by it tore at the
vitals of the Central states. The measures then conceived and applied
would prove whether or no the collapse of Germany and her allies could
be averted. So serious was the situation that the several governments
felt compelled to send out peace-feelers, one or two of them being
definite propositions of a general nature.
The crumbs and scraps had been saved for a long time even then. As far
back as November, 1914, all garbage had been carefully sorted into
rubbish and food remnants which might serve as animal feed. But that was
no longer necessary now. Food remnants no longer went into the
garbage-cans. Nor was it necessary to advise the public not to waste old
clothing and other textiles. The ragman was paying too good a price for
them. Much of the copper and brass complement of households had been
turned over to the government, and most copper roofs were being
replaced by tin. The church bells were being smelted. Old iron fetched a
fancy price. In the currency iron was taking the place of nickel. Old
paper was in keen demand. The sweepings of the street were being used as
fertilizer. During the summer and fall the hedges had been searched for
berries, and in the woodlands thousands of women and children had been
busy gathering mushrooms and nuts. To meet the ever-growing scarcity of
fuel the German government permitted the villagers to lop the dead wood
in the state forests. To ease the needs of the small live-stock-owner he
was allowed to cut grass on the fiscal woodlands and gather the dead
leaves for stable bedding.
It was a season of saving scraps. The entire economic machinery seemed
ready for the scrap-heap. Much of the saving that was being practised
was leading to economic waste.
The city streets were no longer as clean as they used to be. During the
summer much light-fuel had been saved by the introduction of "summer
time." The clocks were set ahead an hour, so that people rose shortly
after dawn, worked their customary ten hours in the shops and factories,
and then still had enough daylight to work in their gardens. When dusk
came they went to bed. Street traction had been limited also. The early
closing of shops, cafés, and restaurants effected further savings in
light, and, above all, eatables.
The countryside presented a dreary picture. Nobody had time to
whitewash the buildings, and few cared about the appearance of their
homes. What is the use? they said. They could wait until better times
came. The dilapidated shutter kept fit company with the rain-streaked
wall. The untidy yard harmonized with the neglected garden in a
veritable diapason of indifference. The implements and tools of the farm
were left where they had been used last. The remaining stock had an
unkempt look about it.
I remember how during a trip in Steiermark I once compared the
commonwealth with a lonely hen I saw scratching for food in a yard. The
rusty plumage of the bird showed that nobody had fed it in months. There
was no doubt, though, that somebody expected that hen to lay eggs.
It was now a question, however, of saving the scraps of the state--of
the socio-economic fabric. The flood of regulation which had spilled
over Central Europe had pulled so many threads out of the socio-economic
life that, like a thin-worn shawl, it had no longer the qualities of
keeping warm those under it. The threads had been used by those in the
trenches, and the civilian population had been unable to replace them.
It would be quite impossible to give within the confines of a single
volume a list of these regulations, together with a discussion of their
many purposes, tendencies, and effects. I would have to start with the
economic embryo of all social economy--the exchange of food between the
tiller of the soil and the fisherman--to make a good job of that.
A little intensive reasoning will show what the processes applied in
Central Europe had been up to the fall of 1916. Regulated was then
almost everything man needs in order to live: bread, fats, meat, butter,
milk, eggs, peas, beans, potatoes, sugar, beer, fuel, clothing, shoes,
and coal-oil. These were the articles directly under control. Under the
indirect influence of regulation, however, lay everything, water and air
alone excepted.
Now, the purpose of this regulation had been to save and to provide the
government with the funds needed for the war. That was well enough so
long as there was something to save. But the time was come in which the
governmental effort at saving was futile endeavor. There was nothing
that could be saved any more. Surpluses had ceased to be. Production no
longer equaled consumption, and when that state of things comes crumbs
and scraps disappear of themselves.
Once I had to have a pair of heels straightened. I had no trouble
finding a cobbler. But the cobbler had no leather.
"Surely," I said, "you can find scraps enough to fix these heels!"
"But, I can't, sir!" replied the man. "I cannot buy scraps, even. There
is no more leather. I am allowed a small quantity each month. But what I
had has been used up long ago. If you have another old pair of shoes,
bring them around. I can use part of the soles of them to repair the
heels, and for the remainder I will pay with my labor. I won't charge
you anything for mending your shoes."
I accepted the proposal and learned later that the cobbler had not made
so bad a bargain, after all.
A similar policy had to be adopted to keep the Central populations in
clothes. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey produce
considerable quantities of wool, flax, silk, and cotton. But what they
produce was not enough to go around, and the men at the front were
wearing out their uniforms at an alarming rate. The military authorities
felt that nothing would be gained by making the uniforms of poor cloth.
The wear and tear on the fabric was severe. Labor in the making and
distribution of the uniforms could be saved only by using the best
materials available.
For the civilians it became necessary to wear shoddy. And to obtain
shoddy every scrap must be saved. The time came when an old all-wool
suit brought second-hand as good a price as a new suit fresh from the
mill and the tailor shop. With the addition of a little new fiber that
old suit might make two new ones. The old material was "combed" into
wool again, and to this was added some new wool, cotton, or silk, and
"new" goods appeared again on the counter.
The "I-cash" never had done such business before. The attics and cellars
were ransacked, and since those who had most old clothing to sell bought
hardly any at all now, the pinch of the war in clothing was really
never felt very much by the poor. To prevent the spread of contagious
diseases the several governments saw to it that the shoddy was
thoroughly sterilized.
But economies of that sort are more or less automatic and lie within the
realm of supply and demand. Unchecked, they may also become the cause of
economic waste. The time comes when shoddy is an absolute loss. When
fibers are used over and over, together with new elements, the oldest of
them finally cease to have value. That means that the fabric does not
have the wearing qualities which will give economic compensation for the
labor spent on it and the price asked from the consumer. The stuff may
be good to look upon, but in times of war that is not essential.
The profiteer found a fine field in the manufacture of shoddy. All
first-hand shoddy he would sell as new material, and before he admitted
that a certain piece of cloth was "indifferent" in quality, it had to be
poor indeed. He would ask a good price for a suit that might fall to
pieces in the first rain, and the consumer was left to do the best he
could with the thing. When the consumer complained he would be told that
the "war" was responsible, and the consumer, knowing in a general and
superficial manner that things were indeed scarce, would decide to be
reasonable.
But the government could not take that easy view. Labor which might have
been put to better use had been expended in the making of that shoddy,
and now the fabric served no good purpose. That had to be avoided. It
was far better to abandon fiber of this sort than to have it become the
cause of waste in labor and the reason for further discontent. Labor
that results in nothing more than this is non-productive, and the
governments of Central Europe knew only too well that they had no hands
to spare for that kind of unavailing effort.
I ran into a case of this sort in Bohemia. A large mill had turned out a
great deal of very poor shoddy. The cloth looked well, and, since wool
fiber newly dyed makes a good appearance even long after its wearing
qualities have departed forever, the firm was doing a land-office
business. All went well until some of the fine cloth got on the backs of
people. Then trouble came. Some of the suits shrank when wet, while
others did the very opposite. The matter came to the attention of the
authorities.
Experts in textiles examined the cloth. Some of the output was found to
contain as much as 60 per cent. old fiber, and there was no telling how
many times this old fiber had been made over. It was finally shown that,
had the manufacturer been content with a little less profit, he could
have converted the new fiber--which, by the way, he had obtained from
the government Fiber Central--into some thirty thousand yards of
first-class shoddy under a formula that called for 65 per cent. new
fiber and 35 per cent. old. As it was, he had turned the good raw
material into nearly fifty-two thousand yards of fabrics that were not
worth anything and he had wasted the labor of hundreds of men and women
besides.
The man had been trying to make use of crumbs and scraps for his own
benefit. Personal interests had led, in this instance, to an attempt to
convert an economic negative into a positive. The useless fiber was a
minus which no effort in plus could cause to have any other value than
that which this profit-hunter saw in it. By the rational economist the
shoddy had been abandoned, and all effort to overcome the statics of
true economy, as here represented by the unserviceableness of the fiber
for the use to which it had been assigned, was bound to be an economic
waste.
Cases such as these--and there were thousands of them--showed the
authorities that there was danger even in economy. The crumbs and scraps
themselves were useless in the end. Beyond a certain point all use of
them resulted in losses, and that point was the minimum of utility that
could be obtained with a maximum of effort. The economic structure could
not stand on so poor a sand foundation.
But the several governments were largely responsible for this. They had
regulated so much in behalf of economy that they had virtually given the
economic shark _carte blanche_.
There was a season when I attended a good many trials of men who had run
afoul of the law in this manner. They all had the same excuse. Nothing
had been further from their minds than to make in times such as these
excessive profits. They would not think of such a thing. If they had
used poor materials in the things they manufactured, it was due entirely
to their desire to stretch the country's resources. In doing that they
had hoped to lighten the burden of the government. Conservation had
become necessary and everybody would have to help in that. They had been
willing to do their bit, and now the authorities were unreasonable
enough to find fault with this policy.
At first many a judge had the wool pulled over his eyes in that manner.
But in the end the scheme worked no longer. Usually the limit of
punishment fell on the offender.
Abuses of this sort had much to do with an improvement in conservation
methods. So far as the textile industry was concerned it led to the
control by the government Raw-Material Centrals, which were established
rather loosely at the beginning of the war, of all fibers. The ragman
thereafter turned over his wares to these centrals, and when a spinner
wanted material he had to state what he wanted it for and was then given
the necessary quantities in proportions. That helped, and when the
government took a better interest in the goods manufactured this avenue
of economic waste was closed effectively. With these measures came the
clothing cards for the public. After that all seemed well. The poorer
qualities of cloth disappeared from the market overnight, and a suit of
clothing was now sure to give fair value for the price.
I have made use of this example to illustrate what the factors in
regulation and conservation were at times, and how difficult it was to
unscramble the economic omelet which the first conservation policies had
dished up.
There were other crumbs and scraps, however. Not the least of them was
the socio-economic organism itself. That sensitive thing had been
doctored so much that only a major operation could again put it on its
feet. Economy faddists and military horse-doctors alike had tried their
hands on the patient, and all of them had overlooked that the only thing
there was wrong with the case was malnutrition. Everybody was trying to
get the usual quantities and qualities of milk from a cow that was
starving. Poor Bossy!
Man lives not by food alone; nor does society. It takes a whole lot of
things to run a state. While the government had already in its grasp all
the distribution and consumption of food, there were many things it did
not care to interfere with, even if they were almost as important as
food. These things were the products of industry, rather than the fruits
of the fields, though usually, as is natural, it was difficult to draw a
strong line of demarcation in the division of spheres. In social economy
that has always been so. To get the true perspective, take a dozen
pebbles, label them food, fuel, clothing, and whatever else occurs to
you, and then throw the pebbles in the pond. You will find that the
circular wavelets caused by the pebbles will soon run into and across
one another, and if by chance you have followed the waves of food you
will notice that while they have been broken by the impact of the others
they still remain discernible.
Into the rippling pond the several governments had each thrown the
cobblestones of regulation. The food, fuel, and clothing ripples were
still there, of course, but they had been so obliterated that it was now
difficult to trace them on the regulation waves.
But the waves, too, subsided, and on the backwash of them the
authorities read lessons which suggested saner methods--methods whose
conception and application were attended by a better regard for the
nature of the operation, be this production, distribution, or
consumption.
The saving of crumbs and scraps had not been without its value. It
tended to make men short-sighted, however. The governments of Central
Europe wanted to limit consumption to the absolutely necessary, but
overlooked that their _modus operandi_ gave cause to serious losses. The
various authorities did not wish to interfere too much with normal
currents of economic life. That was well enough in a way, but had
disastrous consequences. A shortage in the necessities of life was the
great fact of the day. It could be met only by restricting consumption.
But the machinery of this restriction was a haphazard thing. It promoted
hoarding.
There have been those who have condemned the hoarder in the roundest of
terms. I am not so sure that he deserves all of the anathemas that have
been hurled at him. When a government shouts day in and day out that
the worst will come to pass if everybody does not save the crumbs, the
more easily alarmed are bound to think only of themselves and of their
own. High prices will cease to be a deterrent, for the reason that war
brings only too many examples of the fact that only food and not money
will sustain life. To act in accordance with this may be a weakness, but
it is also along the lines of a natural condition, if self-preservation
be indeed the first law of nature. Soon there are found those who
promote and pamper this weakness for a profit. Food is then stored away
by the majority. Some will waste much of it in over-consumption, while
more will permit the food to spoil by improper storage methods,
especially when the food has to be secreted in cellars and attics,
wardrobes and drawers, as happens when government by inspection becomes
necessary. But of this I have spoken already in its proper place.