Food-regulators will be wroth, I suppose, if I should state that the
consumption of life's necessities can be regulated and diminished for
its own sake, and that high prices are not necessarily the only way of
doing this. At the same time I must admit that prices are bound to rise
when demand exceeds supply. In our system of economy that is a natural
order of affairs. But this tendency, when not interfered with, would
also result in a quick and adequate betterment in wages. In Central
Europe, however, the cost of living was always about 50 per cent. ahead
of the slow increase in earnings. That 50 per cent. was the increment
which the government and its economic minions needed to keep the war
going. What regulation of prices there was kept this in mind always. In
order that every penny in the realm might be mobilized and then kept
producing, no change in these tactics could be permitted.
The food shark and price-boosting middleman were essential in this
scheme, and when these were dropped by the government, one by one, it
was nothing but a case of:
The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go.
Elimination of the middleman worked upward, much as does a disease that
has its bed in the slums. When the consumer had been subjected to the
limit of pressure, the retailer felt the heavy hand of the government.
It got to be the turn of the wholesaler and commission-man, and in
October of 1916, the period of which I speak here, only the industrial
and commercial kings and the banking monarchs were still in favor with
the government. The speculators then operating were either the agents of
these powers or closely affiliated with them.
In the fall of 1916 the war system of national economy had taken the
shape it has to-day. Food had become the irreducible minimum. Not alone
was the quantity on hand barely sufficient to feed the population, but
its price could no longer be increased if the masses were not to starve
for lack of money instead of lack of food. The daily bread was now a
luxury. Men and women had to rise betimes and work late into the night
if they wanted to eat at all.
Let me now speak of the sort of revision of economic regulations that
was in vogue before the adoption of the new system.
That revision started with the farmer--the producer of food. Some
requisitioning had been done on the farms for strictly military
purposes. Horses and meat animals had been taken from the farmer for
cash at the minimum prices established by the authorities. Forage and
grain for the army had been commandeered in a like manner, and in a few
cases wagons, plows, and other implements. Further than that (taking
into account the minimum prices, which were in favor of the farmer and
intended to stimulate production), the government had not actually
interfered with the tiller of the soil. He had gone on as before, so far
as a shortage of labor, draft animals, and fertilizers permitted. He had
not prospered, of course, but on the whole he was better off than the
urbanite and industrial worker, for the reason that he could still
consume of his food as much as he liked. The government had, indeed,
prescribed what percentage of his produce he was to turn over to the
public, but often that interference went no further.
But in the growing and crop season of 1916 the several governments went
on a new tack. Trained agriculturists, employees of the Food Commissions
and Centrals, looked over the crops and estimated what the yield would
be. From the total was then subtracted what the establishment of the
farmer would need, and the rest had to be turned over to the Food
Centrals at fixed dates.
The farmers did not take kindly to this. But there was no help. Failure
to comply with orders meant a heavy fine, and hiding of food brought
similar punishment and imprisonment besides.
With this done, the food authorities began to clear up a little more in
the channels of distribution. The cereals were checked into the mills
more carefully, and the smaller water-mills, which had in the past
charged for their labor by retaining the bran and a little flour, were
put on a cash basis. For every hundred pounds of grain they had to
produce so many pounds of flour, together with by-products when these
latter were allowed.
The flour was then shipped to a Food Central, and this would later issue
it to the bakers, who had to turn out a fixed number of loaves. To each
bakery had been assigned so many consumers, and the baker was now
responsible that these got the bread which the law prescribed.
Potatoes and other foods were handled in much the same manner. The
farmer had to deliver them to the Food Central in given quantities at
fixed dates, and the Central turned them over to the retailers for sale
to the public in prescribed allotments. Now and then small quantities of
"unrestricted" potatoes would get to the consumer through the municipal
markets. But people had to rise at three o'clock in the morning to get
them. This meant, of course, that only those willing to lose hours of
needed sleep for the sake of a little extra food got any of these
potatoes.
The ways of the efficient food-regulator are dark and devious but
positive in their aim.
The meat-supply was not further modified. The meatless days and
exorbitant prices had made further regulation in that department
unnecessary. Milk and fat, however, as well as eggs, were made the
subject of further attention by the Food Commissions. All three of them
were as essential to the masses as was bread, and for that reason they
passed within the domain of the food zone--_Rayon_.
In their case, however, the authorities left the supply uncontrolled.
The farmer sold to the Food Central what milk, butter, lard, suet,
tallow, vegetable-oil, and eggs he produced, and the Central passed them
on to the retailers, who had to distribute them to a given number of
consumers. The same was done in the case of sugar.
Such a scheme left many middlemen high and dry. Those who could not be
of some service in the new system, or found it not worth while to be
connected with it, took to other lines of industry.
The government had left a few such lines open. That, however, was not
done in the interest of the middlemen. The better-paid working classes
still had pennies that had to be garnered, and these pennies, now that
food was surrounded by cast-iron regulations and laws, went into the
many other channels of trade.
I made the acquaintance of a man who in the past had bought and sold on
commission almost anything under the heading of food. Now it would be a
car-load of flour, then several car-loads of potatoes, and when business
in these lines was poor he would do a legal or illicit business in
butter and eggs. Petroleum was a side line of his, and once he made a
contract with the government for remounts. I don't think there was
anything the man had not dealt in. But the same can be said of every one
of the thousands that used to do business in the quiet corners of the
Berlin and Vienna cafés.
I should mention here that the Central European commission-man does not
generally hold forth in an office. The café is his place of
business--not a bad idea, since those with whom he trades do the same.
There are certain cafés in Vienna, Berlin, and Budapest, and the other
cities, that exist almost for that purpose. In any three of them one can
buy and sell anything from a paper of pins to a stack of hay.
My acquaintance found that the new order of things in the food
department left him nothing but the pleasant memory of the "wad" he had
made under the old régime. He took to matches.
Matches were uncontrolled and rather scarce. Soon he had a corner in
matches. He made contracts with the factories at a price he could not
have paid without a large increase in the selling price of the article.
But he knew how to bring that condition about.
Before long the price of matches went up. They had been selling at about
one-quarter cent American for a box of two hundred. The fancier article
sold for a little more.
When the price was one cent a box, my acquaintance began to unload
judiciously. Merchants did not want to be without matches again, and
bought with a will. The speculator cleared one hundred and twenty
thousand crowns on his first release, I was told. His average monthly
profit after that was something like forty thousand crowns.
Somehow he managed to escape prosecution under the anti-high-profit
decree then in force. No doubt that was due to his connections with the
Vienna Bank Food Ring. At any rate, his name appeared as one of the
large subscribers to the fifth Austrian war loan, and, needless to say,
he paid his share of the war-profit tax.
In this case fractions of pennies were mobilized. I suppose almost
anybody who can afford fuel can afford to light a fire with a match that
costs the two-hundredth part of a cent. No doubt the government thought
so. Why not relieve the population of that little accumulation of
economic "fat"?
Another genius of that sort managed to get a corner in candles. How he
managed to get his stock has never been clear to me, since the food
authorities had long ago put a ban on the manufacture of candles. I
understand that some animal fats, suet and tallow, are needed to make
the paraffin "stand" up. Those animal fats were needed by the population
in the form of food.
But the corner in candles was _un fait accompli_. The man was
far-sighted. He held his wares until the government ordered lights out
in the houses at eleven o'clock, and these candles were then welcome at
any price, especially in such houses where the janitor would at the
stroke of the hour throw off the trunk switch in the cellar.
Here was another chance to get pennies from the many who could afford to
buy a candle once or twice a week. The government had no reason to
interfere. Those pennies, left in the pockets of the populace, would
have never formed part of a war loan or war-profit taxes.
Sewing-thread was the subject of another corner. In fact, all the little
things people must have passed one by one into the control of some
speculator.
Gentle criticism of that method of mulcting the public was made in the
press that depended more than ever on advertising. But that fell on deaf
ears. And usually a man had not to be a deep thinker to realize that the
government must permit that sort of thing in order to find money for the
prosecution of the war and the administration of the state. To serious
complaint, the government would reply that it had done enough by
regulating the food, and that further regulation would break down the
economic machine. That was true, of course. To take another step was to
fall into the arms of the Social Democrats, and that responsibility
nobody expected the government to take.
The attitude of the public toward the governmentally decreed system of
social economy is not the least interesting feature of it.
The authorities took good care to accompany every new regulation with
the explanation that it had to be taken in the interest of the state
and the armies in the field. If too much food was consumed in the
interior, the men in the trenches would go hungry. That was a good
argument, of course. Almost every family had some member of it in the
army; that food was indeed scarce was known, and not to be content with
what was issued was folly in the individual--at one time it was treason.
As an antidote against resentment at high prices, the government had
provided the minimum-maximum price schedules, and occasionally some
retailer or wholesaler was promptly dealt with by the court, whose
president was then more interested in fining the man than in putting him
in jail. The government needed the money and was not anxious to feed
prisoners. If some favorite was hit by this, the authorities had the
convenient excuse that it was "war."
It is difficult to see how the attitude of the several governments could
have been different. The authorities of a state have no other power,
strength, and resources than what the community places at their disposal
wittingly or unwittingly. The war was here and had to be prosecuted in
the best manner possible, and the operations incident to the struggle
were so gigantic that every penny and fraction thereof had to be
mobilized. There was no way out of this so long as the enemy was to be
met and opposed. Even the more conservative faction of the Social
Democrats realized that, and for the time being the "internationalist"
socialists had no argument they could advance against this, since
elsewhere the "internationalists" had also taken to cover. The Liberals
everywhere could demand fair treatment of the masses, but that they had
been given by the government to the fullest extent possible under the
circumstances. The exploitation of the public was general and no longer
confined to any class, though it did not operate in all cases with the
same rigor.
To have the laws hit all alike would have meant embracing the very
theories of Karl Marx and his followers. Apart from the fact that the
middle and upper classes were violently opposed to this, there was the
question whether it would have been possible in that case to continue
the war. The German, German-Austrian, and Hungarian public, however,
wanted the war continued, even when the belt had been tightened to the
last hole. What, under these circumstances, could be done by the several
governments but extract from their respective people the very last cent?
Discussion of the policy was similar to a cat chasing its tail.
We may say the same of the motive actuating the authorities when in the
fall of 1916 they established municipal meat markets where meat could be
obtained by the poor at cost price and often below that. Whether that
was done to alleviate hunger or keep the producer in good trim is a
question which each must answer for himself. It all depends on the
attitude one takes. The meat was sold by the municipality or the Food
Commission direct, at prices from 15 to 25 per cent. below the day's
quotation, and was a veritable godsend to the poor. Whether the
difference in price represented humaneness on the part of the
authorities or design would be hard to prove. Those I questioned
invariably claimed that it was a kind interest in the masses which
caused the government to help them in that manner. Had I been willing to
do so I could have shown, of course, that the money spent in this sort
of charity had originally been in the pockets of those who bought the
cheaper meat.
But that is a chronic ailment of social economy, and I am not idealist
enough to say how this ailment could be cured. In fact, I cannot see how
it can be cured if society is not to sink into inertia, seeing that the
scramble for a living is to most the only leaven that will count. That
does not mean, however, that I believe in the maxim, "The devil take the
hindmost"--a maxim which governed the distribution of life's necessities
in Central Europe during the first two years of the war.
The zonification of the bread, milk, fats, and sugar supply, and the
municipal meat markets began to show that either the government had come
to fear the public or was now willing to co-operate with it more closely
than it had done in the past. At any rate, this new and better policy
had a distinctly humane aspect. Some of the food-lines disappeared, and
with them departed much of that brutality which food control by the
government had been associated with in the past. The food allowance was
scant enough, but a good part of it was now assured. It could be
claimed at any time of the day, and that very fact revived in many the
self-respect which had suffered greatly by the eternal begging for food
in the lines.
Having made a study of the psychology of the food-liner, I can realize
what that meant. Of a sudden food riots ceased, and with them passed all
danger of a revolution. I am convinced that in the winter of 1915-16 it
was easier to start internal trouble in the Central states than it was a
year later. A more or less impartial and fairly efficient system of food
distribution had induced the majority to look at the shortage in
eatables as something for which the government was not to blame. That,
after all, was what the government wanted. Whether or no it worked
consciously toward that end I am not prepared to say.
By that time, also, the insufferable small official had been curbed to
quite an extent. As times grew harder, and the small increases in pay
failed more and more to keep pace with the increase in the cost of
living, that class became more and more impossible. Toward its superiors
it showed more obsequiousness than before, because removal from office
meant a stay at the front, and since things in life have the habit of
balancing one another, the class became more rude and oppressive toward
the public. Finally the government caused the small official to
understand that this could not go on. He also learned in a small degree
that bureaucratism is not necessarily the only purpose of the
officeholder, though much progress in that direction was yet necessary.
It has often been my impression that government in Central Europe would
be good if it were possible to put out of their misery the small
officials--the element which snarls at the civilian when there is no
occasion for it. It seems to me that the worst which the extremists
in the Entente group have planned for the Central Powers is still
too good for the martinet who holds forth in the Central European
_Amtsstube_--_i. e._, government office. Law and order has no greater
admirer than myself, but I resent having some former corporal take it
for granted that I had never heard of such things until he happened
along. Yet that is precisely what this class does. It has alienated
hundreds of thousands of friends of the German people. It has stifled
the social enlightenment and political liberty which was so strong in
Central Europe in the first four decades of the nineteenth century.
It is not difficult to imagine what that class did to a population which
had been reduced to subsisting at the public crib. The bread ticket was
handed the applicant with a sort of by-the-grace-of-God mien, when rude
words did not accompany it. The slightest contravention brought a flood
of verbal abuse. Pilate never was so sure that he alone was right.
Between this official insolence, food shortage, and exploitation by the
government and its economic minions, the Central European civilian had a
merry time of it.
But, after all, no people has a better government than it deserves, just
as it has no more food than it produces or is able to secure. The
martinets did not mend their ways until women in the food-lines had
clawed their faces and an overwhelming avalanche of complaints began to
impress the higher officials. Conditions improved rapidly after that and
stayed improved so long as the public was heard from. It may not be
entirely coincidence that acceptable official manners and better
distribution of food came at the same time. In that lies the promise
that the days of the autocratic small official in Central Europe are
numbered.
It was futile, however, to look for a general or deep-seated resentment
against the government itself. Certain officials were hated. Before the
war that would have made little difference to the bureaucratic clans,
and even now they were often reluctant to sacrifice one of their ilk,
but there was no longer any help for it. There was never a time when a
change in the principle of government was considered as the means to
effect a bettering of conditions. The Central European prefers
monarchical to republican government. He is not inclined to do homage to
a ruler who is a commoner--a tribute he still pays his government and
its head.
In the monarchy the ruler occupies a position which the average
republican cannot easily understand. In the constitutional monarchy,
having a responsible ministry, the king is generally little better than
what is known as a figurehead. He is hardly ever heard from, and when
he is the cause of his appearance in the spotlight may be some act that
has little or nothing to do with government itself. He may open some
hospital or attend a maneuver or review of the fleet, or convene
parliament with a speech prepared by the premier, and there his
usefulness ends--seemingly. But that is not quite so. In such a realm
the monarch stands entirely for that continuation of policy and
principle which is necessary for the guidance of the state. He becomes
the living embodiment of the constitution, as it were. He is the
non-political guardian thereof. Political parties may come and go, but
the king stays, seeing to it, theoretically at least, that the
parliamentary majority which has put its men into the ministry does not
violate the ground laws of the country.
In his capacities of King of Prussia and German Emperor, William II. has
been more absolute than any of the other European monarchs, the Czar of
Russia alone excepted. The two constitutions under which he rules, the
Prussian and the German federative, give him a great deal of room in
which to elbow around. When a Reichstag proved intractable he had but to
dissolve it, and in the Prussian chambers of Lords and Deputies he was
as nearly absolute as any man could be--provided always he did what was
agreeable to the Junkers. They are a strong-minded crew in Prussia, and
less inclined to be at the beck and call of their king than Germans
generally are in the case of their Emperor. In Prussia the King is far
more the servant of the state than the Kaiser is in Germany. But this is
one of those little idiosyncrasies in government that can be found
anywhere.
Three years of contact with all classes of Germans have yet to show me
the single individual, not a most radical socialist, who had anything
but kind words for the King-Emperor and his family. What the Kaiser had
to say went through the multitude like an electric impulse. No matter
how uninteresting I might find a statement, because I could not see it
from the angle of the German, the public always received it very much as
it might the word of a prophet. It was conceded that the Emperor could
make mistakes, that, indeed, he had made not a few of them; but this did
not by any means lessen the degree of receptiveness of his subjects.
Against the word of Kaiser Wilhelm all argument is futile, and will
always remain futile.
It was this sentiment which caused the German people to accept with
wonderful patience whatever burden the war brought. Had it ever been
necessary to cast into the government's war treasury the last pfennig,
the mere word from the Kaiser would have accomplished this. What
Napoleon was to his soldiers Emperor William II. is to his people.
And then it must not be overlooked that the Emperor possesses marked
ability as a press agent. He was always the first to conform to a
regulation in food. Long before the rich classes had so much as a
thought of eating war-bread, Emperor William would tolerate nothing else
on his table. The Empress, too, adhered to this. All wheat bread was
banished from the several palaces of the imperial _ménage_. Every court
function was abandoned, save coffee visits in the afternoon for the
friends of the Empress.
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.