THE WORLD PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 46, 22 February 1917, Page 2

THE WORLD PROBLEM

WHAT IS IT?

ATTEMPTS AT SOLUTION

AFTER THE WAR,

Wer.e Mr. Lloyd George asked What is the greatest problem awaiting solution to-day? his answer would probably be, To Win the War The Kaiser might also make a similar reply But there is a still greater riddle to unravel, and, intricate as it was before the war, its complexity is now only intensified by it It is How to Reduce the Cost of Living? This is the world's biggest problem today The proclamation of peace will not solve it. It will still have to bo tackled. The various legislative experiments tried before and during the war to bring that cost down have so far failed. True, mattors ' might have been worse than they are without them, but the appalling naked fact is ever before us that the ? cost of living is not going down, is not remaining stationary, but is ever rising. Statistics show that food consumption is fast outstripping food production, and that the war has given the former a dynamic impetus, while at the same time, in many lands, it has retarded or suspended production. And the position has been intensified by a market manipulation. In some countries production may have been increased. India and Ceylon have augmented their tea outputs, but the fact remains that, consumption has made a greater expansion. The removal from the consumers of the hundreds of thousands of men who have fallen in battle is a negligible factor; but, alas! included in them' are men who in the aggregate would have made a vast army of producers of food.

BREAD AND MEAT OF THE WORLD Take" wheat, International Institute of Agriculture of ■ Rome thus puts tho wheat production of the world for 1916, compared with previous years; — Harvest in Quintals. Five Years 1916. 1915. Average. 605,687,000 835,820,000 653,299,000 Canada, United States, Russia nil yielded less wheat for 1916 than for 1915. Wheat is taken as an instance, for it is the basic food, but other foods are also produced in ' insufficient quantities to satisfy the demand for them. Tho Pastoral Review of Australia, for instance, shows that for- 1915-16 the four meat-raising and exporting States of the Commonwealth had between them 61,----506,000 sheep and 8.129,000 cattle on 31st .Uecomber, 1915, as against 78,675,----000 sheep and 10,019,000 cattle at the close of 1913. Had the average rate of increase been maintained Australia would have had 38,889,000 sheep and 11,235,000 cattle, which gives a real loss of 27,383,----000 sheep and 3)106,000 cattle, and consnmptiou increasing all the time. The world's production of frozen and chilled meat for 1915 was 882,658 tons (of which 300,263 tons was produced within the Empire), and it was 800,413 in 1914 and 767,311 in -1913; but although it ■ shows an increase, that increase is wholly innadequate to meat the demand. These figures are vouched for by Da-lgetys, whose comment on them, by the way, is:—"Among the economic problems which will arise for discussion after the war, that of food supplies must occupy a prominent position." New Zealand's flocks (including stud stock) : numbered 24,788,000 sheep this ybtsr and 24,900,000 last; going back to no earlier than 1910, they numbered 24,269,----000, 'out exports have increased; and the consuming domestic population has increased also, being to-day approximately over a million, whereas in 1910 it was 900,000; and 'frozen meat exports were then valued at £3,850,111, whereas today they are w.orth £8,000,000. Exports in 1910 were 287,000,000 pounds and j in 1916 they were. 366,000,000. So, j then, even in N,ew 'Zealand the, effects are- poignantly felt of consumption out- | stripping product-ion—and this in a new and prolific country. Enough has been stated in admittedly rough and ready fashion to show that the food supply (of bread and meat at any. rate) of the world is growing less and the consumers are growing more.

THE BALANCE-BEAM. When a. commodity becomes scarce, or Hie demand for it. greater, the process is called the operation of the law of supply and demand—an inexorable natural law, as sure as the law of gravitation. It resembles a great equipoised I beam dropping down at one end, rising at the other, supply up and demand down, or vice versa. If the supply of wheat is inadequate to meet the demand then the supply end' goes u.p, or rather the prices do. The cost of production of the wheat immediately concerned sometimes has nothing to do with the matter. The attitude of the owner of it is expressed in the words " Take it or leave it. If you won't pay a dollar a bushel, someone else will, and probably someone else will pay 10 cents more for it." Bui this' law of supply and demand, unlike other fixed laws, while unalterable in theory, can be and is tampered with to the unfair advantage of either demander or supplier. Therein it differs from, say, the law of gravitation, which cannot be defied with impunity, ae. any one in doubt can prove for himself. The law of supply and demand gets "heaps o' lickiu's for the things it didn't do." Chicago wheat speculators are experts in fooling with the law, giving the beam a tilt up at this end or "that. Sometimes they are hit by it, but not often. It is the man who is not near enough to tilt it for himseif who generally gets hit—the consumer. BROUGHT HOME FORCIBLY At the present time and arising out of the fact that almost all the world is at, war, this shortage of food is brought home to all in a more sudden, more forcible fashion than it would otherwise have been. World crops are short, producers are fighting, and not only figbtiug but destroying food crops, and pro ducers of crops, and preventing, at least retarding, production. The present position is disquieting—the outlook more so. " SOMETHING ATTEMPTED,' SOMETHING DONE." Much can be done and much is being attempted by what is called the mobilisation of resources—in other words, national stocktaking with a view to using the things the nation has, the manpower and energy if, possesses, to the best advantage for the good of all. From the very outbreak of war it lias been demonstrated that the so-called "impossible" i.5 possible. No better example of that can bs quoted than, the radical, courageous financial measures taken by Mr. Lloyd George. The State has since requisitioned wheat, meat, wool, cheese (in this country), shipping, railways, coal, gold—all by a stroke of the pen. Private interests have not been allowed to bar the way for a single instant; personal liberty, likes or dislikes, have been set asidn when the interests of the nation required it. *

There has been no war like this wav, and there certainly have been no legislative Acts like those upon the Statute Hooks of tlio Mother Country and Uie Dominions, at least in modern times. It is safe to assume that even ■ greater surprises are to come, not only during the

currency of the war,' but afterwards. It is difficult to imagine the " scrapping" of all the experience now being gained of the production, conservation, and regulation of the food, supply of the world. To imagine, tooj that precedents will not be established is to imagine a vain thing.

The short supply and consequent high prices of food are the problem of the moment, but that bigger problem, production in relation to consumption, will also have to be tackled.

It is not inconceivable that production may be made -compulsory, even as now the. sale of wheat, frozen meat, wool, and cheese are already made compulsory in this country " Canterbury farmers said they could not grow wheat at 6s 3d per bushel—and no doubt, some could not, but the Government lias decided to pay no more than 5s 7d to I 5s 9d for the present, and it will take the wheat at that price. Some' say farmers will not in future grow it for os9d; but the Government, if it is logical, will see t.hat there are no lean years as the result of human indifference, even if it requisitions .the land and grows the wheat itself, and conscripts workers to harvest the grain IK GOVERNMENT'S HANDS. It is in the Government's hands, too, to see that that law of supply and demand is not tampered with. "The task is not an impossible one. The opening of butcher shops in Auckland, selling meat taken from Government requisitioned stocks, jr proof of that. The meat is bought at a price which the producers or sellers admit is ,a- fair price, its distribution is effected at a fair return for the labour involved; and yet, for reasons which buyers of stock for freezing alone can explain, the law of supply,and demand is being so manipulated that they are eagerly paying more for the meat alive "than it will realise dead, plus railage, slaughtering, freezing, and other costs, and allowing ■full market rates for skin and other byproducts This is not done from motives of benevolence. It is tilting the bal-ance-beam: The Governments of the world can see that that unstable beam is kept as steady as is humanly possible, that its equipoise shall not' be disturbed for purposes of gain as distinguished from an equitable.return for work and labour done. They may notbe wholly successful, but in the light of what is happening to-day more can be achieved than was done in the past to reduce the enormous intermediary costs of distribution of food-stuffs and other essential commodities; to prevent, market manipulation and . price jugglery ; and, above all, to ensure the

"passing on", to the consumer of any reduction in price of a food commodity with the celerity that a rise is •transmitted to him If these ameliorations, if these protective measures arc made possible in war, why not iv peace? To ensure a sufficient, if not prodigal, food supply is the great world problem of to-day Notwithstanding legislative blunders and anomalies, the war is showing tho way to its solution; at any rate indicating how to keep steady that fateful balance-beam of the law of supply and demand, which, it must never he forgotten, sometimes operates against the producer as well as the consumer