"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3313, 12 September 1917, Page 51

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page)

OUR, FOOD TROUBLES AND OTHERS.

July 2 Who is robbing the public? is the puzzling question which Lord Rhondda, the new Food Controller, is desirous of answering. The position that he has taken up, he says, is that of guardian of the consumer, and of the poor consumer in particular. He does not intend, so he has informed the people, to be hurried into any premature action, but he is determined to hunt down the profiteers, whether they be in the home markets or those abroad, and when he has found them to put his foot down on their unholy gains. He is determined to put a stop in this country to profiteering and speculation with the food of the people; he is going to be down on the profiteer " like a hundredweight of bricks." And not before it is time for drastic action.

The people are willing to make any sacrifice that is necessary because of the war; but to know that their sacrifices, enforced by high prices, have been chiefly brought about by gangs of dishonest speculators out to make fortunes from the misfortunes of others, is a sorry recompense for the hardships endured patiently while believed to be inevitable "because of the war."

The robbery of the public in the price of meat has been abominable. Hundreds of thousands of people have scarcely tasted meat all the winter—not only people of the class commonly known as "the poor," but many of that other class designated as the " genteel poor," whose shopping has always been a problem quietly solved in the privacy of the crowded cheap markets, where, especially in pre-war time, all sorts and conditions of men and women independently paid their money from a slender purse', and had their choice of food almo:-t equal in quality to the best West End shops, but minus the palatial buildings, the smartlydressed attendants, the flowers, music, and dainty tissue wrappings. To me it is one of the most interesting experiences of 20 years of London to see its shopping. It is a romance, an art, a tragedy—and a mystery which experience alone can elucidate. In New Zealand certain things had certain values all the Dominion over. Shopping simply meant knowing what you wanted, and paying for it as calculated. Shopping in London meant first buyincr your experience, and very little else, at the price. So much per cent, for the street, fo much per cent, for the name of the firm, so much for the building, the service, the environment, and very little else for the money. I used to go into Whitely's, that great emporium of Westbourne Grove, and, fascinated by the streams of people passing in and out of the various departments, pass from one department to another over the many acres of buildings, studying the prosper- * ous middle class and upper middle class shoppers; then to Oxford street and Regent street and Piccadilly, where can be obtained anything that money can purchase or heart or art or taste or covetousness desir-j. Then, more interesting than all, came the study of how the

poor shop in the back areas and streets behind the palaces and great thronged thoroughfares, in the shadow of cathedrals and parks. A teeming -world that of the meaner streets, with shops of second grade concerning size and service, and the f"irices of foods and commodities shorn of he percentages for first-class rents and service; the goods without music and flowers and superfluous space. No romance of artistic or historical value! Prose food and furniture and clothing for prose workers. Then romance again among the kerb merchants. The aristocratic" rich and the i>oor meet at the longstrained points in this. Both classes are independent of custom; each have their freedom of class. Those who have visited London and who have missed its slums and alleys and byways, that vast " back of the beyond" behind the West End (which is not an " end " at all, but a vast world of the rich), have missed half

of London—a world within a world. It is impossible to convey any meaning of London's vastness, of its worlds within worlds, to those who do not know it well. Not Piccadilly and the Strand and Regent street, the Circuses and St. Paul's and Westminster. Abbey, but the byways and the highways where, at any given point, more people pass any day than there are in the whole of New Zealand. I believe many of the visitors to England, go back homo without having seen anything but a great concourse of people, a congestion of traffic, railways crowded everywhere, buses crowded everywhere, and just a few of the show places—St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, the Tower, the Houses of Parliament, etc.; but all the world off the tourists' list is unknown, and the whole a blurr as the memory of a quickly-passing panorama. It is in that world of the tourists' list where the barrow-markets are, not only in London, but in all the great cities of England. The costers' market is disorganised. The coster men are in the army, and the women are endeavouring to " carry on " till they tell you they " can't touch it," meaning the price of many things they used to vend.

The mystery of the varying prices for all the markets, high and low, grows deeper. Four times the price of normal times means only extra expenditure to some; to some it means restricted purchase ; to the great majority it means deprivation; to a large number privation, loss of much comiort and nourishment on the one hand and a state of want on the other. At Smithfield market American chilled beef sold wholesale at what works out at lOd per lb and Is 6d for the best Scotch beef, and English lamb at Is and Is 7d per lb and New Zealand at The Board of Trade buys all the New Zealand lamb which comes into this country. Here is the official record of cost: " Cost of lamb, free on board, 6|d per lb ; landed cost in this country, 8d per lb ; importer's commission, just under -|d per lb; wholesaler's profit, limited to £d per lb; cold storage and administration, etc., Ifd per lb ; to cost to the retailer, per lb." Who gets all the enormous difference—twice the difference and more—from the wholesale to retail prices? English lamb in the shops is from 2s to 2s 6d per lb. Many of the various tales for the enormous prices are twaddle. Meat from the same ship is sold at various prices, and sugar, tea, cheese, bacon, etc., from the same ship are sold according to the honesty of the hands through which they pass. Thus oatmeal in the same street and from the same source is sold at and s£d per lb, flour at and 5J,d per quartern; sugar, Bd, 7d, and 6^d; cheese, Is 8d and Is 4d per lb; tea, 2s lOd, 2s 4d, and 2s 6d per lb. The widest fluctuation prevails in prices. At first the public believed that the prices were regulated by the actual conditions of the markets, and that real scarcity was the cause of the high rates; but knowledge has come of the cornering of foods and holding back perishable goods, like fish and bacon, to keep up the prices, so that in some cases the goods have had to be destroyed.

It is not an enviable post to which the new Food Controller has been appointed, and it is vital that Lord Rhondda should devote every effort to seeing that the staple articles of diet reach the public at a price that is not out of all proportion between wholesale and retail buying and selling. The real trouble in the meat market seems to be thtft the meat is often sold four or five times over before reaching the retailer, and every hand through which it passes from the wholesale dealer makes a profit. These high profits are indignantly denied by all concerned; but the large profits of the meat companies, after excess profit tax has been paid, refute these denials. The war bread is proving a great failure. At first when it was made of whole-meal it was delicious, but as less and less wheaten flour has been used and more of other mixtures it has become more and more unpalatable and indigestible, and there are various stomachic illnesses and manv deaths among the aged that the doctors attribute to the bread. This is not the fault of the bakers, but of what thev are compelled to put in the bread, and. being for hid den by law to sell it till it is at least 24 hours old. it goes cmickly mildewy and mouldy. The workhouse medical doctors sav that the large number of deaths from dysentery among the aged in the workhouses is caused bv the bread. The bakers are sending a deputation to those responsible for the composition of the Avar bread 'to ask for a modification of the ingredients. Whole-meal bread and war bread are entirelv different. One is body and brain building; some of the other is unfit for human consumption. Dr Campbell, a scientific organiser to the Metropolitan Food Economy Committee, savs in his report that at most places where he lectures he is handed samples of uneatable bread, which the people tell him are typical of what they get. and the verv young and old people and"tho*e of dedicate constitution are bound to suffer from the indigestible mixture. Good prewar white flour contains the highest relative percentage of gluten " possible; wheaten flour milled under the Food ConOrder contains a higher percentage of indigestible fibre and a less percentage of gluten. Bread is being made to-dav with onlv 50 per cent, wheaten flour: the other half is supposed to be composed of maize, oats, barley, beans, etc. It soon goes sour, and develops a condition known as "ropy." There is no uniformity of the mixture. In some districts it is much inferior to others, and might be a composition of mud and sawdust, judging by its colour and texture, and is just about as light and as dry as a stale mixture of these might be. A great many peonle are making their own bread, which, even with only the 50 per cent, wheaten flour allowable, is a much lighter and more palatable loaf than the bakers are producing, and if a very great improvement does not take place in the article

they supply the bakers will lose their trade.

It is with great satisfaction that the allotment-holders and thousands of amateur gardeners lift their first potatoes, of which there promises to be a good crop this year. The first of the peas and broad beans and young carrots and turnips are in. But alas! after one of the most wonderful of Junes in remembrance, which rushed everything from the late spring into perfect blossom and early fruitfulness, a series of thunderstorms have beaten us back into winter again, and, after reaching over 80deg of delightful warmth, we are down to 55deg and shivering in a north-easterly wind that is almost a gale, which in four days has turned black and blasted many a garden over which months of labour and hope have been spent. "From seeing things grow" those in the east counties stand helplessly by and see them wither. Gardens of scarlet runners and green peas, a week ago a delight to the eye and an anticipated reward for self-denial and work—how many vegetableless meals and weekends of work have gone to many of those gardens!—a wilted remnant of the abundant promise is all that remains. We trusted this summer after the terrible winter that took eight months of our year. So much was hoped for between this and September. These three months hold the nation's food in their hand-. Should the harvest fail us our courage must ebb, for before the new foods came in this summer we badly needed them: and nothing more discouraging could happen to the new thrift of the people than that they should be robbed of the fruit of their self-denial and labour. The whole country rose to fight the famine which the U boats brought very near, and, more than ever in England's history, we need the crops, the vegetables and fruit, and the g'rain. Many a table this past winter has been bare of everything save enough of food to " keep going." And next winter depends on now.

The sti-awberries have been a luscious croj), but the east winds are shrivelling the'm up. Gooseberries and cherries are plentiful, and many people are bottling them for later use, for it is impossible to get sugar for jam—that is, except for the fruit-growersvwho applied for it some time ago. A million mothers who have been in the habit of preserving will have no jam store this year; and margarine and butter and milk grow scarcer. Even stewed rhubarb and gooseberries are impossible in many households because there is no sugar.

The Welfare and Economy Exhibition, which opened in London last week at the new County Hall, Westminster Bridge, is a wonderful war-time exhibition, and has drawn thousands. One most attractive section for women is a French market, with its stalls shaded by pretty striped awnings; but its real attraction and object is to educate the British housekeeper in the methods of buying and selling in France, where half or even portions of a fowl or duck can be purchased, according to the requirements of .the purchaser. French housekeepers will not buy large joints, but larded fillets of beef, halfshoulders and legs of mutton, boned veal, and joints cut up in a way that our butchers (before the war at any rate) would not condescend to serve to their customers. But housewives are combining of necessity to buy what they want, and not what the butcher dictates. The economy shows and lectures and cooking lessons and demonstrations have taught the housekeepers of England much. The stolid joint and substantial dishes of vegetables and fruit pies and puddings hnve given way to greater variety. Soups and salads and relishes and new-learned sweets have taken the place of cold-meat days. They learn how to utilise the scraps, and convert odds and ends into delicious and nourishing dishes—an art which is as old as cooking with the French. The economy exhibitions are teaching Englishwomen, too, the art of shopping, which is not to deal with one man for meat, another for poultrv. fish, groceries, etc., giving the order in bulk ; but, _ like the French housewives, to go out into the markets and choose here and there what foods recommend themselves, according to price and quality. This method prevents the running up' of bills, and. free from the obligation of credit', the housewife } s independent of the tradesmen, who, in too many instances, decide what she shall or shall not -pay for. The war has been a great instructor in prices and values, weights and measures. Before the housewife is independent of the tradespeople. This is- Babv Week—the National Baby Week—in which from one end of the country to the other "a child will be set in their midst," and the welfare, the claims and rights and privileges of the child, its physical, mental, and moral training _ and development emphasised. There will be baby shows, lectures, illustrations, films, exhibitions, pictures, music: demonstrations how to bathe! dre?s, feed, and educate the baby, who! with the wholesale slaughter of the fittest men of the nation, is of more than common interest and value, for upon the babies of the present the future of the Empire rests. But it will take more than an anpeal to patriotism to put manv a woukl-be father and mother into a mood to welcome frequent advents of the child into the home. Tt will need the assurance that the child will not be plunged into hardship and want and hopeless conditions of labour and poverty, as too many of Britain's children have been little " not-wanteds " of the State, left to scramble through a childhood, jovless and suffering, to fill later on the asylums and the prisons, the worhbouses,' and the paupers' graves. One day, perhaps, it will be a crime punishable by the State for parents to transmit disease to offspring—for a man to sow wild oats for the bitter harvest of the children. This Baby Week in England is the beginning of a great campaign for the rights of every child that is born into the world —the rights of care and cultivation of

body, brain, and soul. Out of every thousand babies born in the British Isles 120, or 12 per cent., die during their first year—slaughtered by ignorance and disease and want.