THE ART OF THE TRIOLET. By Percy Gross Standing BRITAIN AND THE DOMINIONS. By The Hon. A. S. Malcolm A POLICY OF IMPERIAL MIGRATION. By The Right Hon. Sir John CHAOS IN INDUSTRY. By William Sanderson THE MEANING OF The Gold StanDARD. By Frank Morris (1) CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING. By Charles W. J. Tennant AMONG THE DEAD. BY Ř. M. Fox . (3) By Walter Frewen Lord 832 SOME ASPECTS OF ENGLISH HUNTING. By H. A. Bryden THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND IN BRITTANY. BY W Branch Johnson . SCHOOLBOY POETRY. By Aubrey de Selincourt Chalmer Bell THE ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT: A REPLY. THE CONDOMINIUM IN THE NEW HEBRIDES. By M. L. MacCallum WHEN I read this Report it brought to my mind an incident that occurred when I was a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. That great surgeon, the late Mr. C. B. Lockwood, was taking a class on operative surgery, and he asked one of the students which of two operations he would prefer to do in the case of a given injury to the foot. The man made his selection. Lockwood said: 'Very well; why?' All that he could get out of this very able-bodied, but somewhat dunderheaded, student was that he would do it because the books said so. At last Lockwood burst out with something of this kind: 'My dear fellow, can't you understand that a man's conclusions don't matter a damn ? The only things worth considering are his reasons.' The remarkable thing about this Report is that the reasons VOL. XCVIII-No. 581 I B (or, in this case, the discovery of facts) are definite and of capital importance, but the conclusions do not seem in the least to follow from them. Indeed, some are of so halting a character that it is difficult to know whether one is reading a conclusion or a conjecture. It is necessary to preface our examination by reference to the leading definite recommendation--that a 'Food Council' should be established-because the Prime Minister has lately announced 1 that he proposes to accept it, although not quite in the manner proposed by the Commission. The powers and duties of the prospective Council will emerge later, but it is well from the beginning to have in our mind what sort of council it is to be. It is to consist 2 (337) of twelve members with a paid chairmanthree departmental representatives; four persons appointed by the President of the Board of Trade 'on the ground of wide business experience,' one of whom is to be a director of the Co-operative Wholesale Society; two members nominated by or on behalf of the local authorities (one man, one woman); and two members nominated by the Trade Union Congress (one man, one woman). In addition to these, the Council is to have a number of 'assessors, representatives of the different food trades.' Speaking of its composition, the Commission says that it 'attaches particular importance to the representation on the Council of the point of view of the practical housewife with domestic experience.' It would seem from the constitution as proposed that, at the most, there will be two 'practical housewives,' and one is inclined to say of them, amid the number of those with 'wide business experience' and 'representatives of the principal food trades,' as it was said of the five barley loaves and two small fishes: 'What are they among so many?' This Report is really the last of four Government reports dealing with food questions. There were, in succession, the Inter-Departmental Committee on Meat Supplies, under the Right Hon. W. C. Bridgeman (now First Lord of the Admiralty), in 1919; the Interim Report on Meat of the sub-committee appointed by the Standing Committee on Trusts, under Mr. H. W. Macrosty, in 1920; and the Departmental Committee on the Distribution and Prices of Agricultural Produce, under Lord Linlithgow, in 1924. Supplementing these Reports, there are others by the Wheat Commission, the Ministry of Food and others. Some of the Committees made definite and somewhat drastic recommendations, and a Food Council, without statutory powers, 1 Speech at Welbeck Abbey, Monday, June 1. * The figures in brackets refer to the paragraphs of the Report. 3 Cmd. 456, 1919. * Cmd. 1057, 1920. that is to hold a watching brief and seek to 'bring together the consumer and trader in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding,' does not seem to be a very masculine product of the abundance of fact and definite advice with which we have been supplied. Two issues assert themselves throughout. They are the relative helplessness of the producer and of the consumer in the matter of price, and our alarmingly increasing dependence upon overseas supplies both of wheat and meat. With regard to the first, this Report supplies further and very disconcerting evidence of the growing coalescence and improved organisation of the agencies which stand between the producer and the consumer, and of the toll they levy upon both alike. In the same way, also, the control of our overseas supplies is getting into fewer and fewer hands. The Commission does not furnish any evidence of an insufficiency of world supply, but whilst 76 per cent. of our wheat was home-grown seventy years ago, it has now come down to 23 per cent., and, indeed, in 1924 it was anticipated that, owing to the wet harvest and to other causes, it may have dwindled to 13 per cent. (108). Anyhow, it is fair to say that the United Kingdom is dependent for four-fifths of its bread upon imported wheat. In the case of beef and mutton the same process is going on, although, happily, it has not advanced so far. The home supplies of beef have diminished from 62 per cent. in 1907 to 52 per cent. in 1924, and of mutton from 55 per cent. to 45 per cent. London, however, stands by itself, for no less than fivesixths of its meat is obtained from foreign sources. With regard to the findings of the Commission on costs and profits, it should be stated that, although many persons and bodies readily gave assistance, the Commission had no power to obtain information (105) other than it could elicit by voluntary means, so that both with regard to the figures supplied by the bakers' associations (105) and by Lord Vestey (316) it had to make the best of what it could get. Perhaps the best way of examining the facts is to approach them from the consumer's end and work backwards. It is estimated that 60 per cent. of the total income of the people is used for the purchase of food in various forms, and they have now to spend 20s. for food that was obtainable in 1914 for IIS. 2d. (14). It is estimated that the average family budget in the pre-war period included a weekly expenditure of 16s. 7åd. on food, and that the same amount of food would now cost from 29s. Iod. to 33s. 4d. (52). The Commission thinks that 'to thousands of housewives the rise in prices has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the family income' (24), and the importance of that observation is emphasised when we bear in mind that, although the level of wages has been practically stationary during the past two years, the reductions of wages in 1921 and 1922, according to the Ministry of Labour Gazette of January, amounted to more than 10,000,0ool. per week, or to a diminished annual purchasing power of at least 500,000,000l. The situation, therefore, is one that would warrant even exceptional action in the curtailment of excessive cost if any means could be devised for doing so. In its endeavour to ascertain as to whether current prices are fair prices the Commission sent out a large number of inquiries, and the analyses of the costs and profits given in the Report are based upon them. But from the multitude of bakers in the country only forty-three returns were presented, and only 277 out of the 40,000 retail butchers. The material therefore is scanty, but even if it were more abundant it would be a mistake, as well as unjust, if we were to allow excesses in the charges made by retailers to tempt us to lose sight of the much more powerful agencies that the Report tells us about, but which are naturally hidden from the ordinary purchaser. An idea of the significance of bread prices is gained from the fact (53) that an increase of Id. on the price of a 4-lb. loaf augments the national bread bill by about 10,000,oool. per annum! An interesting table is given in Annex I to the Report of the alleged cost of the bread sold from 389 lb. of mixed Manitoban and English wheat, and a part of it may be quoted as an illustration of the excellent criticisms of the ingredients of cost which the Report supplies from such materials as were available. It is as follows: The examination of this table gives us some glimpse of what the Commission might have been able to do if it had the same power for the ascertainment of cost as we had, for example, in the Ministry of Munitions during the war. In the first place, the sales are based upon an estimated produce of 92.35 4-lb. loaves out of a sack of 280 lb. of flour, whereas it appeared that in tests carried out at Aldershot the produce was 95, and at Shorncliffe 961. The examination of the production costs found 6s. 2d. for labour, other costs making up the balance. Without burdening ourselves with details, it is to be noted that the conclusion of the Commission (85) is that there is a profit per sack of from 1s. 7td. |