All of which was well enough so long as the supply of food was not really short. But when it grew short another factor entered the arena. Everybody began to hoard. The quantities which the authorities released for consumption were not intended to be stored, however. Storing food by incompetents is most wasteful, as the massacre of the pigs had shown, and hoarding, moreover, gave more food to the rich than to the poor; so for the time being it could not be encouraged too openly, despite the revenues that came from it.
But the hoarder is hard to defeat. The consumer knew and trusted the retailer, the retailer was on the best of terms with the wholesaler, and the rapacious commission-man knew where to get the goods.
He made the farmer a better offer than the minimum price he usually received. He paid six cents for the kilogram of potatoes, or even seven. Then he sold in a manner which brought the potatoes to the consumer for eleven cents through the "food speak-easy." The middleman and retailer had now cleared four cents on the kilogram, instead of one and one-half cents; their outlay deducted, they would make a net profit running from two and one-half cents to three and one-half cents per 2.205 American pounds of potatoes. This sort of traffic ran into the tens of thousands of tons. The food shark was making hay while the weather was good. The entire range of human alimentation was at his mercy, and often the government closed an eye because the food shark would subscribe handsomely to the next war loan.
In the winter of 1915-16 I made several trips into the country to see how things were getting along. On one occasion I was in Moravia. I had heard rumors that here the food shark had found Paradise. It was a fact. Near a freight-yard in Brünn a potato-dealer was installed. He bought potatoes in any quantity, being in effect merely the agent of the Vienna Bank Ring that was doing a food-commission business as a side line. I don't know why the government permitted this, except that this "concession" was a quid pro quo for war-loan subscriptions.
A little old Czech farmer drove up. He had some thirty bags of potatoes on his sleigh, all well protected by straw and blankets. The food shark looked the load over and offered the minimum price for that grade, which on that day was eighteen hellers the kilogram, about one and three-fourths cents American per pound avoirdupois.
The farmer protested. "My daughter in Vienna tells me that she has to pay thirty-six hellers a kilogram," he said.
"Not according to the maximum price set by the government, which is twenty-one hellers just now," was the bland remark of the agent.
"That is all very well, sir!" returned the farmer. "But you know as well as I do that when my daughter wants potatoes she must pay thirty-six hellers or whatever the retailer wants. She writes me that when she stands in the food-line she never gets anything. So she does business with a man who always has potatoes."
The food shark had no time to lose. Other farmers came.
"Eighteen hellers or nothing," he said.