The most important of our domestic commodities are wheat, flour, meat, sugar, and coal. Inquiries made by a Committee of the Cabinet have shown that, as compared with the average prices ruling in the three years before the war, the price of wheat and flour has risen by something like 66 per cent.! Sugar has increased 43 per cent., coal about 60 per cent., imported meat about 19 per cent., and British meat 12 per cent. The rise in prices is falling upon the very poor with a cruelty which can only be viewed with horror. Imagine, for a moment, the plight of the working-class family with an income of thirty shillings a week, and perhaps five or six mouths to feed. Even in normal times their lot is not to be envied: food shortage is almost inevitable. Suddenly they find that for a sovereign they can purchase only fifteen shillings' worth of food. Hunger steps in at once: the pinch of famine is felt acutely, and, thanks to the appalling price to which coal has been forced, it is aggravated by intense suffering from the cold, which ill-nurtured bodies are in no condition to resist.
I am not contending that there is any very abnormal amount of distress throughout the country, taking the working-classes as a whole. Thanks to the withdrawal of the huge numbers of men now serving in the Army, the labour market, for once in a way, finds itself rather under than over-stocked, and the ratio of unemployment is undoubtedly lower than it has been for some considerable time. The better-paid artisans, whose wages are decidedly above the average at the present moment, are not suffering severely, even with the high prices now ruling. But they are exasperated, and some of them are making all kinds of unpatriotic threats, to which I shall allude presently.
The real sufferers, and there are too many of them, are the families of the labouring classes of the lower grades, whose weekly wage is small and whose families, as a rule, are correspondingly numerous. At the best of times these people seldom achieve more than a bare existence: at the present moment they are suffering terribly. Yet all the consolation they get from the Government is the assurance that they ought to be glad they did not live in the days of the Crimean War, and the pious hope that "within a few weeks"—oh! beautifully elastic term!—prices will come down—if we, by forcing the Dardanelles, liberate the grain accumulated in the Black Sea ports. No doubt the best possible arrangements have been made towards that issue, and we all hope for a victorious end, but our immediate business is to investigate the distress among the very poor, and to check the ominous threats of labour troubles which have been freely bandied about and have even been translated into action—or inaction—which has had the effect of delaying some of the country's preparations for carrying on the war.
The average retail prices paid by the working-classes for food in eighty of the principal towns on March 9th and a year ago are compared in the following table issued by the President of the Board of Trade:
A few more facts. Though the matter was constantly referred to, yet we had been at war for five months before the Government could be prevailed upon to prohibit the exportation of cocoa; with what result? In December, January, and February last our exports of cocoa to neutral countries were 16,575,017 lbs., whilst for the corresponding period for 1913 the exports were but 3,584,003 lbs.! Before the war, Holland was an exporter of cocoa to this country; since the war she has been the principal importer; and there is a mass of indisputable evidence to show that nearly the whole of our exports of cocoa have found their way to Germany through this channel.
The prohibition is now removed, so we may expect that the old game of supplying the German Army with cocoa from England will begin again!
The German Army must also have tea. Let us see how we have supplied it. During the first fortnight of war, export was restricted and only 60,666 lbs. were sent out of the country, whereas for the corresponding period of the previous year 179,143 lbs. were exported. During the next three months the restrictions were removed, when no less a quantity than 15,808,628 lbs. was sent away—the greater part of it by roundabout channels to Germany—against 1,146,237 lbs. for the corresponding period in 1913. After three months a modified restriction was placed upon the export of tea, but after reckoning the whole sum it is found that during the time we have been at war we have sent abroad over 20,000,000 lbs. of tea, while in the corresponding period of the previous year we sent only a little over 2,000,000 lbs.!
Now where has it gone? In August and September last, Germany received from Holland 16,000,000 lbs. whereas in that period of 1913 she only received 1,000,000 lbs. Tea is given as a stimulant to German troops in the field, so we see how the British Government have been tricked into actually feeding the enemy!