The Popular English
Pastime: Playing with Food Prices
By Lacey Amy
From Saturday Night magazine, Toronto,
Canada, 25 November 1916.
Digitized by Doug Frizzle, 25 September, 2017
for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca
Apology – This
entry has been created from very old microfilm from a very old magazine.
Certain areas of the graphic are unclear. I have endeavoured to reason at the
missing parts of words. If there are errors, or if the meaning is not clear, it
is my fault./drf
Scene I.
ONE chilly, but bright October afternoon on the Embankment below
Charing Cross, I came on a curious crowd. It was in three parts, distinct in
formation but connected in idea. On the pavement on the river side was a casual
throng of idlers searching for entertainment on a holiday afternoon. Half a
hundred yards distant, browsing in that air of detachment peculiar to their
kind, was a squad of policemen, sixty or seventy strong.
The third portion, the centre of interest, was a medley of
humanity splashed along the north side of the street, a mob, a clutter of
Eastenders, made up of a dozen women, most of them with babies in their arms or
in “prams” before them; half a dozen men who looked a bit sheepish but dogged,
and a half hundred boys. I could imagine every street gamin within sight waving
on his companions at the promise of a procession with a banner for everyone.
Without the banners it might have been only the incipience of a
street riot, or a cinema queue. With the banners it became a tremendous Uplift
Gathering, the Great English Public Speaking to its Legislators.
Everyone had a banner—most of the lads two—and a taxi load was
left over after all hands were filled. “Down with the Milk Trust.” howled the
placard of a seven year-old trust-buster. “My Father is in the Trenches. Give
his Babies Milk,” pleaded a girl in Saturday-afternoon silk stockings and a
keen eye for eligible young men. “Must Our Babies Starve?” demanded an
aggressive female who, if she were not a spinster, was breaking all the laws of
Nature. And red-nosed female hawkers bawled out “The Women’s Dreadnought.”
Sylvia “Painkhoorst’s” mouthpiece.
It was very amusing. . . I went home
and had milk as usual in my coffee.
Scene II.
TWO nights later. My coffee steamed before me and I reached
mechanically for the sugar. It was not there. I rang, and my landlady entered
apologetically. All afternoon she had gone from store to store begging a half
pound of sugar. At ten groceries she had failed. My pet aversion, unsweetened
coffee, faced me.
Ahem! It was coming too near home to be amusing. However, by
Monday the Government would probably have released another supply.
Scene III.
WITH the evening paper propped against the cruet (there are still
cruets in England) I was trying to while away my solitary meal without cursing
the inconveniences of war. My landlady had just set before me a disturbingly
small helping of mutton chop. Gradually it broke in through the Dobrudja muddle
and the menace of temporary insufficiency that she had not left the room. I
looked up, smiling invitation.
“I’m sorry, sir. but I believe I’ll ‘ave
to ask a little mo’ for the meals.” She was stammering, twiddling with the
other end of the tablecloth. “You see things have gone up so—twenty-five per
cent since you came. (I wish the Government would stop issuing figures for the
common people.) That bit of meat cost one and five to-day, an’ the herrin’ was
fo’pence. An’ butter’s two shillings, an’ bread—”
Didn’t I know it? Hadn’t I been collecting prices for this
article, with the result that I knew nothing short of stealing her supplies
would enable her to feed me so well at such a price? Now I’m paying five
shillings a week more—and the end has scarcely begun to begin.
No longer is it merely amusing, no longer merely temporarily
inconvenient. The H. C. of L. (high cost
of living) has become more than a literary treatise.
THE paraders were justified. Milk is now twelve cents a quart and
gathering wind for another flight Also it is neither rich, nor good measure,
not pasteurized, nor even clean. Newspapers and street agitation have effected
nothing, despite the profits declared by some rural dairies on eight cent milk.
Big companies have bought up the small, and forced those reluctant to sell by
offering unasked to the farmer a price beyond what the farmer ever dreamed of.
The joke—in which the public does not share—is that the farmer
learned quickly. His winter contracts now call for nine cents a quart, which
means that twelve cents is waiting only until a new price list can be printed.
Sugar is not a sweet subject to contemplate. It will be recalled
that the Government took over stocks and importations at the commencement of
the war. The only visible results are that sugar is now doled out in homeopathic
doses by an independent grocer, who sees in it the opportunity of securing new
customers. It is still only twelve cents a pound—if you can get it.
In his most liberal moments, no grocer permits more than two
pounds to leave his store with one order, and always other goods must be
purchased. Usually the supply is a half pound at a time, and for that fifty
cents to a dollar must be spent. Some co-operative societies have issued sugar
tickets, a hole punched at each purchase.
And there are weeks when entire villages are sugarless. This
summer no jam was put down in private houses, and all kinds of recipes are
abroad for putting down fruit without sugar. I have tasted some of them and am
living on other “sweets.”
Before the war sugar was four cents a pound. Beef has gone from
twenty-one to thirty-four cents, butter from twenty-eight to fifty and more
(most families arc content with margarine, a tasteless and perishable, but
satisfactory, substitute at sixteen to twenty-four cents a pound), cheese from
sixteen to twenty-eight; eggs from three cents to whatever you look able to pay,
up to ten cents; and tea from forty to fifty-six cents for the cheap varieties.
Bread is twenty-one cents a four-pound loaf, and at that is cheaper than in
Toronto, I understand. Before the war it was eight cents. And it has but begun
its climb. I see that on Saturday wheat rose eight per cent., making forty-five
per cent. in four months. It is now higher than in the past hundred years.
Potatoes are four cents a pound and six cents is promised.
Fish, a hand-to-mouth article of food in this insular country,
fluctuates from day to day. On Saturday soles were seventy-eight cents a pound wholesale, and cod
(with head and insides) twenty-seven cents. A dinner for three shillings or
less takes no account of any fish but herring and haddock, with now and then a
taste of hake or whiting. Many fish stores have closed owing to the uncertainty
of supply.
Fruit and confectionery are luxuries of which to dream. In a store
window the other day peaches were sixty cents apiece, nectarines thirty-six cents,
small melons sixty cents, grapes a dollar-and-a-half a pound, pineapples
eighty-four cents, pears thirty-six cents. Fruit of this kind is usually
English, than which there is none better grown. For some time oranges were not
on the market, owing to Government shipping regulations, but latterly these
restrictions have been removed and fair oranges are five cents each. I have yet
to see, even at seven or eight cents each, an apple that would be tempting to a
Canadian at home.
English confectionery never did compete with the kind sold in a
hundred shops in Toronto, either in price or quality. After a study of windows
I cannot find the cheapest stuff under twenty-eight cents a pound—not equal to
the fifteen cent varieties in Toronto—and bonbons are not eatable under a
dollar a pound. The kind obtainable at fifty cents so readily in Toronto when I left is not to be had here at any price, but a
fair imitation costs a dollar-and-a-half.
Coal (soft, mind you) is nine dollars a ton, and is held there
only by the Government regulation of prices at the mine; the retailer asks what
he pleases. Matches, once four cents a dozen boxes, are now eighteen cents.
Tomatoes have never been below twelve cents this summer; and at that they do
not take the place of the Canadian kind since they will not ripen in the open
save in the extreme south. I have dared to mention here tomatoes ripening
outside up at Fort Vermilion and in the Yukon, but comment like that slides off
the contented Englishman.
I have begun to prepare for winter—and that to a Canadian brings
visions of central heating. An ordinary coal-oil heater costs six dollars, and
a small electric heater which I am sure I could purchase in Toronto at eight
dollars was going to cost me thirty-eight dollars. For anything that savors of
modernity it would pay one to visit America on a shopping expedition. It is lese majeste to introduce
into England a new system of heating.
Restaurant meals that used to cost a dollar-and-a-half have been
lowered in calibre and raised in price to a dollar-eighty-five cents; and I see
that even the “dosser” (real English for “tramp”) is asked to pay sixteen cents
instead of twelve for bed and breakfast at Lord Rowton’s lodging houses. So
where is one to lay his head?
If you own a car—you probably don’t unless you are a military
official, the Red Cross having requisitioned it or forced you to sell it in
self defence—your gasoline asks for sixty-eight cents a gallon, with an
additional twelve cents to the Government for letting you buy any.
Sixty-eight per cent. is the Government estimate of the increase
in the cost of living since the war began.
Only threatened strikes on railways and in mines forced the
Government finally to recognize conditions. But the realization of the
necessity for action is but the first of a dozen steps before action is taken.
Some of the Government’s best
friends (and remember that the Government is coalition) are firm in the belief
that a report will be made and stem measures taken—if the war lasts long
enough.
Up to the present the only effect on prices is to boost them,
except where a threatened investigation into the hoarded tea frightened the
shippers into reducing prices. A Cabinet Minister two weeks ago stilled an
incipient rebellion by stating that sugar was cheaper here than in America—in
spite of the fact that sugar at that time was quoted at eight cents in New York
and Toronto. One of the Government Departments went so far as to wave a
reproving hand at the farmers. “Oh, fie’” it gently upbraided. “Now you really
shouldn’t charge more than eight cents a quart for milk, you know. We may—um—we
may have to consider doing something in the matter if you keep on “ A Wheat
Commission merely bemoans the high price and is contradicted in its findings by
everyone concerned. A Food Prices Commission could do little more than advise a
meatless day a week. And the House towered to grand heights of patriotism in
demanding of the munition workers—who are at it in the Woolwich Arsenal twelve
hours a day—that they eschew holidays. After which it hastily packed its bag
for a six weeks’ holiday of its own.
As this is being written the South Wales Miners’ Federation
threaten to organize a great strike unless the Government takes full control of
the food supplies; and the Scottish Mine Workers also make similar threats. Profiteering has passed all endurance in this country, but the
trouble is that wealthy M. Ps. and members of the Lords are interested
financially in almost every industry, and of course block action.
Hands Across the Sea! If we could only reach that ideal now there’d
be one hand going empty and returning fulL Personally mine would return with
Canadian bonbons, Canadian apples—and a whiff of Canadian sunlit air.
The people who are suffering most in England now, and who will
continue to do so after the war, are those who live upon unearned incomes. A
man with an income of $50,000 a year from his estates
or stocks in England is receiving only $25,000 a year, as 40 per cent, goes to
the Government and the other 10 per cent, is taken up by the increased cost of
living.
The price of food, according to the Duke of Marlborough. who keeps
up a big household, has increased 100 per cent, since the war began. A
correspondent for a New York paper finds that eggs are ten cents apiece in
London.
Barrie. 14th
November. 1916.
Editor. “Saturday
Night ‘.
DEAR SIR,—I have read with amazement and considerable indignation
an article entitled “The Canadian Incubus.” by Lacey Amy, in your issue of
November 11th—amazement at some of the statements made in the article, and indignation
at its unfair and ungenerous tone toward Canadian women in England. Will Mr.
Amy give the name of the “great London paper” which stated that “hundreds of
thousands of Canadian women have
followed their husbands to England,” and also the date of the issue in which
this statement appeared? And will he also give the address of any boarding house
“in and around London.” where fifteen dollars a week is asked for “board and
one semi-furnished room”? I should inspect such a boarding house, when I return
to England and also to see the people who are foolish enough to pay such a
price for such accommodation—although one would think that an Asylum for the
Feeble Minded would be a more appropriate place of residence for them than a
boarding house. I enclose the address of a house in the Bloomsbury district of
London (well known to many Canadians for years past) where a comfortably
furnished room with excellent board may be obtained for twenty-eight shillings
per week. These are the rates which were asked and paid last August. I also
enclose the address of an excellent boarding house in Bayswater, where the
terms are thirty to thirty-two shillings a week. And there are many others “in
and around London” equally good, and at equally reasonable rates.
As to the “sad Canadian housewife” who paid nine cents apiece for
eggs, her place is certainly with the inmates of the fifteen dollars a week,
semi-furnished boarding house. The “Weekly Times” of October 27th quotes the
price of eggs in London as three shillings and sixpence a dozen, and yet the “sad
Canadian housewife” was “forced” to pay at the rate of four and six a dozen at
least a month earlier!
In a
paragraph concerning work in England for Canadian women, the following astonishing
statement appears: “Frankly, don’t believe the appeals which fill the English
papers. As the editor of a London paper said to me: ‘That is only one of the
War Office frolics’.” Does Mr. Lacey Amy actually expect sane and intelligent
Canadians to believe that the War Office publishes appeals in the English
papers by way of a joke? They are much more likely to think that it is the
editor of the London paper who is indulging in a “frolic”—at the expense of the
credulous Mr. Lacey Amy.
One impression
given by this article is that London is overcrowded with Canadians. The plain
fact is, that even “at such a camp centre as Folkestone.” where Canadians are
far more numerous in proportion to the general population than in London, the “little
Dominion” which they form consists of (leaving out the troops) a floating
population of from five to six hundred scattered through Folkestone and the
adjoining towns and villages of Bandgate, Hythe, Sandling, Cheriton, etc.,
where the general population amounts to at least forty thousand. It is evident
that the presence of the Canadians cannot affect conditions very seriously, and
the fact that accommodation can be obtained without the least trouble in
Folkestone and its neighborhood shows that there is no overcrowding. As to London,
the Canadians there are leas than the proverbial “drop in the bucket.”
Some
Canadian papers have taken up the cry that Canadians (and especially Canadian
women) are not wanted in England. During a stay of twenty months in England,
ending last August, the writer neither heard nor read any word or hint of such
a thing either from English people or in English papers One read with
astonishment the articles which appeared in Canadian papers on this subject,
and one felt that Canadians were being made rather ridiculous by this outcry
over a matter of which English people were apparently unconscious, and on which
English papers, so far as one could judge, were making no comment whatever. Mr.
Lacey Amy says “The newspapers on both sides of the water have endeavored to interrupt
the stream.” I would again ask for the name of any responsible English paper
and the date of the issue in which such an endeavor was made, as it would be
both interesting and instructive to read it.
While prices
have gone up very much in England, they have also risen rapidly in Canada, and
one finds on returning, that the cost of living is quite as high here as in England.
While loaf sugar (but no other kind) was sometimes difficult to get, and eggs
and butter were very dear (especially eggs), no scarcity of food was felt, and
some foods (bacon, for instance) were cheaper than in Canada.
Mr. Lacey
Amy’s estimate of Canadian women in England, and the work they are doing, is so
obviously unfair and prejudiced that it should not carry weight with any
fair-minded reader of “Saturday Night.” It can only arouse indignation in those
who know of the quiet useful work which Is being done in hospitals, soldiers’
clubs and canteens and also for the Red Cross and Field Comforts, by numbers of
Canadian women in England—women whose hearts are torn with anxiety, and who
find their greatest comfort in doing what they can to help In every work for
the comfort and well-being of the soldiers. If any impartial and fair-minded
Canadian writer would take up the question of the work which is being done by
Canadian women in England—investigating thoroughly and carefully, and reporting
honestly and fairly—the story he could tell would be one to make Canadians
proud of their women He could write of the Canadian Women’s Club of Folkestone,
for instance—of their work on behalf of the tubercular patients at Moore
Barracks Hospital; of the Connaught Club for soldiers, where all the cooking of
good home-made Canadian dishes—sometimes for as many as a hundred soldiers in
one day—is done by the women of the Canadian Club; of the comfortable rest and
recreation room which they have furnished, and the free canteen which they are
operating for the benefit of the soldiers passing through the Canadian Casualty
Assembly Centre at Folkestone—men just out of hospital who are in need
of rest and comfort; of their devoted work in the many hospitals of the
Shorncliffe area, and of their many activities for the benefit of the soldiers,
of which time fails me to tell. He could speak of the valuable work done by
Lady Drummond and her devoted hand of helpers in the Information Department of the
Canadian Red Cross Society—of the help they give to anxious and bereaved
Canadians gathering information for them, and of the unfailing kindness
and sympathy with which (hat help Is given, to which the present writer desires
to bear grateful personal testimony.
Mr. Lacey Amy has no
word of praise or appreciation for any of these things. He is like a man
walking by a mountain road, who has no eyes for the heights around him, but
sees only the muddy spots on the path. He would judge all Canadian women by the
actions of a few idle and foolish ones. He would also have us believe that Canadian soldiers
are churlish and ungrateful, but the experience of the “average hospital
visitor” has been that they are invariably courteous and friendly, and grateful
for any little kindness, as well as brave and cheerful and patient in
suffering.
If Mr. Lacey Amy’s article was written as
the result of his personal experience, one can only conclude that he has been
equally unfortunate in his choice of a boarding-house, in the soldiers he has
met, and in the type of Canadian woman he has encountered, even “when tea-ing(!)
at the home of one of England’s illustrious titled men!”
Yours truly.
MARY GRASETT.
Editor’s Note:—Mr. Amy, being in England,
the Editor will endeavor to answer a number of Mrs. Grasett’s questions. First
of all the “great London newspaper” spoken of is the “Daily News,” the date of
which I am unable to give, though the clipping was in my hands in October and
was referred to in the Front Page of this journal in the issue of October 14. I
pass the subject of boarding houses as I have had no personal knowledge, but as
Mr. Amy has been in England some two years or more he probably spoke by the
book. As for the price of food products, eggs were quoted this week in London
at ten cents each. This fact may be substantiated from press reports published
in the New York “Times.” and New York “Post.” However, Mr. Walter Runciman’s
speech in Parliament last week, in which he notified the public that there
would be no more flour made from the pure grain; that more stringent measures
would have to be taken in respect to the consumption of sugar; that the State
control of potatoes was imminent, and finally that the Government might be compelled
to put food tickets into force, is, I think, sufficient answer as to what
position England is in with regard to food supplies. As to the reference to “one
of the War Office’s frolics.” this Editor does not know the source of this
remark (it came from one of the largest and most influential London dailies),
but without Mr. Amy’s approval could scarcely make it public. As for Mr. Amy’s
general information on matters in England, would state that he is a trained and
experienced journalist with London newspaper connections.
Readers of the “Women’s Section” of Saturday Night are well aware that this journal has
always attempted to do justice to the war work of Canadian women in England,
not only through the
page written by Miss Mary Macleod Moore, our special correspondent in London,
but also by means of many minor reports of such endeavor. Mr. Amy does not
doubt the extent and excellence of Canadian women’s work in England—he mere
emphasizes what overseas authorities have already complained of—the presence in
England of too many inadequately employed Canadian women.
THE DARK SPOT (In Canada known as 
Gideon McElheren, gaunt and
cowardly.
