31 JULY 1941, Page 7

PRO AND CON LORD WOOLTON

By C. T. LEHMANN

HE Ministry of Food is under constant criticism. That I is inevitable, for Lord Woolton's activities touch the average citizen's life at vital points every day. It is also very salutary, for mistakes here may hit millions of people, and hit them very hard. But the criticism ought to be both intelligent and fair, and very often it is neither. Take, for example, the attacks on the middleman, who, if the newspapers and their correspondents are to be believed, is responsible both for high prices and for shortage, the corollary being that all inter- mediaries between producer and retailer should be eliminated. That particular case is badly over-stated. It is quite possible, no doubt, that a large manufacturer of foodstuffs which are heavily advertised, and therefore sold at high prices, can do with a small selling-staff, and can sell and distribute direct to the retailer ; but it may be questioned whether the public is enabled to pay less for his wares than for goods of a similar nature packed by a smaller manufacturer who employs a firm of brokers or agents to canvass wholesalers, who in turn supply the retailer. There are two middlemen in this case ; but experience shows that their activities do not put up the price.

I am stating here the case of the large manufacturer of food- stuffs ; but all foodstuffs are not manufactured in bulk. Many of them represent the output of scores, if not hundreds, of producers for whom it is quite impossible to get m touch with the thousands of retailers throughout the country. A simple illustration will suffice: Mackerel may be landed at Newlyn, skate and cod at Fleet- wood, herrings and haddock at Peterhead, soles and plaice at Grimsby ; but the fisherman who lands his catch at these ports can no more get in touch with the fishmonger at, say, Tunbridge Wells than the latter can get in touch with the fisherman. There must be at least a commission-merchant at the port dealing with the wholesaler, and that wholesaler has to dis- tribute again throughout the country and, in many cases, through a subsidiary wholesaler. He obviously renders an essential service. It is only the large multiple shops which are in a position to cut out the middleman by buying direct from the manufacturer, distributing to their own branches and selling direct to the public. Even they will often have to use a broker,—,jn normal times an almost indispensable middle- man, though the Ministry of Food is cutting him out at the present time by buying direct itself. It is not at all certain that this is to the real advantage of the country as a whole. The type of " middleman " who can, and should, be eliminated is the one who performs no service but merely speculates.

The very basis on which this trade is founded, i.e., bulk- purchases of every-day necessities, also limits the articles to which it can be usefully applied. The multiple concerns are performing their best function, and they do it superlatively well, when dealing with perishables such as butter, bacon, cheese, eggs, and with goods in daily demand such as sugar and tea. An extension of this system of trading to the whole of the food distribution of the country would frankly be National Socialism at its worst, and we are fighting not for that but for individual freedom, and the right of the smaller man must be preserved. This smaller man can and does generally sell a much greater variety of goods and, whether produced at home or imported, they must pass through at least two hands before they can reach the retailer.

That brings up at once the question of the small shop, which has been hotly debated and on which the Ministry has just recently given way. Here some definition is needed. By " small shop " country-dwellers mean the little village-store, which is the post-office, grocer, provision-dealer, haberdasher, draper, ironmonger, stationer and housewives' club, and indig- nation seethed when it was suggested that such enterprises should be done away with unless they had at least 25 registered customers. But the small shop in many of our large Midland and Northern towns is also known as the " parlour-shop." There are thousands and thousands of them. The shop is the parlour of one house in a terrace-row of cottages,—those depressing rows of back-to-back houses. Its stock• generally consists of a few packets of tea, tins of condensed milk, mustard, salt, penny packets of dried herbs, matches, pickles, &c. It used to sell fresh milk ; fortunately that has been stopped, but conditions are still such that it ought not to sell perishables such as butter, bacon, &c. Its trade should be confined to ready-packed goods. It is doubtful whether many such shops would have 25 registered customers. The Ministry is probably right on economic grounds in trying to close them ; but the hardships inflicted on those who eke out a very modest living or part-living in this occupation would be out of all proportion to the economy effected, an economy which would never affect the population generally.

What are the criticisms most commonly levelled at the Ministry of Food? First, that as soon as prices are controlled goods disappear from the market. It is quite true that as soon as prices are controlled supplies are or appear to be short, but the reasons are various. Tomatoes, for instance, appeared to be abundant when they were 2S. 6d. per• lb. They were said to vanish when they were Is. 4d. or Is. 2d. As a matter of fact the supplies the first week of control were just as large as they were the week before ; but the demand was four or five times as great, so that four out of five persons asking for tomatoes had to go without. Since then bad weather and air-raid damage have considerably reduced the amount of tomatoes available. One firm let me inspect their books, showing that from the same suppliers they received in the last two weeks less than half what they had in the corresponding weeks of last year. It is a large firm, which normally gets every satisfaction, and they themselves do not feel that they are being badly treated ; it is just the luck of the market. Potatoes were scarce for a week or ten days ; but you cannot blame the Ministry if new potatoes were three weeks later than usual and that the normal Channel Islands supply was completely cut off.

But that kind of explanation will not always fit. Herrings and mackerel at 7d. per lb. are almost unobtainable. Here the fault appears to lie with the Ministry, which has not allowed sufficient margin for distribution. By the time the fish has reached the less populated centres, and allowance is made for loss in weight and delivery to the customer, there is only about Id. per lb. left for the retail fishmonger. It is not worth his while to buy a stone of either of these fish, with the prospect of making 7d. gross profit and the knowledge that if a single fish is spoilt there is nothing at all in the transaction. Much the same thing applies in the case of fresh fruit. The margin is zoo small. This may be deliberate on the part of the Ministry. On broad grounds it is very likely better that fruit should go to the jam-makers, whom it reaches in a fresher con- dition and where there is none of the loss that a retailer may have to suffer. Fresh fruit which has to be bought from shops is always an extravagant article of food.

On the whole it is fair to say that the Ministry of Food is making the best of a very difficult job. The most serious complaints against it come not from the public but from traders, who feel they are too little consulted. The advice of important bodies like the Liverpool, London and Bristol Cham- bers of Commerce is not sought, and that given by so-called Advisory Committees is frequently ignored. Trade Directors in the Ministry itself, who are usually men who know their job thoroughly, are frequently over-ruled by the purely Civil Service element, and there are intolerable delays in arriving at decisions and in carrying out those that have been taken. The Press featured one instance recently, that of prices for canned fish, which were given to the trade in November and not enforced until April. I know of other cases, but as they are sub judice, so to speak, I cannot give details.

The same notice referred to the issuing of licences, and to the recommendation made by certain bodies that only persons or firms selling certain articles before the war should be allowed to sell them now. I presume that the Ministry is in sympathy with this view, but the perpetual difficulty of " definition " arises. It is easy to understand what is meant, but very difficult to make orders for carrying out the policy. A firm of tea-packers may rightly be asked not to sell drapery ; but throughout the country you have small shops who describe themselves as grocers and drapers, but in addition to that may sell a large number of other goods. In fact, if licences were to be issued for individual articles, some concerns would have to apply for two or three hundred or more licences. If they were issued by trades, then what, for instance, could a " grocer " sell? Under what category would firms like Woolworths come? If such firms are to be allowed to sell anything they want, why deny that right to equally enterprising competitors in the same street? If no one is to sell what he did not sell in 1938 or 1939 who is going to put on the market the egg substitute, so useful now when eggs are scarce, or the edulcorant now that sugar is limited? Should all the ingenuity that is displayed in producing substitutes be wasted? On the whole I think Lord Woolton is right in saying that he would rather discover the speculator and put him out of business than extinguish the enterprising food-chemist. Probably the most weighty complaint of all is that of the trade against the Civil Service administration. The Govern. ment did itself a serious disservice by putting up Lord Simon to crush Lord Perry when the latter in the House of Lords made a very fair statement on the disadvantages and delays caused by the organisation of the Civil Service. The fact that the seducer kills the wronged husband in a dud does not put him in the right ; it simply shows that he is the more skilled swordsman.

Personally I have always found Civil Servants extremely courteous, obliging, anxious to facilitate things ; but they are tied by so many regulations, and so afraid of taking responsi- bility, that they introduce into the organisation of the Ministry of Food an amount of delay, quibbling, petty parsimony that would never be tolerated in any business-house. They cannot be blamed for their ignorance of trade conditions (we have not yet reached the stage when every Civil Servant would have to spend two years in some business-house as part of his qualification) ; but I have no doubt that many of the complaints which are now made would never have arisen if an ordinary business-staff was running the Ministry of Food.