FEED THE HUNGRY WORKERS
By J. L. HODSON
URING the past six weeks I have been renewing acquaint- ance with some of our indyistrial or other centres- Ca.deside. the North-east Coast, Lancashire, Sheffield and outh Wales. It was ten months since I had been in most of ern: I was anxious to see how they were faring. I have gained- number of impressions, most of them encouraging, but not I. Too much complacence, too little appreciation of the tiffness of our task—these are common. What I want to refer to here, however, is the food situation: for I have slowly cached the belief that our existing rationing-system is less quitable than it might be, and therefore less wise.
It is widely accepted, I think, that our armed forces must he well fed. Their rations, until recently, have been in excess
of yours and mine. Even after the recent cuts they are, I
believe, somewhat higher. (It took the Minister of Food some months, I understand, to persuade the armed forces to agree o those reductions.) Most of us will not complain if soldiers and airmen are better fed than we are. Next (or equal) in importance are workers directly engaged in manufacturing the weapons of war—ships, tanks, guns, aircraft and the rest.
Alongside are the blastfurnacemen, coal-miners, dockers and others engaged in heavy manual toil. Without the highest out- put from these we cannot win this war—for this is a war of machinery. Have we taken, so far, sufficient steps to ensure that these men—and a lot of women can rightly be included, Lancashire weavers, for example—are getting all the food the rest of us can spare for them? I do not think so. A consider- able proportion of our heavy workers take one meal, a sand- wich meal, to work. This is particularly true of pitmen and the blastfurnacemen of Middlesbrough. We all know how scarce cheese, cooked meats, onions, and fruit are, which those men used commonly to put in their pockets. • I was not investigating the food situation beyond other aspects of war, and do not pretend to deep knowledge. But in Middlesbrough I saw the wives and children of blastfurnace- men queueing up outside a pork butcher's shop to procure stuff for sandwiches. (I was told they do it sometimes at 7.30 a.m.) The Mayoress was informed during my visit by a workman in a bus that he had been at it from 6 p.m. till noon next day on sardine sandwiches. Mr. A. Callighan, General Secretary of the Blastfumacemen, says he travels about Britain a good deal, and his impression is that food is shorter in Middlesbrough than many other places. One or two distin- guished citizens told me they had found more food in Scar- borough and York. Mr. Callighan said the blast-furnaces in the to could do with six works-canteens; he believed there were two. A Food Official said to me: "The cooked meats Position is serious."
In Lincashire an Oldham journalist said that women opera- tives have lately been so tired out by Thursday and Friday that their ceasing work completely on Saturday had been dis- cussed. Mr. James Barbour, chairman of the Scottish Mine- workers' Association (with 90,000 members) told me that in his own coalfield, Stirling, some colliers at the tail-end of the _week are occasionally going down the pits with no more than bread and margarine to eat and water in their flasks. An 'fficial from the West Lothian coalfield confirmed it. The of the Shipwrights and Shipconstructors' Association, Glasgow, informed me that only about a fifth of the Clyde shipyards have canteens. These shafts of light, which broke into my investigations almost by .accident, suggest to me that all is not well.
What is the other side of the picture? I lived in hotels. In every one I could eat, if I wished, egg and bacon each morn- ing, meat oftener than not for one other principal meal, and poultry for the third. Friends in Glasgow and near Blackpool told me they could get a dozen eggs from the outlying farms whenever they could find petrol to run out in the car to fetch them. Aberdeen seemed to be what one of her best-known citizens called it—" a land flowing with milk and honey." Baskets of eggs are in grocers' windows. I bought half a dozen myself. The pastrycooks sell large meat patties, pies, Cornish pasties. As the Lord Provost said : "Nothing comes over us here." A Devonshire hotel advertises: "Here you will be fed like a fighting-cock."
It seems to me clear (a) that if you are well-to-do you may eat all the food you desire (if not of one sort, then another), and (b) that there are certain parts of the country and certain towns that are a good deal better-off for food supplies than others, and that those best served are not necessarily those whose needs are greatest, measured by output of war-munitions. Anybody who buys meals in restaurants can not only eat very well, but has his rations at home preserved intact. Moreover, areas that are agricultural usually (not always) fare better than those which are industrial.
I visited two or three fishing-ports. In each of them I found fish being sold on the quay from three to (in some instances) six times its pre-war price. Does this allow the less well-to-do of our people a fair share of fish? I found skippers earning handsome wages of £40 and £30 a week (occasionally too a week), and deck-hands £r to 25s. a day. Some of the crews at all events are quite willing to go to sea for less than these wages. Mr. J. M. Crockett, secretary of Aberdeen Skippers' and Mates' Association, said to me: "We are in favour of price-control, though control may halve skippers' wages. We think the price of fish is ridiculous."
Iceland cod is now to have a maximum price, but I suggest that the delay in controlling all fish prices is too prolonged. On the day I was in Aberdeen the price of herrings, which are controlled, was 245. a box; the price of mackerel (uncontrolled) loos. a box. Is it unreasonable to plead for the rationing of all foods, including all poultry, game and fish? More than that, is it not desirable, when the nation is on short commons, that the Food Minister should make very certain that the foods of high nutritive value, such as cheese and meat, should be sent, first of all, to the localities doing heavy munitions work —to the miners, shipyard workers, blastfurnacemen, and so forth, even if it means that the remainder of us would go shorter than we do?
In Aberdeen an experiment in communal feeding has been run by a group of workers, on the suggestion of Sir John Orr. It has been a great success. Sir John believes that works-canteens and communal feeding-centres will go far to solve many of our difficulties, because as soon as canteens are established at every works-centre, it will be possible to ration in accordance with needs those foods which are scarce. Those of us not engaged in war work can get along pretty well with about 2,000 calories per head each day, whereas men engaged in hard manual labour need about double that amount. A uniform system of rationing per head is excellent for some foods, but does not adjust the food supply to different food- requirements. An admirable exception is now to be made by the Food Ministry in the case of cheese—extra amounts of which are to be sent to the mining and agricultural community. Other heavy workers need it also, possibly just as much. When every works has a canteen, it will be possible to divert a supply of foods which are scarce to the industries which need them. most. The special provision of milk for mothers and young children is an excellent precedent. What we now require is wide extension of the notion underlying that scheme—priori for those whose work is of the utmost importance.
I think it is true to say that such growling as exists among the heavy workers is, so far, small. That is all to their credit But changes are needed. These men are the Brigade of Guards of our industrial war-effort and certainly not less vital to our victory than our soldiers, sailors and airmen.
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