TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE PEOPLE'S REMEMBRANCE
rIIHE first Report of the Royal Commission on Food Prices was published on Saturday last. It is an interim Report, for it deals only with wheat and other cereals and with meat, leaving the dairy foodstuffs for further consideration. Though the evidence taken was exceedingly interesting and in many respects is likely to prove useful; the specific recommendations will, we fear, cause disappointment. That was inevitable from the nature of the subject, and also from the unduly high hopes that were raised when the matter was first discussed.
Yet the underlying aspirations which prompted the appointment of the Commission were in themselves most natural and most commendable. If we go down to the bed-rock of these aspirations we see that it is really the foundation of all economic science. That science exists in order to teach man how to eliminate waste in the instruments which he uses for getting food out of the ground into his mouth, wool off sheeps' backs or cotton off the cotton plants on to his body, metals out of the rocks to make his machines, bricks out of the clay to build his houses, and stones out of the quarries. There is only one crime in economics, and that is waste7-producing with unnecessary effort, and- therefore at higher prices and in smaller quantities than need be. Again, waste may, and often does, mean an unnecessary deviousness in getting the goods from the factory or the warehouse into the home of the consumer. When the cart goes five miles round instead of taking the short cut there is waste. Again, when a cart takes a thing to a particular destination and comes back empty when by a little more trouble it might have come back full, there is waste. But, alas ! to note waste and to eliminate waste are very different things. You may note that waste is going on, but in your efforts to stop it you may create a greater waste than before. Again, what looked like waste, what looked like taking an unnecessarily long journey, may prove to have been an error, not in action, but in observation. The thing that looked like a short cut may be in fact - a very long cut.. " Oh, what a tangled web we Weave ! That is the first thought that comes to the man who watches the attempts to eliminate waste, and to get 'a favourable answer to the prayer :-
" Straighten our roads And lighten our loads."
The moment you begin to interfere with the complicated tangles of commerce difficulties spring up on every side. If yOuslash the lauits Ind kinks in the string you may do irreparable harm to the ball, and if you try the milder way, unlesS you have the patience of Job, you get little or no result.
These were the considerations with which the Royal. Commission on Food Prices were faced-. at the very outset of their inquiry. . It is, we hold, much to their credit that they did not throw Up the sponge in despair. Instead, realizing how great would be the benefits to the nation if they could provide anything in the shape of a remedy, they made certain specific proposals. Their main suggestion is that a Food Council shall be estab- lished under the Board of Trade. This Council is not to have executive powers, but will have the specific duty imposed upon it of supervising the staple food trades' and of giving a wide publicity to precise information as to the stocks and prices Of the chief foodstuffs. So much for the Council's duties. For its powers the Council is to rely upon a force which, as we have often pointed out, has not hitherto been sufficiently used as a mean of punishment for bad courses or of rewards for goodi Offenders who fail to obey the Council's instructions to desist from actiOns contrary to .the public interest will if the }:43°d Council is established, be reported to the Board of Trade, and by the President of the Board of Trade to Parliament. Though we see difficulties in the way, Food we are by no means prepared to say that the Food Council will do no good because it is authorized to warn rather than to punish, to. suggest rather than to act. In old days the King, or some potentate in commission like the City of London, had an officer called the King's or the City's Remembrancer. It was the duty of that officer—a duty that still exists, like the office, in name—to put the King in mind thereof when some new bad practice grew up in the State, or when some told wrong demanded a remedy. The Remembrancer's duty was, in effect; to ask his Chief what he meant to do about Some patent scandal. No doubt he often got in effect the Cockney. answer, " Well, what about it ? " But he also, no doubt,' did in many cases effectually jog the arm of Justice; of the Legislature, or of the ExecutiVe. That being so; we welcome an attempt to set up a People's (Or shall-Nye say a Housewife's ?) Remembrancer in the shape of the Food Council.. That body, as the Report shoWs,. is to be perpetually nudging the elbow of the householder and his wife on the one side and of the wholesalers and retailers on the other. It will remind them, each and all, that it is a monstrous piece of waste that., say, four carts call at Clematis Cottage three times a week,, one bringing bread, one bringing meat, one bringing,groceries, and one bringing fruit and .vegetables, .and that .a, . • _, fifth calls to collect for sale the eggs laid. by the house- . holder's hens. .Next, the People's Remerabraneer can give many useful reminders as . to why and when Prices, are unnecessarily high and how that bad eminence may., be reduced.
Again, the People's Remembrancer may act very much, as the Meterological Office acts when it tells ,us what the weather is likely. to be. , But as, a. matter of fact, . the Food Council may. get a, good, deal nearer reality than that. For,: example, the first four ,specifie recommenda-, tions in the Report in regard to bread contain excellent suggestions. We have only space to. note one of them., It declares that the Council should consider " Whether. consumers .who have bread delivered should not pay. for that :service, so that bread sold across . the, counter. may be cheaper." Here it seems to. us that vigilant, publicity might do ,a,great deal .of good..
Into the detailed recommendations as. to. the constitu-‘ tion of the Board we have not time to enter, but we desire to express our strong approval that one of the members is to be a Director of the Co-operatiye;Wholesale. Society, for no body knows better the case both of t he consumer and of the seller than this .Society., nothing could 'be better than the appointment . of two women representatives of the consumers. Finally, we. approve the decision against State7trading..in foodstuffs. Till State-trading. in transport, i.e. the Post Office,. can show better results it would be madness to trust, our supplies. of food.-to the State. . . .
We will end with a specific .suggestion. Itis that the Food Council should have imposed upon it the duty., of publishing a bulletin at least once a week. Public_ bodies, like night-watchmen, -should prove their con... tinned existence by some definite sign, otherwise the.y. are apt to grow " gouty and inactive."
J. ST. Lot STRA.CliEt:'
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