submitted to the Cabinet in June 1917 but was rejected, because at that time the Cabinet was not prepared for rationing as such. It seemed doubtful whether the public would submit to compulsory restriction of their food consumption; there was further an objection to giving the enemy the encouragement of seeing Britain apparently driven to extremities by the success of the submarine campaign.
By the end of Sept. it became clear that the public were prepared and anxious for definite rationing, that is to say for a system under which nobody could get more than a certain quantity and everybody could be certain of getting that. In Oct. and the following months accordingly the scheme was entirely revised and provision made for the household sugar cards to be exchanged for individual cards, and for any person who belonged to no household to obtain a document which should be the sole title to sugar supplies.
Another and more drastic change was also contemplated, namely, the substitution of a single centralized register of sugar consumers, that is to say of the whole population, for the 1,800 separate local registers which had resulted from the registration of households under the original scheme. The first steps to the formation of this central register—in the Imperial Institute buildings at South Kensington—were taken in Nov. 1917, and a good deal of preliminary work was done. The change over from local to central registration, however, was only to be made gradually, and was in fact never completed. After the success of the schemes described below—for rationing fats and meat on the basis of local registration (Feb.-April 1918), the idea of making a central register of the population was abandoned. The public, though at times mildly puzzled by the changes of the cards with which they had to deal, remained for the most part unconscious of the successive revolutionary changes in the ideas which dominated the administration of rationing.
The scheme, which had been started as one for the distribution of sugar to households in July 1917, came into force as a scheme of rationing by individuals on Jan. 1 1918 without a hitch. The reserve stocks at the disposal of the Sugar Commission were at that time considerable, and, since sugar is not highly perishable, the Commission had been able to distribute those stocks widely and to provide each retailer with an ample margin to meet contingencies. With insignificant exceptions, every person in every part of the country was able from the outset to get week by week the ration of half a pound of sugar to which his ration document entitled him.
Meanwhile, in the last quarter of 1917, the public became aware of serious shortages of other commodities, in particular tea, margarine, bacon and cheese. These shortages led to the appearance of queues at the shops and threatened to arouse grave industrial unrest. The centralized rationing scheme which was then the accepted policy in London could not come into force for many months. On the other hand the Food Control committees were established and at work; it was natural for Lord Rhondda to ask the committees to deal with the difficulty of the queues in the interim as best they could. One or two of the committees, among whom the Birmingham committee was conspicuous, started their own schemes for registering consumers with retailers and controlling the distribution of supplies to the retailers by the exercise of powers of requisition granted by the Ministry. General provision for such schemes was made by an Order of the Food Controller of Dec. 22 1917, which was called a Food Control Committees (Local Distribution) Order, but was in fact an order authorizing committees to introduce complete local rationing of any or every article, subject to approval of the scheme by the Ministry of Food. An important memorandum issued to the committees on Dec. 29 1917 outlined model schemes and gave advice and suggestions. The formulation of local schemes in congested industrial areas at once showed the impracticability of purely local action. It was clearly impossible for several Food Control committees in neighbouring districts forming part of a single industrial town to have different rationing systems, or for some to ration while the others did not. It was equally impossible for local committees to control the distribution of foods, such as frozen meat or margarine, which are stored or manufactured at a few main centres for distribution throughout the country. These difficulties came to the fore at once in London and its suburbs.
At a general meeting of executive officers of the London committees held on Jan. 4 1918, it was resolved to have a single rationing scheme for the whole Metropolitan area and to ask the Ministry of Food to prepare such a scheme for approval by the committees as a whole. It became clear almost immediately that no convenient break could be made between London and the districts immediately surrounding it, and the home counties were included. The scheme was originally asked for to deal with fats (margarine and butter) alone, but the meat shortage became acute at a moment's notice in Jan., and estimates of the quantities available in the first quarter of 1918 made it imperative to include meat as well.
A scheme covering both fats and meat was worked out accordingly by the Ministry, approved at another meeting of executive officers, embodied in a “London and Home Counties (Rationing Scheme) Order,” and brought into force on Feb. 25 1918 for an area containing something like 10,000,000 people. It involved the issue of two ration cards to each individual, one with detachable coupons for meat, and one for butter and margarine, without coupons, but with numbered spaces in which the retailer marked off the customer's purchases as they were made; each card had a counterfoil to be deposited with a retailer, and the supplies were distributed to retailers on the basis of the counterfoils deposited with them. The scheme had an almost melodramatic success. The London queues, which, according to the observations made by the Metropolitan Police, had included, in each of the weeks just before rationing, over 1,300,000 people, fell to 191,000 in the first week and to 15,000 in the fourth. Before rationing about 550,000 persons stood in food queues every Saturday in London; on the first Saturday after rationing the number was 110,000, on the next 24,000, and on the fourth Saturday under 7,000. In effect the queues for meat and fats disappeared altogether; there remained only queues for cheese, jam and other unrationed articles. The success of rationing was one of organization; the total amount of meat and fats available for consumption and actually consumed in London was not greater after rationing than before. It was simply better distributed and made obtainable without the labour of standing in a queue.
Meanwhile local schemes under the Order of Dec. 22 1917 had made considerable headway in the diminution or abolition of queues for butter and margarine outside London and the home counties. The local rationing of meat, however, presented insoluble difficulties, and even before the introduction and success of the London scheme the decision had been taken to introduce a national scheme for meat rationing as soon as possible. This was done on April 7.
The extension of meat rationing to the whole country was as successful as its introduction in London. The queues disappeared and everyone everywhere got his ration. This result decided incidentally the fate of the sugar scheme. The attempt to form in London a central ration register of the population was abandoned; the staff, till they could be dispersed, were used on other work in the checking of coupons, and arrangements were made to include sugar in the uniform scheme of national rationing through local committees which was introduced on July 14 1918, when each member of the public received a single book with different coloured leaves of uniform coupons for meat and bacon, fats, sugar, and lard. These, with jam included for the first time in Nov. 1918, were the only articles of food which were rationed nationally, i.e. throughout Great Britain. In addition tea was rationed in most of the great industrial centres under local schemes, and came within an ace of being included under the national scheme of July 1918. Cheese was rationed by a number of committees, but the varying consumption in different parts of the country and by different classes of consumers made any uniform system difficult; it continued to the end to be distributed on a “trade basis,” that is to say by giving
