The Iron Ration Part 19

That and the state of the railroads kept the upper cla.s.ses at home. Many of them were thus afforded their first good chance to know where they lived.

Shortage had even come to rule the day for the aristocrats. It was a bitter pill for them, but I will say that they swallowed it without batting an eye.

XIII

"GIVE US BREAD!"

The food situation in Central Europe became really desperate in the third year of the war. The year's wheat crop had been short in quant.i.ty and quality. Its nutritive value was about 55 per cent. of normal. The rye crop was better, but not large enough to meet the shortage in breadstuffs caused by the poor wheat yield. Barley was fair under the circ.u.mstances. Oats were a success in many parts of Germany, but fell very low in Austria and Hungary. The potato crop was a failure. The supply of peas and beans had been augmented by garden culture, but most people held what they had raised and but little of the crop reached the large population centers. To make things worse, the Hungarian Indian corn crop was very indifferent. Great losses were sustained when the Roumanian army in September and October overran much of Transylvania, drove off some twenty thousand head of cattle, and slaughtered about fifty thousand pigs. Large quant.i.ties of cereals were also ruined by them, as I was able to ascertain on my trips to the Roumanian front.

Up to this time the war-bread of the Central states had been rather palatable, though a steady loss in quality had been noticeable. Soon it came to pa.s.s that the ration of bread had to be reduced to about one-quarter of a pound per day. And the dough it was made of was no longer good.

The 55-25-20 war-bread was good to eat and very nutritious. The stuff now pa.s.sing for bread was anything but that, so far as Austria was concerned. Its quality fluctuated from one week to another. I was unable to keep track of it. Indian corn was already used in the loaf, and before long ground clover hay was to form one of its const.i.tuents. Worst of all, the bread was not always to be had. At the beginning of November the three slices of bread into which the ration was divided, as a rule, fell to two, so that the daily allowance of bread was not quite four ounces. On one occasion Vienna had hardly any bread for four days.

In Hungary conditions were a little better, for the reason that the Hungarian government had closed the border against wheat and cereal exports. But the large population centers were also poorly provided with flour.

Germany, on the other hand, was better off than either Austria or Hungary. The rye crop had been fairly good, and food regulation was further advanced there. It was, in fact, close to the point of being perfect. But the quant.i.ty allotted the individual was inadequate, of course.

Throughout Central Europe the cry was heard:

"Give us bread!"

So far the several populations had borne all hardships in patience and stoical indifference. The limit of endurance was reached, however.

Colder weather called for a greater number of calories to heat the body.

The vegetable season was over. The h.o.a.rdings of the poorer cla.s.ses had been eaten up. The cattle were no longer on pasture, and, fed with hay only, gave now less milk than ever.

It was a mournful season.

All food was now regulated. While there had been no meat cards in Austria and Hungary as yet, there were two, and at times three, meatless days; though when on three days no beef, veal, or pork could be eaten, it was permitted to consume mutton and fowl on one of them.

But the consumption of meat regulated itself, as it were. Meat has always been proportionately expensive in Central Europe, and but a small percentage of people ever ate it more than once a day. The majority, in fact, ate meat only three times a week, as was especially the case in the rural districts, where fresh meat was eaten only on Sundays. There was no inherent craving for this food, on this account, and beef at seventy cents American a pound was something that few could afford.

Animal fat had in the past taken the place of meat. In the summer not much was needed of this, for the reason that the warm weather called for less body heat, to supply which is the special mission of fats. But with clothing worn thin, shoes leaking, and rooms poorly heated, the demand for heat-producing food grew apace.

This was reflected by the longer potato-lines.

On one occasion I occupied myself with a potato-line in the Second Munic.i.p.al District of Vienna. It was ten o'clock in the morning.

Distribution was going on. Those then served had been standing in that line since six o'clock. The first who had received their quota of the eight pounds of potatoes, which was to last for three days, had appeared in front of the shop at three o'clock in the morning. It had rained most of that time and a cold wind was blowing.

I engaged one of the women in conversation.

She had arrived at the store at about seven o'clock. There were three children she had to take care of. She had given them a breakfast of coffee and bread for the oldest, and milk for the two others.

"I have n.o.body with whom I could leave the children," she said. "My neighbors also have to stand in the food-line. So I keep them from the stove by placing the table on its side in front of it. Against one end of the table I move the couch. The children can't move that, and against the other end I push my dresser."

It appears that the woman had come home once from the food-line and had found her rooms on the verge of going up in a blaze. One of the children had opened the door of the stove and the live coals had fallen out. They had set fire to some kindlings and a chair. The children thought that great fun.

I complimented the woman on her resourcefulness.

Her husband, a Bohemian, was then at the front in Galicia. For the support of the family the woman received from the government monthly for herself 60 crowns ($12) and for each child 30 crowns, making a total of 150, of which amount she paid 48 crowns for rent every month. I could not see how, with prevailing prices, she managed to keep herself alive.

Coal just then was from 3 to 5 crowns per hundredweight ($12 to $20 per ton), and with only one stove going the woman needed at least five hundred pounds of coal a month. After that, food and a little clothing had to be provided. How did she manage it?

"During the summer I worked in an ammunition factory near here," she said. "I earned about twenty-six crowns a week, and some of the money I was able to save. I am using that now. I really don't know what I am going to do when it is gone. There is work enough to be had. But what is to become of the children? To get food for them I must stand in line here and waste half of my time every day."

The line moved very slowly, I noticed. I concluded that the woman would get her potatoes in about an hour, if by that time there were any left.

Since I used to meet the same people in the same lines, I was able to keep myself informed on what food conditions were from one week to another. They were gradually growing worse. Now and then no bread could be had, and the potatoes were often bad or frozen.

The cry for food became louder, although it was not heard in the hotels and restaurants where I ate. My waiters undertook to supply me with all the bread I wanted, card or no card--but who would eat the concoction they were serving? I was able to buy all the meat I needed and generally ate no other flour products than those in the pastry and puddings.

It was a peculiar experience, then, to eat in a well-appointed dining-room of supplies that were rather plentiful because the poor, who really needed those things, could not afford to buy them. The patrons of the place would come in, produce such cards as they had to have, and then order as before, with all the cares left to the management--which cares were comparatively slight, seeing that the establishment dealt with wholesalers and usually did much of its buying clandestinely.

Somewhere the less fortunate were eating what the luck of the food-line had brought that day, which might be nothing for those who had come late and had no neighbors who would lend a little bread and a few potatoes.

Suicides and crime, due to lack of food, increased alarmingly.

There was a shocking gauntness about the food-lines. Every face showed want. The eyes under the threadbare shawls cried for bread. But how could that bread be had? It simply was not there. And such things as a few ounces of fats and a few eggs every week meant very little in the end.

Perhaps it was just as well that those in the food-lines did not know that a large number of co-citizens were yet living in plenty. There were some who feared that such knowledge might lead to riots of a serious nature. But I had come to understand the food-lines and their psychology better. With the men home, trouble might have come--could not have been averted, in fact. But the women besieging the food-shops were timid and far from hysterical. Most of them were more concerned with the welfare of their children than with their own troubles, as I had many an occasion to learn. Not a few of them sold their bodies to get money enough to feed their offspring. Others p.a.w.ned or sold the last thing of value they had. The necessity of obtaining food at any price was such that many a "business" h.o.a.rd entered the channels of illicit trade and exacted from the unfortunate poor the very last thing they had to give.

The price of a pound of flour or some fat would in some cases be 800 per cent. of what these things normally cost.

The several governments were not ignorant of these things. But for a while they were powerless, though now they had abandoned largely their policy of "mobilizing" the pennies of the poor. To apply the law to every violator of the food regulations was quite impossible. There were not jails enough to hold a tenth of them, and a law that cannot be equitably enforced should not be enforced at all. The very fact that its enforcement is impossible shows that it is contrary to the interest of the social aggregate.

In Germany a fine disregard for social station and wealth had marked almost every food-regulation decree of the government from the very first. The several state governments were concerned with keeping their civil population in as good a physical condition as the food situation permitted. The financial needs of the government had to be considered, but it was forever the object to make the ration of the poor as good as possible, and to do that meant that he or she who had in the past lived on the fat of the land would now have to be content with less. As the war dragged on, pauper and millionaire received the same quant.i.ty of food. If the latter was minded to eat that from expensive porcelain he could do so, nor did anybody mind if he drank champagne with it, for in doing so he did not diminish unnecessarily the natural resources of the nation.

Food regulation in Austria had been less efficacious. In Hungary it was little short of being a farce. In both countries special privilege is still enthroned so high that even the exigencies of the war did not a.s.sail it until much damage had been done.

It was not until toward the end of December that the two governments proceeded vigorously to attack the terrible mixture of food shortage and chaotic regulation that confronted them.

The new ruler of the Dual Monarchy, Emperor-King Charles, was responsible for the change.

While Emperor Francis Joseph lived, the heir-apparent had not occupied much of a place in government. The camarilla surrounding the old man saw to that. But by depriving the young archduke of his rightful place, which the incapacity of the Emperor should have a.s.signed him, the court clique gave him the very opportunities he needed to understand the food situation he was to cope with presently--had to cope with if he wanted to see the government continued.

The removal of Premier Sturgkh by the hand of the a.s.sa.s.sin had been timely; the death of Francis Joseph was timelier yet. The old monarch had ceased to live in the times that were. He came from an age which is as much related to our era as is the rule of the original patriarch, one Abraham of Chaldea. Food conditions might be brought to his attention, but the effort served no purpose. The old man was incapable of understanding why the interests of the privileged cla.s.ses should be sacrificed for the sake of the many.

At the several fronts, at points of troop concentration, and in the very food-lines, the young Emperor had heard and seen what the ailments and shortcomings of public subsistence were. One of the first things he did when he came into power was to take a keen and active interest in food questions. For one thing, he decided to regulate consumption downward.

It was a great shock to the privileged cla.s.s when it heard that the Emperor would cut down the supply of those on top in order that more be left for those beneath.

To do that was not easy, however. The young man thought of the force of example. He prohibited the eating at court of any meals not in accord with the food regulations. Wheat bread and rolls were banished. Every servant not actually needed was dismissed so that he might do some useful work. Several of the imperial and royal establishments were closed altogether. The _menage_ at Castle Schonbrunn was disbanded. The personnel of the Hofburg in Vienna was reduced to actual needs. It was ordered that only one suite in the palace be lighted and heated--a very simple apartment which the Emperor and his family occupied.

Some very amusing stories are told in connection with the policy the Emperor had decided to apply. I will give here a few of them--those I have been able to verify or which for some other reason I may not doubt.

They had been leading a rather easy life at the Austro-Hungarian general headquarters. The chief of staff, Field-Marshal Conrad von Hotzendorff, was rather indulgent with his subordinates, and had never discouraged certain extravagances the officers of the establishment were fond of.

One of them was to have wheat dinner-rolls.

A few days after the new Emperor's ascension of the Austrian throne he happened to be at Baden, near Vienna, which was then the seat of the general headquarters. After a conference he intimated that he would stay for dinner at the general mess of the staff. That was a great honor, of course, though formerly the influence of the archducal party had made the heir-apparent more tolerated than respected in that very group.