Description:Documents in the Sutherland Collection suggest that concern over England’s food supply in time of war was a prominent public issue in the early twentieth century.
The pamphlet above entitled ‘Labour Organisations and Food Supply in Time of War’ states plainly that ‘should this country become involved in a European war, bread would rapidly rise to famine prices. Such a state of affairs, if nothing be done beforehand to guard against it, will prove a source of the very gravest national danger.’
Many of the documents in the collection refer to statistics to support their view of England’s ‘national danger’. ‘Note of the Day’ from the Westminster Gazette February 5th 1903 cites statistics suggesting that during the Crimean War there were 28 million people in England, with 16 million quarters of wheat consumed being homegrown and 3 million imported. In contrast, the statistics reflect that in 1903 the population had increased dramatically, as had the amount of imported wheat consumed. The statistics suggest that 40 million people now lived in the country, with only 6 million quarters of wheat being home grown and 25 million quarters imported.
However, the documents indicate that a concern over food supply was manipulated by some writers in order to promote their own related concerns. Amongst the papers is an advertisement leaflet stating ‘Every Briton From the Prince to the Peasant should read The Ruin of Rural England: A Warning’ by J. W. Martin’.
In addition to stating that ‘the nation is reduced to dependency upon foreign countries for five-sixths of its food supplies’, Martin goes further than other writers remarking that a war with a European power ‘would probably be followed immediately by national starvation, a revolution at home, and the dissolution of the Empire.’
Martin also attributes the ‘Ruin of Rural England’ to issues not directly related to concerns over food supply, such as ‘the misery of the people through overcrowding’ and ‘gambling and drinking habits’.
The Sutherland Collection also includes pamphlets expressing an opposing opinion. A notable example is a pamphlet published in April 1903 entitled ‘Food and Folly: An Examination of the Food Supply Scare’ by Harold Cox.
Cox begins ‘there seem to be certain persons dwelling in these islands who are never happy except when scaring themselves or trying to scare their fellow citizens.’
He refers to the food debate as ‘folly’ where ‘organisers of this latest scare show their complete incapacity to deal with such a problem by habitually writing and talking as if the human inhabitants of the United Kingdom eat nothing but bread’.
Critical of the emphasis on bread, Cox refers instead to ‘Oats and Potatoes; Beef and Mutton’, promoting ‘the humble potato’ and ‘the roast beef of England’.
Cox is directly critical of the discourses by Captain Stewart L. Murray. Copies of these documents also survive in the Collection, providing an opportunity to compare the opposing sides of the food supply debate.
A wide variety of pamphlets are included in the collection. Many are reprints of articles from the press, indicating that they perhaps reflected popular opinion. The pamphlets include ‘Does War mean Starvation?’ by Spenser Wilkinson reprinted from the National Review November 1902, and also the treatise ‘How are the workers and their families to be fed in time of war?’ issued by the National Food Supply Association.