ECONOMIC FACTORS 245 



the tendency is to increase this rather than diminish it with 

 the improvements in the economic position of manual and indus- 

 trial workers. Any backward step in this direction is apt to be 

 very repellant, even if dictated by sound economic considerations. 

 A parallel and extreme case of the same kind is found in the settled 

 habits of consumption of alcoholic drinks which are admittedly a 

 wasteful method of consuming foodstuffs from the point of view 

 of national economy. Habits of consumption, when once formed, 

 may sometimes be quite arbitrary in their working, and show little 

 regard for reasoned economic considerations. However unecono- 

 mical of agricultural resources the consumption beyond certain 

 limits of meat and butter may be under certain circumstances, every 

 effort may nevertheless be made to maintain the habitual rate of 

 consumption ; in some respects the pound of meat is apt to have 

 the same semi- sacred position in the consumption of large classes, 

 that the pint of beer or the cup of tea has among others. It is 

 doubtful whether the majority of the white populations will adapt 

 themselves readily to any future shortage in meat supplies, or will 

 show any willingness, except under great pressure, to utilise to the 

 full the available substitutes in their dietary. 



It has been observed that there is a constant tendency among 

 European populations to regard a temporary abundant supply of 

 foodstuffs and other products of nature as inexhaustible. The 

 apparent abundance of animal foodstuffs towards the close of the 

 19th and at the commencement of the 20th century is a case in 

 point, illustrated in both the newer and the older countries ; in 

 the former probably because the original resources and supplies 

 were great in proportion to the population ; in the latter because 

 large sections of the consumers living in towns were out of touch 

 with the centres of agricultural production and were almost totally 

 ignorant of the conditions under which their food supplies were 

 produced. Whatever the causes, this attitude of mind, this taking 

 it for granted that abundant actual supplies are a promise of a 

 similar abundance in future, 1 produces habits of consumption, often 

 wasteful, that tend to persist. It is true that hitherto no social 

 or political machinery has been in existence in the various countries, 

 still less throughout the international market for the purpose of 

 husbanding immediate supplies and resources or of directing con- 

 sumption with a view to the future. 2 On the contrary, competitive 



1 So far from this supposition being correct, the reverse is not infrequently 

 the case ; abundant supplies of meat for example in a given season may 

 mean a considerable shortage in the following years. Thus in 1911 meat 

 was abundant in Western Europe because, owing to the general drought of 

 that year, it became impossible to carry the usual numbers of live-stock 

 through the following winter and animals were consequently rushed, in many 

 cases prematurely, to slaughter. (Compare Part I., p. 2, Note 2). 



2 The pressure exerted by war conditions in the countries of Western and 

 Central Europe and, to some extent, in North America, has caused the various 

 governments to organise food-control departments which may be of service 



this direction in the future. 



