WAR-TIME CIVILIAN CONSUMPTION OF GOODS

Abstract

COMPARISONS of respective sacrifices in a common cause can never tell the full tale ; but in such situations as that exemplified by the recent statements on food policy, it is expedient that the facts should be agreed and put on record. The report to the Combined Production and Resources Board from a special Combined Committee on Non-Food Consumption Levels, entitled “The Impact of the War on Civilian Consumption in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada”*, deserves to be read by a far wider circle than those economists and statisticians or other specialists to whom the data tabulated in the appendixes, which occupy the greater part of the report, may be primarily of interest. The summary alone is well designed to facilitate that fuller understanding by each country of the circumstances and accomplishments of the others, which it is rightly assumed is essential to a combined approach to their common problems. In ten chapters covering in turn changing consumption levels and patterns, food, alcoholic beverages and tobacco, clothing, housing, fuel and electricity, household goods, other personal effects, amusements and reading matter, transportation and communication, and miscellaneous services, the report provides plenty of objective measurements on a basis affording fair comparisons.