War Profiteers - Blood Money, 29th June 1916

The ‘Hucknall Dispatch’ editorial of 29th June 1916 railed against war profiteers – those who sacrificed the least but gained the most out of the war. Henry Morley pulled no punches….

“Blood Money.

“The history of the great war, if properly written, will contain one ugly chapter. That chapter will deal with the profits made out of the national crisis. Fortunes have already been made, and others are in the process of being piled up from the sweat and agony of a continent. Families which may by and by be joining the ranks of the aristocracy are being founded on blood money, just as others in the past have had their foundations in negro slavery. The war has made us much poorer as a nation but it has diverted some of the streams of wealth to new channels, making many poorer and many others richer than they were before. The irony of the position is that those who are rendering the noblest and most vital service are, as a rule, getting the least recompense while those occupying the strategical positions in commerce – the monopolists, the dividend receivers and the middlemen are getting the plum at the expense of the consumers and tax payers.

“At the outbreak of war the Government very promptly checked the greed of dealers in foodstuffs who were putting up food prices against panic, and there was good hope that the exploitation of the public would be prevented with a strong hand. Since then, however, things have been allowed to drift from bad to worse. It has been nobody’s business to watch over the nation’s interests, and the result has been that, without “cornering” in a sensational sense, one trading association after another has put up the price of every conceivable commodity, from a banana to a banquet, and from hair pins to steel girders regardless of the cost of production. Because of the higher cost of living many sections of workers have been given increased pay and then because of the higher wages the cost of living has gone up further. A vicious circle has come into operation, and those whose income is stationary or on the downgrade are being crushed as if between two millstones.

“The nation has shown exemplary patience, while the cost of living has gone up steadily and remorselessly, but people are at last getting angry, and are demanding instant action instead of a leisurely inquiry by a Committee which may or may not ever be translated into an Act of Parliament. It is full time the Government took a little interest in the price of food. The burden is fast becoming a crushing one. If things go much worse there will soon be thousands of families whose whole income will be swallowed up by the cost of the bare necessities of bodily existence.

“Thanks to bounteous harvests in Canada and India, and the courage of our Government in commandeering shipping to bring the wheat to our ports, there is some prospect of cheaper bread, but everything else, particularly sugar and bacon, is showing a tendency to soar higher and higher. Will somebody tell us why bacon is dearer than it was 12 months ago, though the supplies of it are bigger? Many other things are most baffling, the prices being more than double the old figures. Where 30s. did before the war £2 10s. is required now, and this means that a man has always to work overtime to keep things going.

“From the London docks comes a shameful story that tons of bacon were recently condemned there as unfit for food, and removed for use in the making of soap and candles. The allegation is that the market is so glutted that the bacon could not be sold, or that it was deliberately kept back for a higher price until it became practically worthless. Who besides the shipowners are the people making their fortunes out of the war? Over the Chicago packers, the Winnipeg speculators, and the neutral shipowners we gave very little, if any, control, but cannot something be done to stop the fleecing of the nation by our own traders? If not, let us at least be told who they are – those men with the muck-rake who scrape for filthy lucre while others are giving their life’s blood in freedom’s cause so that in the future we may at all events be saved from the mistake of bestowing respect and honour on the possession of ill-gotten wealth.”

‘Hucknall Dispatch’, 29th June 1916.