Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/268

Rh pray on his grave. The Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich was sent to Persia to join a fighting column. Yussupoff was ordered to leave Petrograd, and interned in his estate. Purichkevich, protected by his immense popularity in the army and by his title of member of the Duma, returned to his work on the front.


 * (Author:Paul Vinogradoff)

 RATHENAU, WALTER (1867-), German industrialist and political economist, president of the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft, was born Sept. 29 1867 in Berlin. He came into prominence in Aug. 1914 as the founder and director of organizations for providing raw materials, during the World War, for Prussia and the German Empire. On the formation of the Wirth ministry in May 1921 he was appointed Minister of Reconstruction, and in that capacity negotiated with the French minister, Loucheur, a convention for supplying German materials for the restoration of the devastated area in France, and thus paying in kind part of the reparation which the German Reich had undertaken to pay in gold. Rathenau published various books, pamphlets and articles, on social and economic questions, some of which attracted world-wide attention, especially his Von kommenden Dingen (1920). In Jan. 1922 he became Foreign Minister in the Wirth Ministry.  RATHMORE, DAVID ROBERT PLUNKET, (1838-1919), Irish lawyer and politician, was born Dec. 3 1838, the third son of John, 3rd Baron Plunket (1793-1871). He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, taking his degree in 1859, and was called to the Irish bar in 1862. He was made Q.C. in 1868, and the same year became legal adviser to the Irish government. In 1870 he stood successfully as Conservative member for Dublin University, holding the seat for twenty-five years. From 1874 to 1877 Plunket was solicitor-general for Ireland, and in 1880 was for a short time paymaster-general. In 1885 he was first commissioner of works in Lord Salisbury's ministry, and resumed this post in 1886, when the Conservative party returned to power, holding it till 1892. In 1895 he was raised to the peerage. He died at Greenore Aug. 22 1919.  RATIONING.—In the articles and the general question of food control during the World War is dealt with. During 1914-8 most of the European states, belligerent and neutral, were driven, by shortage of supplies, to ration the consumption of the more important foods, and in some cases of other articles, by the civilian population. “Rationing,” of course, is a term of military origin; it denotes the supplying to each member of a fighting force or a beleaguered population of a definite “ration,” based upon calculation of his needs, of the supplies available, and of the period for which they must serve. The process of rationing, therefore, has two sides negative and positive: the negative side of preventing any individual from obtaining, by purchase or otherwise, more than the authorized quantity of the rationed article, and the positive side of making it possible for each individual in fact to obtain that quantity. It is thus a problem both of restriction and of distribution, and the success of any rationing system may be judged even more by the degree to which the positive side is carried out, than by the completeness with which the prohibition upon excessive consumption is enforced.

In this respect the British system of food rationing had for the reasons mentioned below a relatively high measure of success and is therefore described here in some detail. The modified system adopted in the United States is dealt with in a final section. Besides food and feeding stuffs for animals, fuel and light were rationed in the United Kingdom, and both these and many other things, such as clothing, tobacco, matches and housing accommodation, were rationed in various enemy and neutral countries in Europe.

Historical Sketch.—The earliest steps to the introduction of compulsory rationing in Great Britain were taken in relation to sugar. Since the first month of the war sugar had been subject to Government control, under a Royal Commission on the Sugar Supplies, constituted in Aug. 1914. By the end of

1916 the quantity of sugar that could be obtained for the United Kingdom as a whole began to fall far short of the public demand, and in the first part of 1917 this reduced quantity was being distributed on the basis of giving so far as possible to each trader, whether wholesale or retail, 50% of the quantity which he had received in 1915, it then being left to the retailer to divide his supplies as best he could among his customers, subject to a limit of price. This simple system was necessarily very imperfect in action, and grew steadily less satisfactory owing to changes in the distribution of the population. With the development of the munitions campaign new towns sprang up as at Gretna or Birtley; old towns like Coventry or Sheffield or Woolwich doubled or trebled their population or acquired new suburbs; from many country districts and provincial or university towns in the south of England the population ebbed away. Distribution of sugar or any other article of food on the 1915 basis became manifestly inequitable.

During the first half of 1917, while the acute difficulties of the new munition areas were being relieved by temporary palliatives, such as the dispatch of additional supplies after enquiry by inspectors in each case, schemes for recasting the whole system of distribution on the basis of a complete fresh registration of the population were worked out and several alternative schemes were submitted to the War Cabinet in June 1917. The Cabinet adopted one of the alternatives, under which each household was to be invited to register for sugar with a particular retailer, to whom supplies of sugar would be sent in accordance with the numbers and size of the households registered with him, at a specified ration per head, but under which there would be nothing to prevent a retailer from using any surplus sugar in his hands to supply others, or to prevent persons from getting sugar, if they could, in excess of the ration, or from any retailer other than the one with whom their household was registered.

The scheme, while applied in the first instance only to sugar, involved the setting up of extensive administrative machinery, which could thereafter be used both for rationing other foods and for any other local work of the Ministry. This machinery consisted in essence of some 1,800 Food Control Committees appointed by the local authorities, but with their expenditure met from national funds, together with Divisional Food Commissioners appointed directly by the Ministry of Food for the 15 main divisions into which the country was divided, and having the special function of supervising, assisting, and coördinating the work of the committees. Immediately after the presentation of these proposals to the Cabinet (June 1917) the first food controller, Lord Devonport, resigned his office, and the proposals were approved by the Cabinet, subject to their receiving the subsequent assent of his successor, Lord Rhondda. The latter did in fact assent, and proceeded at once with the schemes both for redistribution of sugar and for divisional and local organization. The 1,800 local sanitary authorities in Great Britain were invited by circular (issued Aug. 2 1917) to appoint Food Control Committees, and did so during Aug. and the first part of September. Each committee set up a local “Food Office,” usually in one of the municipal buildings, appointed an “Executive Officer,” and during Sept. and Oct. issued to each household in the district a sugar card showing the number of persons in the household, and having a counterfoil to be detached and deposited with the retailer from whom the householder proposed to get his sugar. There was thus carried out a complete registration of the population by households in each district. The intention was to bring the distribution of sugar to each district on to the new (population) basis, as opposed to the old (1915 trade) basis as from Jan. 1 1918.

The sugar scheme, however, was never brought into force in the form approved by the Cabinet. In that form it was a distribution not a rationing scheme, was based on households not individuals, and deliberately made no formal provision for transfer of individuals from one household to another, or for persons too migratory to form part of any household. An alternative scheme for rationing by means of individual cards, entitling the holder to a fixed quantity and no more, had been