Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1916 — LONG BUTTER LINES [ARTICLE]

LONG BUTTER LINES

Picturesque Scenes Witnessed In Berlin Today. People Resort to All Manner of Tricks to Get Extra Supply of Butter— Working Classes Get It, Well-to-Do Go Without. The Hague.—Picturesque and somewhat pitiful scenes where long lines wait at the doors of German butter shops are described in a dispatch to the New Rotterdam Courant from its Berlin correspondent As this newspaper is sympathetic with Germany, it cannot be accused of presenting an excitable and exaggerated account such as the Germans complain of In allied journals. The correspondent begins by quoting from a story told him by a friend’ “I got in with a little persuasion. A line was waiting. They would not let me go in front, of course, but I pretended I only wanted vegetables. So I got through the line and after securing vegetables, I asked with a very Innocent face for a quarter of a pound of butter. 1 hid it in my coat, went out and joined at the end of the line. Without much more trouble I got a second quarter of a pound—” The correspondent comments: "That is how we get along In Berlin today; that is what -we must do to capture a little fat or a little butter. Only with cunning or patience can we butter our bread.- In long straight lines the people stand for hours before the butter shops. Some get nothing, some welter in butter. He who has no need of butter goes out on the hunt for It, as for sport. Housewives tell with pleasure and pride how much butter they have captured. I, myself, with my family had to go without butrter for days till I tumbled on a cunning ruse whereby I secured a pound. And how I bragged about it! “Many butter and cheese shops are closed practically the whole day. A paper in the window announces when the sale will begin and long before the specified time a crowd collects — mostly mothers and children. Some little ones are there to capture a quarter of a pound on their own hook. Did the salesman know there were several from one house they would get nothing, so they cheerfully Ignore each other during the long wait. “A policemen keeps order In the waiting lines. In the good, old days* such lines collected to buy tickets for a Caruso concert; now butter or some other necessity Is all we think of. "The cause of this singular situation is not far to seek. In peace time, to say nothing of war time, Germany does not produce enough butter for home consumption. Lack of fodder and speculation combined to drive up prices. A scarcity of fat accompanied the scarcity of butter. To do without these two would be a disaster for the German working people, so the government took the matter up, and, as butter, like fat, is free from plutocratic influences, the government decided the butter should be fairly divided, and fixed low maximum prices accordingly. v “The result is that the working classes get butter and the well-to-do go without. The working man’s wife goes herself or sends her children to stand for hours in line. She has the whip-hand, now that patience and not money is the determining factor. “The social side of this regulation has thus reached it's goal, but not so the financial. The prices are so low that imports from Denmark and Holland are almost out of the question and the government is now faced with the dilemma; plenty of butter at panic prices or little butter at low prices. “In official circles it is hoped that the situation will soon be easierThey hope soon to get the benefit of a big potato harvest, the increase in the farm stocks, and the'lmported food from the Balkans. But how to deal with the disagreeable fact that the fixing of maximum prices automatically diminishes the supply