GERMAN BREAD TICKETS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1515, 26 February 1916, Page 2

GERMAN BREAD TICKETS.

The German method of limiting the consumption of bread is thus described in an article in The Nineteenth Century and After : “The cards are about the size of a postcard, and are divided up by perforations into 24 tickets about the size of a postage stamp, each ticket being marked with the weight of bread to which it entitled the holder. Bread tickets ot the correct value have to be handed to the baker or shopkeeper at the time of purchase. Any temptation on the part of the baker to sell bread without a ticket is provided against, not only by the possible danger of discovery and punishment for both parties, but by the fact that he can only receive a supply of flour each week corresponding to the total values of the bread tickets received by him in course of business during the preceding week and duly presented to the authorities. In one regard the measure did not go far enough. It patched up the damage done by maximum prices, and it secured more frugal use of the limited national supplies ; but it frustrated one of the objects maximum prices had been designed to achieve — the safeguarding of the poorer classes from hardship. The new measure placed a limit on the consumption of bread only, and fixed the same allowance for all. But bread is the cheapest of all foods, and forms the biggest proportion of the dietary ot the poorest people who cannot afford dearer foods. Hence the fixing of a universal bread or flour ration meant little to the well-to-do, who could afford meat, milk, eggs and vegetables, but pressed severely on the poor.” Since the above was written tickets have been adopted for meat and milk.