Among the pioneer organisations was the Women's War Economy League
founded and developed by a group of titled women who got hundreds of
their sisters to pledge themselves to give up unnecessary entertaining,
not to employ men servants unless ineligible for military service, to
buy no new motor cars and use their old ones for public or charitable
work, to buy as few expensive articles of clothing as possible, to
reduce in every way their expenditures on imported goods, and to limit
the buying of everything that came under the category of luxuries.
Champagne was banned from the dinner table, decollete gowns disappeared:
men substituted black for white waistcoats in the evening.
The rich really needed no organised stimulus to retrench. The great
target for attack was the mass of the population who did not know what
it meant to save and who required just the sort of constructive lesson
that an organised thrift movement could teach.
Much of the increase in wages among the workers was going for food and
drink. Hence the opening assault was made on the market bill.
Fortunately, an agency was already in operation. At the outbreak of the
war a National Food Fund was started to feed the hungry Belgians. That
work had become more or less automatic (the Belgians' appetite is a
pretty regular clock), so its machinery was now trained to the twin
conservation of British stomachs and savings.
"Save the Food of the Nation," was the appeal that went forth on every
side.
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