The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1916-06-30
What You Would Have to Put
Up With in England.
Not Bothered by $95 Tax on a
$500 Automobile.
EGGS AT SEVEN CENTS APIECE
Tax Railway Ticket, Phone
Calls, Cigars-Everything.
But Even Thus, Britisher LIS
Not Disgruntled.

London June 30.-It has all hap
pened so gradually in England that no
one has particularly noticed it. But
If YOU have been away from London
for six months you find upon your
return that the last half year has ut
terly changed the lives of Englishmen-
Suppose for instance that your town
were London. What would the war
have done to it? Or to your nome
life? And how would you take these
changes? Would you be satisfied II
half the matches you bought d1dnt
light because the sticks broke or the
sulphur tips were absent? And II the
price on matches went up, IN spite OF
this?
Or how would you take it if the
coal man didn't make his deliveries
and you found your home coalless
some raw morning?
Or suppose the government put
license tax of sos a year on your little
family automobile for which you had
paid only $500? And gasoline went
up to 35 cents a gallon?
Suppose your morning newspaper
kept getting smaller and smaller,
week by week, because the newspaper
| supply was getting low?
Ten Cents of Every Dollar to Taxes.
Suppose for every dollar you made
| you had to turn over to the govern
ment a dime for war purposes, just as
an income tax, not including the many
small taxes you would pay on almost
everything consumed in your home?
| Would you be bothered?
| Strangely enough, if you had the
spirit of this new England, you
| wouldn't. Your whole idea would be
to beat Germany and that idea would
| keep your attention closely riv-
eted to the battlefields that the de-
| tails of nome Inconvenience would
| largely escape you.
At least, to a neutral on1ooker, they
| have escaped the folk of London.
! 1t is difficult for a neutral to I'M
derstand this unless he is on the
ground. but if you had the new Eng
| land spirit-and such a spirit has
grown up within the last six months
and reaches down to the very core of
| English life-and your town were
| London, you would be enduring incon-
venierces that appear almost unbe-
lievable to you.
| Steak AZ Cents Pound.
| There's beefsteak. at AZ cents a
pound. Beefsteak, in your home in
Missouri or Kansas, would become a
| luxury. ~
| There wouldn't be many eggs for
| breakfast at cents apiece.
Suppose as an Easter treat, you
| planned to have eggs anyhow, and
| announcement
| in the newspapers:
please don't eat eggs for Easter;
our soldiers need a million eggs y
| Would you go without eggs?
You would.
If you were suburbanite and found
a government tax put on your comnIu-
| tatfon ticket so that your morning and
| evening rides would cost you an addi-
| tfonal rs cents a week. II telephone
calls went up to cents from 5. If
your Havana cigars were not even per-
| mltted to enter the country If your
few daily drinks were raised in price
| from % to 35 per cent If shayes
| went up from 10 cents to Is cents. II
| your wife could buy only one pound OF
sugar at a time at the grocer's and
then the grocer insisted that she must
| make other purchases at his store ii
she wanted him to sell her sugar-it
you think you would be annoyed by ali
these things you are wrong
Britons within the last half year are
doing and enduring all these things
/ with great satisfaction and pride.
Birth Rate Drops
Under like conditions folk in Amer
lcan towns would do the same.
other things that are being under
gone by Londoners, almost without
| comment, include:
Watching the birth rate fall so that
nine babies are now born where ten
were born before
Riding in street cars and buses
that are so dark that you can hardly
see what fare you're handing the
conductor.
Cutting down of mail deliveries
| Moving about at night in pitch dark
| streets.
And knowing that new inconveni-
ences are perhaps in sight in the near
| future, if the government discovers
| that they are necessary.
| But London takes all these as a
| matter of course.
If the days communiques from Sir
Douglas Haig and General Joffre are
| what London calls good" London is
satisfied, in spite of its home troubles.
! To get the Germans licked is the
main thing