The Cordova daily times., 1918-03-18

LONDON, Jan. 8 (by maiD There was margarine queue in Kings Road as 1 came downtown this morning. The snow of last night had become slush, the sidewalks were wet and some of those in the queue, crowded off the sidewalk, stood in sIush of the street. An icy wind was blowing.
 The noon editions of the afternoon newspapers reported margarine and meat queues in many other parts of the city, in most every part, in fact, where there was margarine on sale.
 A short time ago the prime minis ter, speaking on the food situation. remarked significantly, There are no food queues outside the cooperative stores" So I went down into Alders- gate this afternoon to ask the cooper ators why In the depot of the CO., operative wholesale societies-as big wholesale house as I'd ever seen in America-I was referred to B. Will jams, head of the Cooperative Union, whose office had been crowded by the growth of business into one of the overflow buildings in a nearby street.
 ."The trouble" said B. Williams, lis that the government has not yet realized that we are at war. or it has not carried the realization jato our commercial life. The plain fact is that the function of controlling the peoples food never should have been put into the hands of any man whose life-training has been profit-making. His experience in life has been such as to totally unfit him for such a post"
 Several months ago when Lord Dev- onpOrt, himself a commission mer- chant, was retiring from the job of food controller Williams was sug- gested as a possible successor. The suggestion apparently did not get very far. Trying to visualize him in the role fell to wondering why he looked so familiar and where I could have seen him before. Suddenly it came to me that it wasn't any single person he reminded me of, but a sort of com posite person. He had the look about him of those various clerks in diff ferent stores that my mother always used to ask for when she wanted to be sure of what she was getting. He looked reliable and gave the impres. sion of wishing to serve, rather than to sell.
 He would look quite at home today behind the counter of one of my mothers favorite stores and yet here he is head of the Co-Operative Union. To make this mean something. it might be mentioned that the cooper ators have the largest flour mills in the world and one of the largest shoe factories; that there are 4.5Oo 000 of them that the immense building around the corner is only one of the many and not by any means the largest; that their own bank in the last quarter, did business of S975.- 900, ,000.
 "The control of food supplies" said Williams, should have been entrusted to board, who have had exnerience in cooperation. All the talk just now is of unity and coordination, bnt they don't apply it to the crying need of the food situation. Such hoard of control should have had wide administrative and executive DOW. CTS. It's sole object for exis. tence should have been to see that all available foodstuffs were bought at the most reasonable prices and equitably distributed at the most eco nomical cost.
 "The trouble from which the peo pie have suffered most during the last three and a half years has been the impossibility of getting Mr 11ovd