Page - 207 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The War Economy Dominates Everyday Life 207 shortages in the food supply. But already a few months later it had to be acknowl- edged that this stance had yielded success insofar as there had truly been no panic. The side-effect, however, was that the people had stuck to their living habits and had not begun to economise more, in spite of rising prices. This could only work if the imports continued to arrive and Hungary continued to deliver all foodstuffs that the Austrian half of the Empire required.487 Neither of these things was to be expected. Moreover, the justifiable yet preposterous belief that ‘The King should wage the war in such a way that the peasant does not notice’ resulted in the stockpiles quickly running out. From October, the effects of too few imports became noticeable.488 And there were initial difficulties in obtaining foodstuffs from Hungary. There, it was said, the harvest had not been a very good one, so that deliveries to Austria were a quarter less than the Cis- leithanian half of the Empire required. In Galicia, part of the harvest was lost because by this time war was being fought there. The Military Administration bought up what it could lay its hands on and the two million soldiers ate considerably more bread than the same number of civilians would have eaten. When, in October, signs of grain shortages began to emerge, it was attempted to buy more grain from Romania and Italy. But by this time these countries had also issued export bans. The result was that bread and grain products became scarce and expensive. In December 1914, the better types of flour were no longer available in Vienna.489 Fur- thermore, there was no uniform price structure. In December, wheat was 47 per cent more expensive in Vienna than it had been in July, in Prague 61 per cent and in Linz 71 per cent.490 From October, the Austrian Social Democrats, among others, demanded the fixing of maximum prices and a rationing of foodstuffs.491 As soon as maximum prices had been set, however, the products in question disappeared from the market and were thereafter only available on the black market. However, it proved possible to limit the food crisis to the extent that it was believed that the decrees on bread grain and flour products were initially adequate. In the case of meat, a decree was not necessary until 1915 in order to regulate the breeding of the animals and to limit the consumption of meat. Only at the beginning of 1915 was it stipulated that there should be two meat-free days each week. Nevertheless, one should not overlook the fact that in those days meat was by no means such a central part of the diet. With 29.9 kg of meat consumed annually per head, different conditions existed in Austria-Hungary in the pre-war period than in Germany, for example, where before the war 52.8 kg of meat were eaten annually per head of the population.492 The food problems also caused a considerable contrast to emerge between the Aus- trian and the Hungarian halves of the Empire, which ultimately broadened into serious conflicts. In order to prevent the drainage of agricultural products from Transleithania, Hungary established rigorous blockades at the border. The approval of quotas and the compensation that had to be negotiated independently of the payment provoked ir-