ABSTRACT
The rationing of essential commodities to the better-to-do classes, whether coupled or not with price control, may be advocated as a means of ensuring that sufficient supplies at reasonable prices shall be available for the poor. Prima facie it would seem that this policy may affect the size of national dividend in one way and the absolute share of it accruing to the poor in another, thus involving disharmony. In the special emergency of the Great War, supplies of certain things were short as a result of causes which could not have been got over, whatever prices sellers had been allowed to charge. Price regulation and rationing did not, therefore, substantially reduce the size of the national dividend. With increasing supply price from the standpoint of the industry the extrusion of part of the demand again, of course, contracts the production of the commodity.
