Shortages Quotes
Historically, this quotation shows the desperate condition of the 1863 food supply in the Confederacy. The most profitable crops were cotton and tobacco. However, Davis and other Southern leaders had to urge patriotic Southerners to abandon those crops in favor of foodstuffs and fodder for the military and their horses. Some did but many did not.
Almost all economists believe that Harding had it totally wrong. WWII for example was one of the greatest increases in productivity in world history. The Civil War and the two world wars both were accompanied by many increases in industrial productivity. The losing side is usually totally devastated by war, and sometimes the winners are impoverished as with England and Russia in WWII. However, the North thrived in the Civil War and America did in WWII. Many economists say that war often impairs the economy of even a winning country in that the war expenditures generally are made at the expense of the civilian economy—infrastructure, public transportation, education, and in the decades following the war the lack of domestic investment in the war years reduces medium and long term growth.
She was talking about the Soviet Union
Ironically, at the time the great worry was the ability to produce sufficient food for the whole world. Today, we find that task relatively easy, but we still have malnutrition and starvation on some parts of the world. Supply is only one factor. Distribution is as critical.
In WWII 15 years later, the Japanese seized most of the natural rubber plantations, and the U. S. would have been in great trouble had not American industry expanded the technology developed by the Germans and the Russians in making synthetic rubber in 1931. Whitford’s warning had not been heeded and rubber was rationed throughout the Second World War.
The Confederate Civilian & Military Authorities in the Confederate Capital were grossly insensitive to the perceptions and opinions of the women of the South. This statement was a classic example. It also indicates the terribly serious plight the Confederacy was in at the time. Just as the leadership deluded themselves into thinking that the women of Richmond would riot and loot for “license ” and not for shortage and want of necessities, they did not face the reality of their strategic military situation.