Tribune, 18 FEBRUARY 1944
A correspondent reproaches me for wanting to see clothes rationing continue until we are all equally shabby; though she adds that clothes rationing hasn’t, in fact, had an equalising effect. I will quote an extract from her letter:—
‘I work in a very exclusive shop just off Bond Street …. When I, shivering in my 25/- utility frock, serve these elegant creatures in sables, fur caps and fur-lined boots, who regard me uncomprehendingly when I say ‘Good morning, it’s very cold to-day, madam’ (very stupid of me—after all, how should they know?), I do not wish to see them deprived of their lovely and warm attire, but rather that such attire was available to me, and for all … We should aim not at reducing the present highest standard of living, but at raising any and everything less than the highest. It is a malicious and mean-spirited attitude that wishes to drag Etonians and Harrovians from their fortunate positions of eminence and force them down the mines. Rather, in the present reshuffling of society we should seek to make these places accessible to all.’
I answer, first of all, that although clothes rationing obviously bears hardest on those who don’t possess large stocks of clothes already, it has had a certain equalising effect, because it has made people uneasy about appearing too smart. Certain garments, such as men’s evening dress, have practically disappeared; also it is now considered permissible to wear almost any clothes for almost any job. But my original point was that if clothes rationing goes on long enough even wealthy people will have worn out their extra stocks of clothes, and we shall all be somewhere near equal.
But is it not the case that we ought always to aim at levelling ‘up’ and not levelling ‘down’? I answer that in some cases you can’t level ‘up.’ You can’t give everyone a Rolls Royce car. You can’t even give everyone a fur coat, especially in war time. As to the statement that everyone ought to go to Eton or Harrow, it is meaningless. The whole value of those places, from the point of view of the people who go there, is their exclusiveness. And since certain luxuries—high-powered cars, for instance, fur coats, yachts, country houses and what-not—obviously can’t be distributed to everybody, then it is better that nobody should have them. The rich lose almost as much by their wealth as the poor lose by their poverty. Doesn’t my correspondent bring that out when she speaks of those ignorant rich women who cannot even imagine what a cold morning means to a person without an overcoat?