On This Day, 3 September 1918

Birmingham Daily Post

Tuesday 3 September 1918

Tobacco Shortage.

Birmingham not alone in experiencing a tobacco shortage, and are having difficulties here which it is to be hoped will be as promptly relieved —if it be true that your scarcity has, in fact, been ended. The small retailers here seem to have been the first to suffer. There are some who for weeks have been unable to obtain their usual supplies. In the London trade it is said that the trouble arises from other causes than the reluctance of the Control to release stock from bond. The latest call-up has drastically reduced the already depleted number of tobacco cutters and other skilled and unskilled workers in the calling, and the problem of distribution does not become easier as the weeks pass. The Control will be wise if it takes all possible steps to get more tobacco on the market. The people— and it is the cheaper sorts of tobacco which are the scarcer —have borne with astonishing patience the long-continued shortage of beer. Some enterprising printer must have made a lot of money producing the placard “No beer” which is painfully familiar in the South of England. But if to “No beer” there had to be added “No tobacco’’ the London workman’s stock of patience would surely run out. Part of the increased demand for cigarettes arises from the ever-extending habit of smoking among women workers, though the smoking is still chiefly done in the privacy of the home.