And the reason for this collapse was loss of labour power in men and animals and of fertilisers, natural and artificial. Women in Germany do not play the large part in field work that many of us supposed. The greater proportion of the heavy work of cereal production was done by immigrant labour, and for that the prisoner labour seems to have been a very inadequate substitute. When this disappeared the effort to induce unemployed to go on the land was as complete a failure as might have been expected from our experience. To this loss of labour must be added the loss of agricultural land in the province of Posen, now occupied by the Poles, from which Berlin and the Saxon industrial districts drew their grain and potatoes. Thereafter the potato ration in Leipzig was for some time reduced from 5 lb. to 2 lb. weekly. The importation of flour from America made at first little difference. It cost far too much and came to far too little. Meat was nearly always procurable at a price, and, if one knew where to go, was good enough. And for a hundred marks or so, equivalent to five pounds at the pre-war rate of money, quite a decent dinner could be got in select restaurants.[C] The organisation of food supply was distinctly good. The conditions in Germany were indeed far more difficult than in England. Instead of having merely to control the importation at the main ports in Germany the supply had to be controlled before it left the hands of the individual farmer. This could, of course, only be done on broad lines. The system followed was to divide the country up into administrative areas corresponding to the local governments and roughly to apportion the supply of food products to the population. This resulted in certain areas becoming surplus and others deficit regions; and the surplus regions were then compelled to supply a certain proportion of their abundance to their less fortunate neighbours. But, of course, no control, however meticulous, could prevent rural districts from feeding full before anything went to the industrial districts, or could stop illicit trading between the well-to-do and the farmers. This "schleich-handel" or sneak trade kept the profiteer well supplied throughout the war with farm produce. After the revolution this profiteers' sneak trade was supplemented by a proletariat sneak trade, in which plundered stores were hawked through the poor quarters by broken soldiers and miscellaneous brigands. In Berlin, round the Alexanderplatz, there was perpetual skirmishing between these "wild traders" and the patrols of the Frei-Corps. The efforts to suppress the sneak trade of the well-to-do classes supporting the Government were not so drastic. Butter could generally be bought through the hotel waiters at forty marks a pound.