WAGE EARNERS IN GERMANY

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 149, 24 June 1908, Page 4

WAGE EARNERS IN GERMANY

The reference -in our cable columns to the great success of the trades union movement in Germany may direct our attention to the steady improvement that has taken place in -the condition of the wage-earners in Germany within recent years. For a long time it was an accepted axiom with British economists and politicians that the Continental workers are never so well off as their British rivals. Yet we believe that the evidence now available proves that this assumption is entirely fallacious. In the first place, it is a significant fact that the annual" exodus of immigrants from England is about ten times as great in proportion to population as from Germany. This certainly indicates that the German worker has far less reason than the British wage-earner to be discontented with his lot. But in spite of the comparatively small outflow of workers from Germany those who are left behind find work much more easily and regularly than the wage-earners in England. The percentages of trades-unionists unemployed in Germany for 1905-1907 varied from 2 to 1.6 per cent; while in England the percentages varied from 5.4 to 4.2 per cent. Among unorganised workers, chiefly in unskilled trades, statistics show that there are five or six times as many unemployed in England as in Germany. And while the lack of employment has been far more general and pressing in England, wages have risen far more rapidly in Germany. A recent Washington bulletin shows that between 1890 and 1903 wages increased by 21.8 per cent in Germany, by 20.7 per cent in the United States, and by only 11.9 per cent in England. To the argument that cost of living has risen correspondingly in Germany, and that this rise has been due to Protection, we may reply by quoting from the "Financial Beform Almanack" a return which shows that the. increase in the price of wheat between December, 1908, and December, 1907, was 8/7 per quarter in England and 8/3 per quarter in Germany. The improvement in the condition of the-German workers is testified |to by k large array of unimpeachable witnesses. Mr. Howard, of Pennsylvania University, has recently declared that there is in Germany none of the ragged depravity that marks the condition of the lowest classes in England: Mr. Davis, of Birmingham, a well-known Labour leader, has recently- said that the German workers "are unmistakably better nourished than in England, and enjoy a higher social life." The deputation of English workers who recently •published a report on "Life and Labour in i_.erm.Tny" "emphatically repudiate the arguments of those who say that the German workman leads a miserable life." He is in a decidedly better position, they assert, than tho workers of their own country; and the immense success that has attended the progress of trades unionism in Germany will enable the German worker to secure for himself an even larger share in his country'_ 3 prosperity than falls to the lot of his KngUsb rival. _ _