GERMAN REVIVAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 168, 16 July 1921, Page 7

GERMAN REVIVAL.

NEW ENTERPRISES BEGUN. HUGE CAPITAL ISSUES. (Received 10.30 a.m.! BERLIN, July 15. New capital fo r industrial concerns raised in the first half of 1021 totals I 10.291,000,000 marks. i The June figures total 1,525,000,000, against the May figures of 1,179,000,000 marks.— (A. and N.Z. Cable,) Though the Oerman Government has sought to create, the impression that the country is commercially stagnant, ; figures like those quoted" above, the! • observation of competent authorities who have visited Germany, show that I these jeVemiads are largely camouflage.! I The Government has continually asserted j ! that the labour troubles, the rate of j exchange, the monthly coal deliveries' to France have reduced German industry to a mere shadow of its former self, all Government officials cite staggering unemplo}'ed figures (which cannot possibly be verified), and try to make your flesh creep wilb. tales of starvation and ruin. On the other hand, in private industry employers, works managers, foremen and workpeople simply laugh at such wild talk. They say that German industry is recovering fast; they show you new and often excellent articles which have already been turned out by I the thousand; they talk of gigantic' I amalgamation schemes for practically all' 'branches of industry; and tney point out that since the armistice many GerI man industrial concerns have increased; I their capital and started a very large I export business. The dividends are.hid-; I den in some cases, but the published ■ profits are often enormous. ■ Forests of scaffolding in commanding ! sites in many of the great cities show I • how leading German industrial and bank-1 : ing concerns are seeking to keep pace | I with the swift upward trend of business. I The banks, particularly, which are more prosperous than ever, arc launching out all over Germany Into ambitious plans for erecting premises more palatial, morei colossal than even the state edifices in which they are already housed. Low wages and long hours are the rule in industrial Germany to-day. All : Germany is hard at work. At the present rate of exchange the average Ger.man workman does not receive in j wages more than from 18/ to 20/ a I week. Even making allowance for the! fact that the cost of living in Germany is nothing like, so high as it is in England, the standard of wages remains very low.. Women, young girls, and youths get much less than the figure mentioned, and in some country districts workpeople receive in marks what if they were in England they would ! receive' in shillings. In the textile, dressj making, and fancy goods trades wages ' arc particularly low. Before the war a mark equalled a shilling. To-day the mark is worth j roughly, a penny. Wages in Germany, have increased by anything between five, and seven times the pre-war level; in i England by. about twice or more. Therefore it will be seen a German manufacturer in competition with a Britisfi firm in the world's market pays his hands a wage of somewhere about 7d for every , 2/ or 2/6 which his British rival has to pay his people.