THE GERMAN WORKER.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 22, 26 January 1924, Page 6

THE GERMAN WORKER.

According to the Berlin correspondent I of the "Daily Chronicle" Germany is faced with unemployment on a colossal seifle. This writer says that there are at least three million workers entirely unemployed, and that they are subsisting on a meagre dole of four Shillings a week for bachelors and seven shillings for married men. Small as this allow-i I nnce is.' it amounts in the aggregate to something like £-30,000,000 a year, and that alone renders hope of effective financial reform illusory. The burden seems to fall heaviest on the children. Recent medical examination of German school children is said to have shown that two out of five attended without food. The latest reports- show that almost unknown diseases, due entirely' to prolonged starvation, are appearing among child patients all.over Germany. An inquiry amongst teachers of the elementary sclnxils- of Leipzig has shown that 3000 children go to school -breakfast less. 4SOO have no midday meal, 2SOO never get a warm nreal.--and over GOO are kept at home owing to lack of food. I The parents explain that they keep the children in bed as they feel it less. Yet with all this misery among the workers, .the agrarians, together with wholesale j dealers and middlemen, are waxing prosperous, and since the Government is largely controlled, by these interests little cau be done for the poorer classes. There seems to he a large amount of German capital invested abroad, judging from recent trade returns. Many German ' factory owners have been purchasing j large quantities of raw material, which I they appear to have again exported, j since it has not been used in their j factories' owing to the low price obtaini able in Germany for manufactured ' proI ducts. In eight months Germany bought | 54-.044 bales of cotton from the United j Mates, the value of which was over j f14.000.000, and this represented lo per j '.cent more than England's purchases for i the same period. In regard to copper, ! | Germany was America's best customer, j ] taking 'lOS.non.ooo putunls. valued at I £3,400,000. Germans would appear to i have been among the most active buyers jat the record wool sale at Tnvcrcargill j yesterday. Everything points to the j fact that large sums of German money j are invested abroad, and tbe wealthy j German financiers are exploiting the wretched condition of the workers for their own ends. The remedy seems to lie with the Germans themselves. As long as they continue to allow their I wealthy" men to avoid their share of , taxation and to exploit the workers ' unemployment . and consequent misery and starvation must result. A country ' which can import cotton and copper on the scale Germany is doing cannot be ■ poor, and a strong effort ought to be i made to compel the financiers i to relieve distress at home, instead of using their money in other countries to the detriment of their own and the eva- ' | sion of their country's just debts lo.the [nations-it has wronged. •"- --.t