INFLATION HORRORS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13240, 16 January 1941, Page 2

INFLATION HORRORS

REFUGEE’S EXPERIENCES

As a refugee from Germany, may I be allowed to picture some of the horrors of inflation? wrote a Gippsland woman recently to the editor of a Melbourne paper.

It began there with a slow increase in prices in 1916. By 192 22 3 inflation was at its height with prices increasing from day to day and, in the end, from morning to afternoon, according to the decay of the currency.

Prices were sometimes twice as much as on the previous day, and went up to the millions and billions when, in November, 1923, at its climax four billion to five billion marks had to be given for £ 1 sterling.

Salaries and wages were increased every few days, but they never could catch up with prices. In the end, they were paid daily, and everybody tried to exchange them as speedily as possible into goods, but their purchasing power became less and less and the misery of the mid-dle-class and of factory workers was tremendous. /

People who previously had a good living could no longer feed their families. All savings and all premiums on insurances were lost. Although there might have been some financiers who profiteered from inflation, lots of well-to-do and wealthy families lost their funds completely and had to depend on charities.

As a result of the inflation years, after the re-establishment of the currency Germany had the greatest unemployment rate in its history. About 6,500,000 people were out of work, some of them for years, because capital had been lost by inflation and foreign loans were no longer available.