CHAOS IN GERMAN TRADE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1923, Page 7

CHAOS IN GERMAN TRADE

The Berlin electricity workers are adopting passive resistance, and the supply of electricity is already scanty. The shops, except food stores, were closed on Thursday as a protest against the wholesalers demanding payment in dollars, whgpeas the retailers are compelled to accept marks.

WAGE SYSTEM FAILING

COMMUNISTS EXPLOITING THE

SITUATION.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.)

(AUSTRALIAN - NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.)

(Received 11th August, 10 a.m.)

LONDON, 10th August.

The Berlin correspondent of the 11 Morning Post " says that food in th» large towns is becoming scarcer. Meat is obtainable only by the richest; and potatoes and eggs have practically disappeared. Crowds stand for hours outside the butter shops. Farmers and agriculturists, owing to the depreciation of the mark purchases abroad, have become masters of the situation, and the prices of everything have risen to hundreds of thousands of marks. Notes for five million marks are plentiful, but they cannot be changed. The supply of notes of less value*than a million is unaccountably failing, and in consequence the workers are not being fully paid. This, coupled with the fact that the rate of wages does not keep pace with the rising cost of food, is the cause of disturbances, and the Communists are everywhere exploiting the situation.

The shops present a curious spectacle, with their absolutely empty windows! The shopkeepers refuse to display goods owing to the regulation which compels them to show the price on the articles displayed. They declare it is impossible to keep step with the climbing prices. The authorities announce that the printing presses cannot cope with the demand for notes required for daily, necessities; but the <workers suspect other reasons.

In Danzig the dockers refuse to work .unless they are paid a dollar a day. Blohm and Voss, the shipbuilders, at Hamburg, have closed their yards in consequence of the attitude of the workers, who are under Communist influence. Siemens's workers "demonstrated before the directors' offices, complaining that advances in wages were not arranged quickly enough to keep pace with the prices.