WHO SUFFERS?

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 93, 21 April 1933, Page 7

WHO SUFFERS?

MAN OR MONEY"?

THE UNITED STATES DOLLAR

GERMAN ADVICE

"Current History" for March contains a plea for United States, currency inflation by-K. W. Page (a son of the late Ambassador Page) writing as a country (North Carolina) banker. He advocates "doubling the purchasing power of the (gold) dollar; in other words, effective, drastic inflation." He would so alter the currency that a fifty cent dollar would meet a dollar debt (100 cents). If this is done, the creditor will havo an immediate loss of 50 per cent. If this is not done, he will have an ultimate loss of everything. He states that in the Southern States, with the exception of a limited number of businesses, everybody—firms, companies, and public bodies —is bankrupt. Bankrupt hi the sense that they cannot now pay in gold more than 30 per cent, of their debts. "In most of the small towns in the south nobody really owns a piece of property; the debts would take all the property three or four times over." INFLATE, OR LIQUIDATE? The alternative to currency inflation is "the present process of bankrupty in detail—that is, debts wiped,out over a generation, with resulting bitterness; ruin of families, loss of traditions, morale, and standards, attended by feuds, lawsuits, .suicides, degradation, and despair." The samo issue of "Current History" has an. article on Germany by* the owner and editor-in-chief of the "Frankfurter Zeitung," Hoinrich Simon. Germany started out. on the currency inflation path with perhaps a lesser objective (50 per cent.) than Mr. Pago; but soon overshot the mark. Germany and France gained their currency manipulation experience years ago. Both are now on gold. It is interesting to compare the Simon and Pago outlooks. ... Herr Simon says that currency manipulation, and depression have changed Germany, "her, class lines have crumbled," but she remains. Quito recently iv the cablegrams there was a suggestion that Germany -would again go off gold, but Herr Simon writes: "The German public still trembles at the thought of another period of inflation, unfounded as their fears may be." WHEKE INSECURITY HITS HARDEST. It is noteworthy that both these writers preach the evil of insecurityPage stars the insecurity of all ownership and job-holding —but Simon seems to think that the moat demoralising of all insecurity feelings ,is that pertaining to insecure money. It has even caused "a new\ attitude towards money in Germany today"—an attitude which clearly he would not advise America to strive after. "Money is the element that is most affected by insecurity. Certain, values may rise in. periods of great insecurity, for example, the value of art or religion. But with money the situation is entirely different. Money that is insecure has lost all Teason for its existence. It loses its reputation as well when its value can be" maintained only, by tricks and manoeuvres. People begin to doubt whether an honest man can earn money at all ... People who are able to travel first-class today prefer to travel second because their associates of yesterday are forced to travel third., Possession of money has somehow become a source- of embarrassment in Germany. One wants to have as little to do with it as possible . . . And yet the people save, especially the small middle class— another indication of the indestructible optimism of the German people and its faith in its own future." So here we haye^ an advocate, in America, of inflation as being bettor than bankruptcy proceedings. And we have a German chronicler of the results of currency manipulation (plus, it is fair to add, war results that America escaped). Do the Simon findings support, or do they nogative, the Page hopes for a beneficent and disciplined ■ inflation & IS EVU. SELECTIVE, OR ONLY DESTRUCTIVE? Herr Simon does not accept tho view that Germany has been materially and spiritually destroyed by her experience. Germany was "east by fate into this sea of uncertainty and insecurity"; is over populated (the population being ten times moro dense than that of the United States); cannot emigrate (colonies, gone, America closed); can offer her youth no future; but —"the patient still lives," and—politically most important!—prefers a bourgeois to a communist solution. And out of the very fire may come" new strength (if the fire is not made too hot!) In. this "unparalleled severity" the German people "has developed forces that renew its vitality. Mere existence has become a fear that calls out all the latent forces of the individual. If the process of selection operated during the war in a negative senso for the elimination of tho fittest, it now operates positively for the survival of the fittest, the strongest, the ablest, the most intelligent. This is only relatively true, of course, for when tho crisis and general misery have reached a certain point, even the most able are not secure from destruction." Mr. Page, for America, rejects the "have faith and suffer" policy. Ho would prefer to mako the dollar suffer. But can the "United States,' by that means, avoid suffering? Or will currency mnnipulation cause the furnace to bo seven times heated 1