TRADE IN GERMANY

Evening Star, Issue 17924, 21 March 1922, Page 6

TRADE IN GERMANY

SOLID HARD WORK. THE COST OF LIVING. An observer recently returned _ from Hamburg gives an illuminating description of the great activity which prevails in shipbuilding as well as in tho discharge and loading of cargoes at that port. Men, he eays, aro working night and day, in fair weather and in foul, and he draws a striking comparison, between labor conditions there, which permit a large vessel to be "worked to a finish" in three days and nights, and in the Port of London where ten days would be required, or even more if rain interfered with the comfort of the workers. The German stevedores have their cost of living problems, for their wages have not risen proportionately with the depreciation of the mark. Far more serious, however, is the problem of unemployment which has to be faced at tho London docks. Factories and workshops ashore are said to be full of orders. The workman complains that he is working hard and receiving nothing for it; that the foreigner attracts everything out of the country, so that his necessaries of life are forced ever and ever dearer. The mark is still a mark to the German workman; it is his standard of value, just as the shilling is still a shilling to us. But the increasing number of marks he gets do. him no good. His cost of living increases as the mark depreciates in relation to foreign currency. While the stevedore, for example, got five marks a day before tho war and gets seventy-five to-day, he pays forty marks per lb for his butter, against one mark before the war; twenty-seven marks for his margarine, against sixty-five pfg. (about two-thirds of a mark) before the war; twenty-five marks for beef, against one; 400 marks for a stout pair of boots, against twelve; forty-livo marks for his coffee, against two : 2,500 marks for a suit of clothes, against 100 before the war, and so on. With the growing depreciation of the mark the stevedore is finding his daily wages increased at once from seventy-five marks to ninety marks. All wages aie being raised in the same way; while the worker's butter has jumped during the last week or so from thirty marks to fortymarks per lb in ono leap. ORGY OF SPECULATION.

While wages continue to increase in approximate proportion to the lessening value of the mark, there is not much trouble. But they say nobody tries to save any marks. The mark has a value to-day; therefore it should be spent, so the argument runs, in, food and drink ; silks and furnishings and things should bo bought, and foreign bills and industrial shares acquired, for to-morrow it may bo worth less —and presently nothing at all; hence the orgy of speculation, of Insurious living, and material prosperity observable everywhere. For those with fixed incomes and salaries the hardships of living must be very painful. As the marks depreciate m relation to foreign currencies, so more and more goods are attracted out cl the country, and tho cost to the German of what he requires goes up. Germany is doing the export trade of the world. She is working night and day. She is building thousands of locomotives and tens of thousands of railway trucks to replenish tho systems of Rumania, Soviet Russia, Sweden, and other countries. German ships get their bunker coal at 480 marks (12s 6d at tho time of writing) a ton, while a foreign ship must take ia foreign bunkers (about 31s for North Country British). Thus Germany subsidises tho revival of her shipping industry and other industries at the expense of tho State revenue.

Whether the effect of this huge export trade will give Germany, sooner or later, a balance of exports to put tilings right in some mysterious manner can be but a riddle of the future. Tho production of her reparation cool is impoverishing Great Britain's coal-mining industry. The provision of her reparation money is having a similar effect. To moot her recent reparation payments to the Allies Germany had to create milliards of marks by the printing press and buy foreign exchange. Thereupon down went her credit, with further depreciation of the mark, while into Germany's manufacturers poured aja increasing flow of orders, to the further detriment of Great Britain's home and export trade, and at the same time the increase of the Germans' cost of living. So Again will it probably bo when the next instalment becomes d'ue to tho Allies in January. Germany will have to go to the printing press tigain, and the process will be repeated., with intensified stress to the world at large. This deliberate policy of inflation—if it be deliberate—of the German powers-that-bo is apparently an attempt to attain a position, perhaps of assumed national insolvency, which will enable them to evade their treaty obligations. Whether this policy will eventually make or ruin Germany rests in the lap of tho gods. Compared with the distress of our policy of deflation, there is abounding material prosperity, plentiful work, and employment in Germany just now for everybody. These are winning for her the world's markets on a basis which will enable her to rebuild, resuscitate, and operate her mercantile marine, and recover her position throughout the world in a way that no other nation can contemplate. Raw materials, especially wool and cotton, are pouring into Germany. Since she exports these again to the world in manufactured form, the exchange paid in obtaining the raw materials is presumably counter-balanced by the exchange received l in return for tho finished product. She also edls to the foreigners tho labor used in the process, and altogether should thus reap a huge advantage.