WRECKER OF GERMAN MARK

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 10 June 1933, Page 14

WRECKER OF GERMAN MARK

"OTERR. WILHELM CUNO, the forme> German Chancellor, "who will go down in history as the man who re- ■ duced the value of the mark, to extinction, died recently at hi's home at Aumuhle. He was fifty-seven years of age. • It was not as a successful business man who became chairman of the •Hamburg-Amerika Line that he will bo remembered, but as the one ""^ 0 tried to drive the French from the Ruhr coalbasin with printing presses turning out bank-notes night and day as his only weapons. Those who lived in Germany during the perilous months from November, 1922, to August, .1923, can recall them only as a period filled with the hideous absurdities of a nightmare. When it became clear that the Frenieh intended to occupy the Ruhr as a means of compelling Germany to fulfil her agreement to pay certain reparations in kind, President Ebert asked Herr Cuno to form a Cabinet. On the French occupying Essen Cuno’s Cabin/et flung millions of pounds’ worth of bullion on to the gold market, with the result that for a week or two the mark actually rose in value. But soon it became evident that the entire contents of the Reichs■bank’s purse could not permanently peg the German currency. The sale of gold was accordingly stopped and the note presses were set to work. Until the Cuno Government collapsed, together with the mark, practically the entire cost of running the State was met by pure and undiluted paper inflation. Effective steps to supply the Treasury from normal sources were not even attempted.

Practically the only people to pay any direct imposts whatever were the workmen and other employees, .whose income-tax was deducted from ■ their wages and salaries before these were paid.

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Effort to Drive French from Ruhr

As the mark sank from to 1,000,000 th of its nominal ' vaiue pig landowners boasted that they paying 'the interest on heavy mortgages with the eggs from one hen or the apples from a single tree (says writer in the “Daily Telegraph ). While the value was falling in ever greater drops from i^OO, 000th to 1 000,000,000 th of its nominal level, it was no uncommon thing to see taxis drive away from banks crammed to the roof with bundles of bank-notes tied up as unceremoniously as if thej had been waste paper. . In spite of this fantastic procedure, there were moments when* the total srold value of the entire German currency did not exceed £5,000,000. At the end it was difficult to believe that one was not living in a world of dreams. ... . ' ... The final stage was like the dying squeak of an inflated lubber pigThough the dollar had become the real unit of pecuniary value for large sections of the German population, the printing works commandeered by the Government could not, though printing without a pause day and night, turn out marks fast enough to keep pace with the depreciation. Finally each employer of labour, at any distance from one of these printing works was compelled to issue his own paper money in agreement with the local tradesmen as the only possible means of paying, hi's employees and enabling them to live. When the mark was eventually destroved and Herr Cuno returned to the management of tne Hamburg-Amerika Company, Germany did what she could have done long before—put her State finance in order and started off with a brand-new gold standard currency. Whether Herr Cuno’s extraordinary financial policy was a deliberate manoeuvre or merely the result of recklessness is still a secret hidden from the public.