STRIKE SETTLED,

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 13 August 1923, Page 5

STRIKE SETTLED,

PRINTING OF BANK NOTES

RESUMED.

AMAZING SCENES

BERLIN, Aug. 11. The strike of State printers has been settled, and - the pointing of bank notes has.-'been resumed.; The Reiehsbarik reopens on Saturday after a most remarkable Friday. The building was beset in the morning as usual by a crowd of messengers from State and municipal departments, banks, factories and offices armed with every kind of bag, sack and portmanteau. These wore apparently endless. First-comers we^: fcold they could have only a proportion of the amounts of their cheques, and must take it partly in million mark notes and t>artiy in tern, twenty, and fifty mark's, which was meaningless when an evening pamper cost ten thousand and a tiny roll of bread twelve thousand marks.

After an hour the cashieir announced the end of their resources, and closed the doors, while the crowd burst out in fierce arguments until dispersed by horse and foot police. The strangesc sight was at lunch time, when people were seen with five and ten all ion mark notes frantically trying to obtain change in order to> pay for a modest meal. The municipality^ received the Government's permission to utilise old paper money of a hundred, fivehundred and a thousand mark notes. Great manufacturing firms are beginning to pay workers in emergency money, which the co-operative stores agreed to accept, the firms undertaking redemption at the earliest moment. With the absence of wages in many places lightning strikes occurred, and some ugly incidents are reported The great Thyssen works in the Dass'eldorf district are closed. The Communists ■ d??jaTld' aJnO7IS other thintrs, that the children in the Rnhr should be evacuated into unoccupied Germany. (V.ving to. the note stringency, practiratty all the. banks have stopped paynv* out. It therefore became impossible to provide the workers with wages. I

Many large employers, anticipating, suspension, sent able-bodied men to the banks, who remained outside all night. Ihe banks' supplies of currency wer e quickly exhausted, and some of the largest firms, like the,,Siemen's Electrical Company, employing tens of thousands, were unable to obtain sufficient to pay the wages, while many individuals with private resources were only able to draw enough to buy a loaf.