A NATION GAMBLING

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11653, 18 October 1923, Page 7

A NATION GAMBLING

GERMAN HOUSEKEEPING PITIFUL STRUGGLES OF MIDDLECLASS PEOPLE. HOW MANY ARE LIVING? A few days ago I (London “Times” correspondent) came back from Germany with a bundle of 50,000-mark notes in my pocket. They were merely the leavings of my German holiday money, but I could have bought myself a new hat with them or stood myself a very good dinner indeed. If I went back again now I should hesitate to offer them as a tip to the porter who carried my bag, for they are worth about a tenth of what they were then. Simply by letting those notes lie for a few weeks 1 am the poorer by six or seven shillings. What, then, of the Germans themselves, all of whose money is carried in this unstable currency? Gan they manage to avoid being made poorer all the time? Before leaving Germany I went to call on my old friends, the W s, and their case, as I saw it, answers this riddle to some extent, and explains how the average German middleclass family lives. Old W is a lawyer, who retired from practice during the first years of the war, having earned the honorary title of Justizrat and seen his three children 6afely started in life. I rang up young W first. When the war broke out he was learning to be an architect. He went into the Air Service, served with distinction as a pilot, and was rewarded by being given a captain’s commission in the State police. His reply to my general inquiry about the well-being of the family was “First rate.” He gets his salary paid quarterly, in advance. It is barely enough to live on, but it gives him a little capital to play with, which is everything. Old W- >s reply, when I saw him later was lees emphatically favourable, but still I gathered that, all things considered, life remained bearable. ADVANTAGES OF A FLAT. The W s’ great asset has been their flat, as it has been to many middle-class German families. It is a very roomy one, and there Vive in it now, besides Herr and Frau \V a young official and hie wife, a ratio* mysterious Russian, and an American Student of music. The last is the pride of Frau W— ’s heart, for she pays in dollars. The flat is run by Frau W-——-, with the help of a charwoman. As rents are kept low, by a Tenants’ Protection Act what is paid by the lodgers more than oovers all expense* connected with its upkeep. The old man has had to take up work again, and every now and then gets a fee for giving legal advice or witnessing an affidavit. These fees are regulated by the official multiplicator, which is fixed weekly, so that, although the mark tumbles down, Herr W ’s fees, as a unit for reckoning in, remain as stable as the dollar, or nearly so. So the two old people manage to rub along. It is harder work than either of them expected to do at their time of life, but they extet. Herr W smokes a pipe. He has had to give up cigars, except when he gets one from his son. The hoUBe-keeping problem is greatly helped by occasional supplies which come from their daughter, who has married a well-to-do manufacturer and has a small country house with a farm in Pomerania.

There are two factors which enable the middle-class in Germany to live in the present financial confusion. One of these is the index figure, or officinl nfultiplicator, by which a real value is maintained in wages, prices, and fees of all sorts, whatever the rate of the mark. The second is “speculation.” When I went to see the W s for the firs* time after the war, two years ago, Frau W was shaking her bead over her children. Her sons, and even her daughter, had token to speculating on the Stock Exchange. “They make quite a lot of money, too,” she said, but that did not make the 'habit seem any less reprehensible to her careful mind. However, a year later she was poring over the Stock Exchange list as eagerly ae any of them. _ This so-called speculation, as a matter of fact, loses most of its element of uncertainty, tor oven a layman, when the currency depreciates as steadily as the marie Has done. Whenever the mark takes a plunge there is a. boom on ,the stock market, and tip go the prices of stocks and shares just as surely as the price of boots or butter, and several degrees more quickly. The average German now puts his spare cash into industrials, just as in normal times he would have put them into a savings bank.' When he wants to buy a new suit or go away for tho holidays he sells out, and makes an enormous profit—in marks. In reality, he has merely maintained the value of his ottrital. If he is lucky he has improved it, fer the tremendous demand far shares which have a name to them often gives them aii exaggerated value. WHEN TO CHANGE STERLING. The same demand for something of real value to exchange for worthless marks sends up the price of foreign currencies. Any Englishman who has been for some time in Germany knows that the week-end is a bad time to change a sterling cheque or a pound note. The rate is nearly always higher on Monday, for, with the payment of wages at the week-end comes a demand from thousands of people all over Germany for foreign currency in which to insure their earnings against depreciation. This Bends the rate up. In the same way, every quarter day, when Government officials all over the country are paid their wages in advance, the prices of foodstuffs go up, for every Hausfrau whose husband draws a Government salary is buying in for the next quarter. By investing his spare cash in easily marketable shares, or in sound fpreign currency, the German gives it an additional purchasing power, for their quotations will always reflect the real value of the mark, whereas the prices in the shops only follow after during the next forty-eight hours. Therefore, if he sells some shares or a dollar or' two immediately the mark takes a sudden plunge, and buys what he wants, he will probably get his purchases pi prices well below their proper value. The gleat thing, so young W informed me, iB to be on good terms with one’s bank, so as to be able to get the cash at once when one wants it. AN EXCITING GAME.

Life in these circumstances becomes a sort of log-jumping. Each stage in the value of the mark is like a log which carries one on a stage until the moment comes to jump again. It is an exciting and even exhilarating game if one has the knack of it, but woe to tho man who misses his footing and goes under. The people to be pitied are those who, through age or temperament, cannot get the knack. They must sell what they have—ser-

Tice, if there is anything to which they can turn their hand; if not, their furniture, pictures, clothes, and anything they hare. So you find elderly ladies taking in sewing from their bakers’ wives, and shabby individuals, who have obviously been gentlemen, addressing* envelopes on office stools. This is the social revolution taking its course. It is a pitiful eight to see, but there is far less of it than one might suppose.