FAMINE IN EUROPE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10608, 10 November 1910, Page 2

FAMINE IN EUROPE.

Alarming reports are coming from Spain, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland with regard to the scarcity of meat. The laboring classes of Germany find it impossible to purchase flesh, and bread is scarce even in the south of Italy once the granary of the peninsula. According to the Arbeiter Zeitung (Vienna), the organ of Austrian Socialism, meat has suddenly risen from 8 to 10 per cent., and in some localities even more per retail pound. We read in the Frankfurter Zeitung that m Germany a corresponding increase in prices of food commodities is spreading all over the country, and the Socialist Volkstimme (Frankfort) reports that dog flesh and horse flesh are also becoming scarce and expensive. Public meetings are being held in all the principal cities in Germany in _, which, resolutions are carried entreating the Government to .break down the frontier tariff wall and admit foreign cattle, on foot or iu .carcases. Commenting t n these facts Mr Fabra Ribas writes ju the Humanite (Paris): — "It is difficult for the moment to see clearly the cause of this sudden scarcity. It is, however, incontestable that the principal cause lies in the commercial policy pursued by severil of the States of Central Europe, cially Austria and Germany, where an Agrarian party, who play so ■ import las a role in the direction of public affairs,' have set so high a duty on foreign meat as tb exclude its importation. This protective tariff enables the great lauded, proprietors to sell at exorbitant prices, while it discourages the raising of cattle among neighboring nations, which once supplied German and Austrian markets': Thus trade has been thrown out of its natural and healthy conditions; and a crisis of practical famine has come through the greed and selfishness of a few wealthy people in Austria and Germany."

The condition of tilings in Italy is not much better. We road in the Tempo (Milan) that there has not been enough grain raised in Italy even 'to support the tillers of the soil, and Mr Amicis, a deputy and landed proprietor of Pouille, which was once considered the granary of Italy told a representative of the Giornale d'ltalia (Rome) that not more than n-tenth of the ordinary, crop of wine and oil had been raised this.year. This, of course, results, in part, from the depopulation of Calabria, Basilicata, and other sections of Italy through emigration to the United States. Of the condition of Spain Mr Ribns declares:

"The statistics of emigration tell us, better than anything else, how profound is the poverty, and how bitter the scarcity that reigns there. As a general thing the Spanish working man does not leave his country unlesfc forced by want, and yet the latest returns tell us that in 1909 111,058 left Spain for South America; that_is, 3335 more than the preceding year."

This writer things that there are some signs of revolutionary disturbance among the starving populations -of Europe. 'The monopoly of the land and the greed of the great agrarian classes are kindling smouldering fires of fierce hatred, and rebellion. He points to ■ihe lesson of history: • "It is only right that the causes of widespread poverty should be explained more clearly to the working classes. It must needs be that then the proletariat of every country will eventually understand that the bourgeoisie are really tyrants, trafficking in the poverty of thosa who are the producers of the country, of which they have been dispossessed. "History "always repeats itself. The famine of 1846 was the direct cause of the revolution of 1848. - The terrible financial scandals of the present year aggravate the situation under the prevailing dearth and scarcity and the condition of things, unless it be ameliorated, .threatens to, bring a new 1848 of much wider extent,, in that it may mean an international uprising."