GREEN FRONT IN GERMANY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17437, 8 April 1931, Page 2

GREEN FRONT IN GERMANY

TOWN V. COUNTRY WHAT THE 5-DAY WEEK MEANS ' TINNED FRUIT FROM RUSSIA ( BERLIN, Feb. 19. Statistics recently published in GerI many showed that for the equivalent of ! ev"ery <£s earned the German workman spent £2 Is on food, the employee £1 7s 1 and the civil servant or official, who | constitutes so large a proportion of the \ population, £1 ss. j These figures are ot the highest ini forest in view of a situation causing Dr. Bruiting atul his Cabinet more trouble than anything since the. workman s unemployment and sickness insurance problem. To-day talk is of the Greens instead of the Reds. .lust, as in common parlance and in the press the color blank is significant of the Clerical Centre, so does green denote the vast agrarian population which supplies the rest of tha country with food. Though too many figures are odious to the layman, it has been brought home to the nation that it. pays twenty thousand millions of gold marks every year for its food, and that hot quite half of ibis vast- sum '(just over nine thousand millions, m fact) goes into the, pockets of German farmers. The rest goes to the middleman at home and is paid out abroad. But at the present moment relief for these farmers and landowners of the. Eastern provinces is demanded of the Government and lias indeed been promised. The Green Front rose, demanded, and was prepared to abandon the Minister it sent into the Bruiting Cabinet, Herr Schiele, rather than abate one jot of its demands. Yet there arc unhappily so many aspects to the question that all the new political squabbles as well as tlie old class quarrels appear involved in the question. DEMAND FDR HIGH TARIFF The agricultural centres send deputations to the many congresses which have met on this subject, saving that money alone is of no use save for paying the most pressing debts and buying the most needed implements and manure, and that only new and high protective tariffs can save the country. An elaborate scale lias been worked out, proving even that in very up-to-date estates, where reorganisation is the password, where, owners are turning their attention to lentils, peas, and beans instead of rye, of which there was a surplus last year, nothing can help the lentil and beangrower until foreign cereals are kept out of the country. At the same time, in the cities, where short liours and cuts in wages and salaries are the rule to-day, every effort is being made to keep prices down. But butter, lard, and bacon will rise if the Green Front has its way as regards prices. Germany’s exports have been falling of late, and energetic protests are reaching het from her neighbors dependent. upon the export of agricultural produce —Finland, Holland, Scandinavia, as well, of course, as the always distrustful Poland—that nobody ran hope to sell their goods in countries where they will not. buy. This is a veiled threat. The Minister of Economics has been attacking the Minister of Agriculture. The man in the street is invited to lectures on commercial treaties and preferential tariffs. He sees, to his astonishment, in Berlin shop windows and in the open markets imports of good quality from Russia—ranging from tinned fruit and preserves to fresh vegetables and poultry —and is informed at the same time, on expert authority, that Germany’s East needs agrarian reforms, tractors, and the like on the same scale, as Russia. Such things aro bewildering. “RATIONALISATION” Meanwhile, in the cities the Five-Day Week, so-called, inaugurated by big industrialists bent on rationalisation, anil now extended to salaries as well as wages earners, has met with protests on the part of the Social-Democrats. It means working 42i hours a week instead of 48. Men and women come and go an hour earlier, a .privilege which would doubtless be appreciated were it not for tlio accompanying reduction of pay. In some cases as in Hie metal-working industries, this has meant an extra cut added to the original official 8 per cent., reducing the whole to a quarter of what the wages and salary earners received originally. It is definitely stated that the avowed intention of directors to take on the equivalent number of unemployed whose pay totalled these sums has only in very few cases been fulfilled. Regarded as a way out of the present difficulties of unemployment and decreased consumption, with the concomitant reaction upon the country’s prosperity, the situation does not, in the eyes of economists, appear to have benefited, and bitterness has certainly increased. THE FARMERS’ RELIEF BILL Political reactions are already visible. It is necessary to pass the Farmers’ Relief Bill on a constitutional basis or the foreign credits with which Germany hopes, in part, to finance it will not be so easily forthcoming. Taxes on industry are insufficient to bear the whole burden. This is the reason why the dictatorial powers granted by paragraph 48 of the Constitution have not been called upon long ago. But not only do Hie workers of the towns not approve this largo subsidy for the country, but the big landowners are unwilling that the small farmers and settlers should participate, seeing that large-scale methods and rationalisation is the goal. Again, it is stipulated by the, Government that all those who have suffered in a particular district, business enterprises, and tradespeople not paid by bankrupt agrarians, should also be helped over their difficulties. The sufferers of the towns object to this favoritism. Industrialists agree to the necessity for making the country more or Jess selfsupporting in regard to food and fodder stuffs, and concur therefore with the relief project, but object violently to increased tariffs. Suspicious Social Democracy sees in the whole plan a furthering of the old East-Elbian Junker ideas. Only the truly optimistic, in short, really believe that the plan of reafforestation and reclaiming of waste and marshland, the constructing of roads and introducing technical improvements on the “American and Russian (sic) model” is going to bring back lost prosperity to Germany.—London Observer,