BANKRUPT GERMANY

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 98, 30 August 1923, Page 5

BANKRUPT GERMANY

MUNICIPALITIES GO UNDER. BUSINESS FAILURES. Press Association—Copyright. Av.s .raliun h*•»! N Z Cable Association. (Received 9.25 a.m.) London, August 29. The Daily Ch oniclo’s Berlin corresp indent says : Germany’s favourite seaside resort, Swiudmunde, has gone bank upt, the municipality having decided to suspend payments at the height of the season. Most of the cities and towns in Germany are really bankrupt. Everything is sto'dily going bankrupt. Berlin’s biggest hotel closed 250 rooms, and another belonging to Stinnes was closed. The smaller restaurants are giving up the struggle. Theatrical managers and film producers are joining in the same dirge. Taximen are ceasing to ply. A taxi run of a mile costs two million marks, and fares are few and far between. Owning a motor car is a good way of hastening personal bankruptcy. The yearly tax on a 12-horse-power car is 1224 million marks, which is equal at present to over £6O. A 40-horse-power car is taxed at £4OO.

Since the war four hundred banks, mostly of the mushroom variety, sprung up in Berlin alone, and it is certain they cannot long keep up the struggle. The high food prices have so forced up wages that few employers will bo able to keep going much longer. As it is, the wages now paid are in many cases really disguised unemployment doles, which are paid in order to keep the workers together. Unemployment is going to be widespread during the winter. The printing trade is the first to bo seriously affected. Newspapers are now luxuries, and only the richest can afford to buy books, the produo tion whereof is declining rapidly. Newspapers are suspending publication throughout the country. Even the Muniche Fligonde Blatter, equivalent to London Punch, has died.