DIRE POVERTY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7032, 10 December 1890, Page 1

DIRE POVERTY.

A Berlin cable of Oct. 19 says that all Jasi week, from Tuesday till Saturday, th< aristocratic families of Germany were busj sending letters of congratulation to Casth P&nden, where the Duke of Katisbon celebrated with elaborate festivity the fiftieth anniversary of his elevation to the ducal rank by Frederick William 11. The Duke, who is a brother of the Governor of Alsace-Lorraine, is immensely rich, and the landlord of fifty weaving villages in Silesia, whose 200,000 inhabitants are the poorest and most neglected of the entire Empire. Belonging to his domain are the districts of Bybuick and SchweintalowitZj where hunger never quite ceases to levy its toll of victims all the year round, and where women and children have to exist on a diet of weak coffee, poor potatoes and Boup made of sour flour. The men at times enjoy the luxury of a piece of bacon or sausage, which they claim whenever pay-day cornea, arguing that they are entitled to the little nutritious food obtainable, as they work harder than the women. The town of Myßlogitz belongs to the Duke. It is the place where the poor weavers ran a line over the river to the Austrian bank, to which was fastened a bag on a pulley to bring over to Prussian territory small quantities of flour, that necessity of life being 35 per cent cheaper in Austria than in Prussia. The Duke'a Guards soon stopped this, and the weavers went on starving. In all the accounts of the Duke's Jubilee there ie not a line to indicate that he has made it an occasion for bettering the condition of these poor people. They were fed on pork and beer for once in fifty years, but no permanent benefit has been effected or promised, and no newspaper has been outspoken enough to remind the mighty Duke of his duty to his suffering serfs.