FOUR MILLION IDLE.

Waikato Times, Volume 110, Issue 18407, 14 August 1931, Page 9

FOUR MILLION IDLE.

GERMANY AT CROSS-ROADS nightmare of unemployment. CROWDS FLOCK TO “ PIED PIPER." (From a Correspondent.) BERLIN, July 4. With four million unemployed on her registers, Germany is living through a nightmare of poverty and discontent unparalleled in her history. The signs of distress are to be seen in every case; and in many of the villages. denuded of their resources, the plight of the hungry army of workless is tragic. In recent weeks the “ dole ” has been reduced, and mobs of unemployed, organised by extremists, have raided the town halls, particularly in Westphalia and Saxony, where they have forced the Burgomasters to hand out the full amount of unemployment money. Famished workers in Berlin. Cologne, Frankfort, and elsewhere in the State invade the food shops almost daily, snatching handfuls of sausages and fleeing before the arrival of the police. Plight of the Children. Even the most elaborate of municipal organisations have proved powerless to stem the tide of distress. Owing to a lack of funds, the poor children of the Berlin schools, who used to be given large meals, now receive only a bread roll and a cup of cocoa. There are in Berlin, however, as in other cities, about forty soup kitchens, and cheap clothing is distributed to the workiess, well as food. The occupants of the big apartment houses are unable to pay their rent, and a sign of the times is the appearance of large numbers of " To Let ’’ notices which plaster the windows of the houses. The doorbells of the houses in the residential districts ring all day. They are sounded by streams of beggars, workless labourers, merchants and clerks, who beseech the housewives for food anl alms. Cities ami villages are inundated with pedlars, among whom women have now appeared for the first- time, selling everything from biscuits to neckties. Among the most popular of the street hawkers and traders, however, arc those who have stands on the street corners and charge sixpence to read lurid horoscopes for their customers. Innumerable shrewd clairvoyants have suddenly appeared, aware that their fortune-telling is a lure even to the needy, for poverty breeds superstition. Growth of Suicide.

These are merely a few manifestations of human ingenuity in the face of privation and hunger. But more tragic evidence of the national distress is revealed in the alarming growth and frequency of suicide in Germany. There were more than 1000 suicides in Berlin in 1930, or more than twice the rate before the war. The suicide rate has increased by 12J per cent, so far this year. A similar grim rise in the figures is recorded in most centres of population in Germany. “ These citizens,” say the Germans sardonically, " are resorting to suicide to escape a slower death.”

Discussing the misery of the four million unemployed and their (estimated) eight million dependents, Dr. Bruning, the German Chancellor, said that the unemployed, often with families to support were now reduced to rely entirely on a " dole ” of 50 marks to 70 marks (£2 10s to £3 10s) a month. With a gesture of hopelessness the Chancellor asked: “How do you expect them to live?” A representative who visited the unemployment exchanges, where the unemployed were standing in queues, found that, though penniless, many of the men were still neatly dressed. It was revealed that the clothes the men were wearing were all that many of them possessed in the world. At present every third German Industrial worker is out of work. A trade union inquiry recently showed that the workers’ wives now have to live lives of unrelieved gloom. Millions of women spend all their time in household drudgery, and thousands of women replied to a questionnaire by the textile trades union, declaring, •* We do not want children.” Hitler’s Millions. The plight of the 1,500,000 members of the middle class who are out of work is worse than that of the manual workers. These professional folk, rentiers, pensioners, and small shopkeepers, who lost their savings in the inflation period when the mark dropped to billions to the pound, are now completely destitute. National poverty explains the stampede of the hungry workers, the demoralised section of the middle class, and the mortgage-ridden farmers into the rank* of the political extremists. That is why Herr Hitler, the Fascist ” Pied Piper of Muniotu” increased has meagre following or Ron.non voters in 1928 to a huge arm? e*timaied t 0 number 10,000,000 aay- The strength of the Communist-, is estimated to number 6,000,000 to-day, so that the Fascists and Communists control between them about half the total of the German electorate. One of the Immediate results of this drift Into the camps of political extremism has been the wave of violence which has swept tiie country. 11 is estimated that 300 persons have been killed md many thousands injured in disturbances since the beginning of the year. In spite of Government action, the disturbances have Increased, and a prominent Reichswehr officer told a correspondent that, if the police were unable to cope witli the outbreaks, the army might be given the task of maintaining order in the autumn and winter.