FRANCE AND THE ECONOMIC CRISIS.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18947, 17 May 1933, Page 6

FRANCE AND THE ECONOMIC CRISIS.

French official optimism dwells with some complacency on the fact that France has suffered less severely than any other Mestmn countrv from the world-wide economic depression. Flfl ° ce a popular.paper declared the other day, “is the land of refuge of civilisation.” . / • ■

The causes of this relative immunity are fairly plain. French prosperity has never rested on towering accumulations of wealth belonging to individuals or corporations but on the more widely diffused wellbeing of relatively small proprietors and rentiers. French wealth, like French small business,-is on a cash rather than a credit basis, and banks play a much more restricted part than in other countries. Under *he Versailles Treaty and during the post-war years the French Government, on behalf of its rentiers, has been able to drive the sharpest bargains that nationalistic selfishness could dictate. Moreover, France is in many respects a far more compact and selfcontained entity than America, Great Britain or Germany has ever been.

Yet the fall in all sources of revenue, including a loss of some £BO 000,000 on the railways and a rising adverse trade balance, has resulted in a deficit in the French Budget of over £110,000,000, which is daily increasing more rapidly than the savings intended to reduce it. Those savings are being effected by slashing the salaries and Avages of the numerous government employees, including most of the railway men as well' as workers in State industries. Yar pensions and unemployment relief are being cut to the bone. _ The deductions from wages on account of insurance have been considerably increased, while the employers’ contributions are unaffected. Although the government taxes upon all earned incomes are heavy, the rentier’s coupons escape direct taxation; on the other hand, his income is being reduced by conversion loans which carry lower interest rates.

The number of French unemployed is estimated at 2,000,000 and is fast increasing. Although the police, by curbing mendicancy, vagrancy, gatherings and demonstrations within the larger cities, keep rags and misery somewhat effectively out of sight, swarms of destitute humanity during the past winter straggled, like wolves, from the outer suburbs Paris, seeking food and shelter. Homeless families, mjen, women and children, according to reports frpm observers, thronged the subway stations and camped, lighting fires from sticks, on the quais of the Seine. In the textile industries the number of workers employed is one-third of what it was five years ago. Their wages, always low, have been reduced considerably. In the rayon industry women number 85 per cent, of all employed workers. Cheaper female labour, which has been extensively substituted for male labour, represents 40 per cent, of the total of all employed workers.