MISERY IN GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2269, 1 October 1914, Page 6

MISERY IN GERMANY

THE PINCH OF FAMINE. - All the German newspapers just received indioate. that economic disturbances in the Fatherland are already having disastrous effect. The -pinch of food "scarcity is being felt in Berlin and other large towns, and the police have had to intervene in some places between provisionals and customers. Not only is German.y practically cut off by postal communication with the rest of the world, but various parts of tho Empire are suffering from tho entire disruption of the railways. No goods can be forwarded from Berlin to Stettin, or for any western centre without a 6peoial permit, and in the Rhenish provinces' lines of business have been closed down owing to the lack of supplies. The "Cologne Gazette". gives a terrible picture of industrial workers' conditions in Berlin. A conference has been held at the Ministry of the Intorior to discuss tho great unemployment problem in" Berlin among women. The stores have dismissed niost of their employees, and-were expected to dismiss moro. Most women clorks. typists, and assistants have been discharged, because their employers aro at war or are ruined. The costume trade is at a standstill, and home workers are starving. The textile industry is suffering fearfully, and dismissing its mill workers, mostly women, by hundreds. Other factories must shut up because the mobilisation has taken away their male workmen.

Women who inn boardinghonses or let rooms are ruined. At the conference it whs complained that ruthlessnessof the rich was reducing the employment of women unnecessarily. One town has bought £32,000 worth of foodstuffs to tin sold at shops It is estimated that there are 17,000 families, each jwith _ three children, who need help, which will cost the town about £10,000 a month. Ench family receives 27 shillings a month' from the-Imperial treasury, and the «ame amount from the municipal treasury. liv Berlin the Isbmir bureaus sto unable to find employment for the crowds of women who besiege them. Crowds of girls are now offering their services for board and lodainsr. ■

The newspapers are ridiculing tho Tsar's historic proclamation ' recording Poland, and Professor R-nst Haeckel, the well-known DarwimVi!, who not long ago celebrated his 80th birthday, ,has written on angry fulmination against "Eingland's 8.10 >d-Euiltinc«."

Mr. Runciman (President of tho Board of Trade), replying to a question from Mr. Barlow in Hie House of Commons on August 10, y said if any instances were brought to the notice of tho Board of beef combines or any other persons unreasonably withholding meat or any other foodstuffs tho Board would bo bound to put into force tho powors which they had takea. (Cheers.) Mr. Brrmner asked ' whether the prohibition oil the export ofsalt had been w thdrawn. ,Mr.'Runciman answered that a now-proclamation was issued that morning. dealing with the exportation of foodstuffs, and under that tile exportation of salt, was not new prohibited, as Britain had lr.nro than it could consume. The Unreasonable Withholding of Foodstuffs l!i!l,. which gives the Board of Trade the. powers to which Mr. Runciman referred, was passed through all its stages 1 in the House of Lords on August 10.