FOOD PRICES IN GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2656, 30 December 1915, Page 2

FOOD PRICES IN GERMANY

* — The Gorman papers are giving liberal space to the family budgets of soldiers' wives, tables showing the steady rise in prices, etc. For example. Dr. Carl von Tysiska, writing in a Berlin paper of October, deplores the fact that the most necessary foodstuffs of all descriptions, especially those on which the poor chiefly depend, liave.risen most in price. A family of four persons with a yearly average iijioine of .£IOO to <£120 must now spend £5 10s. (110 marks) for monthly food supplies, which before the war cost only JZ'i 7s. marks). Dr. von Tyszka, notes further that there has been aTheavy rise in the price of heating and lighting materials, and in the cost of clothing, especially of shoes. Walking 6hoes, which beforo the war cost 12s. to 145., cannot now be purchased under 16s. to His. The writer closes with a warning that an insufficiently nourished people cannot be vigorous and healthy. He suys:— ' "The frequent statement that a limita« lion of ineat-eating would be beneficial from a physiological standpoint, as we were eating too much meat beforo the war. applies only to tlie relatively small number of the well-to-do. For a few hundred thousand over-nourished human beings it limitation in the amount of bread and meat consumed might nerhaps be wholesome, but the masses of the ueople do not eat too much meat even in times of peace; on the contrary, llie.v eat too little. A further declino in the use of this most valuable form of nutriment might have a permanently detrimental influence on Hie national vigour."