WHAT HAS GERMANY LOST?

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 64, 10 January 1918, Page 4

WHAT HAS GERMANY LOST?

The Passing of German Industry. The effects of this industrial failure will be felt long after the war. Germany's ability to compete in the world market has been shaken to its foundation. The cold dawn of such a fear animates the German cry for peace. Only a shell exists of the powerful aggressive commercial giant of yesterday. It is folly to imagine an inuudation of cheap German goods following the war. Great changes have been wrought in the superbly efficient industrial empire during the past two years —changes so great that I, an observer on the spot, could follow their progress month by month. Impoverished, disorganised, disheartened, the Germany of the coming time of peace will be in no condition to overwhelm foreign markets with its wares. It will need to call upon all its pluck, all its efficiency, all its skill in its organization barely to hold its own. Many vague stories have come out of Berlin concerning the empire's preparations of unloosing a great commercial drive with the coming of peace. These stories were inspired with the purpose of discounting the British blockade in the eyes of neutrals. The Germans were said to be storing vast quantities of manufactured goods which, at the conclusion of a victorious peace, were to be used in a price-cut-ting campaign for the regaining of Germany's lost markets. It was an alluring notice to Germany's former customers, and a helpless blustering threat to the new war growth of Germany's ■competitors. The sale of these goods was to restore Germany, at a jump, to all the prestige of her old position as a trader. These stories were a figment in the German psychological campaign. It will take Germany many years of peaceful efforts to win back her old position ; and, with the war lasting on, it is highly doubtful whether she will ever regain that which she has lost. Business has dwindled and dwindled. The famous industry that formerly supplied a large part of the world's demand is now almost solely employed in catering for war, and its peacetime organization has been disrupted past recognition. In short, the peacetime industries have wasted away. When the British - swept G**r-~i"<iu goods from all the seas, - urst deep note in the mighty sym- \ phony of the anguished passing of a people's dream was sounded. This blow temporarily staggered the whole German industrial system, and from this blow some of the German industries have never recovered. Then came the failure of important raw materials. Other factories closed their doors and the plans and sacrifices of a generation went for naught. There was next manifested a shortage of, labor, with which a terrible wastagell of skilled labor on the battle frontsl went hand in hand. I THE EEASONS FOE SUBMAEINeI

WAEFAKE. The industrials, tire merchants and the shippers began to get an inkling of their plight by the winter of 1 ills-16. "With the disconcerting vision of the passing of Germany's industry before them, they joined forces with the hungry people in demanding unrestricted, unlimited submarine warfare. Their motives were, however, different from tli( motives of the people. The Gennar. masses, tortured by poverty, by hunger and by heartache, demanded, if the submarine was such a potent weapon, that it be turned loose to bring in an early peace. German \ merchants, manufacturers and ship-J pers, on the other hand, supported! the demands of the people ia the hope! that this warfare would handicap! their enemies' trade, even as theyl were handicapped—or, better, in the . hope that the frightful handicaps faced by German industry and shipping would be to some extent equalized by the destruction of enemy shipping and by a blocking of the enemy trade routes." "7 Much of the early hot resentment against our country .was because we did not keep the way open for the outflow of German products through neutral lands to the markets of both Americas, When Great Britain made common cause with France and Russia, the Germans thought to divert their exports and imports from Hamburg and Bremen to Eotterdam and Copenhagen. They expected to continue in possession of a large part of their world trade through neutral agents. The shattering of these expectations was a stunning blow to them. This loss of skilled labor is an item in the German industrial account that future generations of Germans must pay, and pay again. Finally there was undertaken a thorough re-organ-isation of Germany's industry for the business of war; and when this reorganisation was completed the competitor of peace-time had staked his full investment upon the conquest of enemy territory and the destruction of enemy trade. "The readjustment of our production to the conditions of blockade is the greatest triumph of the war," a Greiz manufacturer of dress goods told me one night at dinner. " It shows the soundness and solidity of the foundations upon which the fabric of German business has been reared." .

lii oilier words, he pointed out that the most severe strain Germany had been called upon to sustain, with tlio outbreak of war, was the strain of the British blockade. He spoke of this strain as an emergency; whereas, in truth it was and is a condition progressively destroying—pulling apart so to speak—the powerful machinery of Germany's real strength, the great industry upon whose shield the Wai Gods themselves are carried. The British blockade and the labor disturbance fell like a blow from the hammer of Thor upon the Gorman industrial world. Hundreds of thousands of skilled operatives marched away and many factories closed then doors on account of lack of labor True, training schools for the wive; and sisters of tho mobilised workmer were opened all over the empire. Tha work has gone forward without a res until to-day a race of women laborer! and mechanics frowzy roughenec Amazons peoples Central Europo The labor shortage however grows auc grows. And, with the closing of the se? lanes, many flourishing firms amonj those almost entirety dependent upoi their export business for their income! went into bankruptcy. Govennen: subsidies tided other firms over tin first period of stress. Thus Claviez known in the trade of tho world as tin manufacturer of lino wood-pulp fab vies, was saved by government inter vention. 9 The wheels of Saxon industry al most ceased to turn ; for this Germar state manufactures wares chiefly foi foreign markets. It sent its fancj dress goods to France, England auc America, It sent its Staple weaves t( Eussia and to the Orient. It sold it! fancy porcelains to England and Americas. It sold its cheap cotton to India China and South America. It distri buted its machine-made laces and em. broideries throughout the world, send ing about four-fifths of these product: abroad. Likewise, it sold a greate; part of its leather goods and notion! abroad. In plain American parlance every country in the world was Sax ony's meal ticket, except the hom< country. The appeajgjee of the Eng ym mmtmmmm :■ fl| take years of painstaking effort to revive it. The production of artistic porcelains, rich in coloring and design and as fragile in texture as rose petals, has been given over. The famed Meissen shops now devote themselves to the production of the heavy cheap war porcelains and the splendid art of before the war is being forgotten through disuse. The skilled artists are falling victims on the battlefronts. The manufacture of leather gloves and other leather goods not for army use has stopped. The manufacture of bronzoware has been outlawed. So also has the manufacture of chocolate bonbons. The Germans consume a great part of their sugar production in tho manufacture of glycerin, and there remains not enough sugar for table use, even with the manufacture of candy denied and that of cake severely restricted. With all building at a standstill and with the people practicing a Spartan retrenchment in every possible direction, the largest German furniture factories are running but a fraction of normal time, while the small factories have long since failed. Hundreds of lace and embroidery firms have failed, and nearly all of them have closed their doors until the dawn of peace. There is not sufficient textile material to waste in fripperies; and so this industry is being lost. The manufacturo of German torchon laces has been almost given up, and the women in the forest villages, who formerly turned out exquisite lace patterns, aro now doing sweaty labor in munition factories.

DRESSES AND HATS OF TAPER. The manufacture of fancy dress goods—before the war the German's led the "world in the creation of novelty patterns every season —has ceased. The men wear mostly field-gray now and the people back home have become indifferent in matters of style and dress. Moreover, it is now throe years since the foreign buyer brought a stream of foreign wealth into the life of the mills. All these industries I have named and many that I have not mentioned, have passed, in their decay, into almost helpless states of disorganisation. There need be little fear thai they will take up the old keen competition where it was left off before tho great war began. Germany has.been forced to concentrate her energies upon the creation of necessities and upon war business. She has abandoned tho production of luxuries. This has played havoc with many of the leading lines of German export. It has disorganised much of tho home trado remaining. For example, Germany had a lively home and foreign market for her output of pleasure motor cars before the war. To-day tho manufacture of these cars has given way to the manufacture of fleet plain dispatch cars, cumbersome busses for the transportation of troops, ambulances and heavy supply trucks. Rarely now one sees a pleasure motor in use in Germany. This means that the German automobile industry has not advanced since the declaration of war iu 1914; that this industry in Germany is just three years behind its sister-industries in the United States and Great Britain. This is a random example out of numerous possible examples. " We are a decade behind the styles in everything except war machinery," was the subject of a plaintiff discourse to me b}' Kommerzienrat Wolff, of Zwickau, shortly before I left Germany. The Herr Kommerzienrat was frank; but, then, the Herr Kommerzienrat is one of the few prominent Germans who have been opposed to war all along. Kommerzienrat Wolff, in the days of Germany's prosperity,