GERMAN HOUSEKEEPING.

Putaruru Press, Volume II, Issue 13, 10 January 1924, Page 3

GERMAN HOUSEKEEPING.

L i MIDDLE CLASS STRUGGLES. The Falling Mark. j A Tew days ago I came back from ■ Germany with a bundle of 50,000- | mark notes in my pocket, writes a * correspondent to the London Times. They were merely the leavings of my German holiday money, but I could have bought myself a new hat with them or stood myself a very good j dinner indeed. If I went back again now I should hesitate to offer them as a tip to the porter who carried my bag - , for they are worth about a tenth of what they were then. Simply by letting these notes lie for a few weeks 1 am the poorer by six or seven shillings. What, then, of the Germans themselves, ail of whose money is carried in this unstable currency? Can they manage to avoid being made poorer all the time? Before leaving Germany I went to call on my old friends, the W s:, and their case, as I saw it, answers this riddle to some extent and explain- how the average German mid-dle-class family lives. Old W is a lawyer who retired from practice during the first years of the war, having- earned the honorary title of Justizrat and seen his three children safely started in life. 1 rang up young W first. Whtn the war broke out he was learning- to be an architect. He went into the Air Service, served with distinction as a pilot, and was rewarded by being* given a captain’s commission in the State Police. His reply to my general inquiry about the well-being of the family was “ First rate.” He gets his salary paid quarterly in advance. Tt is hardly enough to live on but it gives him a little capital to play with, which is everything*. Old W ’s reply, when I saw him later, was less emphatically favourable, but still T gathered that, all things considered. life remained bearable. ADVANTAGES OF A FLAT. The W s’ great asset has been their flat, as it has been to many middle-class German families. Tt is a very roomy one, and there live in it now, besides Herr and Frau W , I a young official and his wife, a rather I mysterious Russian, and an American J student of music. The last is the 5 pride of Frau W ’s heart, for she I pays in dollars. The flat is run by j Frau W with the help of a char- [ woman. As rents are kept low, by i a Tenants’ Protection Act, what is • ' paid by the lodgers more than covers i all expenses connected with its up- 1 keep. The old man has had to take up work again, and every now and then gets a fee for giving legal advice or witnessing an affidavit. These fees are regulated by the official multiplicator, which is fixed weekly, so ; that, although the mark tumbles j down and down, Her W ’s fees, as ! a unit for reckoning in, remain as 1 stable as the dollar, or nearly so. j So the two old people manage to 1 rub along. It is harder work than ! either of them expected to do at their i Hme of life, but they exist. Herr : W smokes a pipe. He lias had to j give up cigars, exrp.pt when he gets j one from his son. The house ... problem is greatly helped by occasion d supplies which come from their daughter, who has married a well-to-do manufacturer and has a small country house with a farm in Pomerania. There are two factors which enable the middle class in Germany to live injhs present financial confusion. One oi these is the index figure, or official multiplicator, by which a real value is maintained in wages, prices and .fees of all sorts, whatever the rate of Jtlie mark. The second is “ speculator*. ” When 1 went to see the W s lor the first time after the war, two years ago, Frau W was shaking •her head over her children. Her sons, and even her daughter, had taken to speculating on the Stock Exchange. “ They make quite a lot of money, too,” she said, hut that did not make the habit seem any less reprehensible to her careful mind. However, a year biter she was poring* over the Stock Exchange List as eagerly as any of them. Tins so-called speculation, as a matter of fact, loses most of its clej ment of uncertainty, even for a layman, when the currency depreciates as steadily as the mark has done. Whenever the mark takes a plunge there is a boom on the stock market, and up go the prices of stocks and shares just as surely as the price of boots and butter, and several degrees more quickly. The average German now puts his spare cash into industrials, just as in normal times he would have put them into a savings bank. When he wants to buy a new suit or go away for the holidays he sells out, and makes an enormous profit—in marks' In reality, he has ; merely maintained the value of his ' capital. If he fs lucky he has improved it, for the tremendous demand for : shares which have a name to them olten gives them an exaggerated value. WHEN TO CHANGE STERLING. j The samotlemand for something* of real value to exchange for worthless marks sends up the price of foreign currency. Any Englishman who lias been some time in Germany know? that the week-end is a bad'time to change a sterling* cheque or a pound note. Ihe rate is nearly always higher on Monday, for, with the payment of wages at the week-end comes a demand from thousands of people all over Germany for foreign currency in which to insure their earnings against . depreciation. This sends the rate up. In the same way, every quarter day, when Government officials all over the country are paid their wages in , advance, the prices of foodstuffs g*o up, for every Hausfrau whose husband draws a Government salary is buying in for the next quarter. By investing his spare cash in easily marketable shares, or in sound foreign currency, the German gives an additional purchasing power, for their quotations will always reflect the real value of the mark, whereas the prices in the shops only follow (Continued at Foot of Next Column.)