THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1910. THE GERMAN WORKMAN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9690, 14 January 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1910. THE GERMAN WORKMAN.

Mr. Winston Churchill's epistolary activity has been directed to the economic conditions prevailing in Germany, and with what his Welsh colleague in the Cabinet would describe as "the last resort of a thoroughly desperate man who saw his cause was lost," has revived the exploded myth that the German workman lives j on horseflesh and black bread, and that he is forced to this dire necessity as the result of the German protective tariff It is a little too late in the day to attempt to impose upon the credulity of the British working classes by such crude and clumsy methods. The deputations of British workmen that have visited Germany during the past two or three years have made the true facts widely known, and have dispelled the fictions and misconceptions that formerly ex • isted as to the condition of the German workmen. The Gainsborough Commission of Workmen reported i in 1906: "We have been forced to face the fact that Germany has ceased to be poor, and has become well-to-do; that her workpeople have received a large increase in wages, and that the general social condition of her people has improved. Occupation is to be had for the asking of it in all facto, ies, and at all works in the town wt have passed through. The unskili working man is undoubtedly as we on, and in many caaes relatively • *.er. thau unskilled workmen in England. In going through the workmen's quarters in German towns we were struck

with thefact ..that nowhere have we seen the same abject dirt and misery that one meets with in London, Liverpool and Glasgow." Mr Ghurchill represents the problem of unenjploy" ment as being acute in Germany, and adduces it as a proof that protection is no guarantee against scarcity of work. But let us see what official figures prove. In 19u3 the percentage of unemployed was 2.7, as compared with 5.1 in Great Britain. In 1908 it was still 2 7 in Germany, and 9.4 in Free Trade Britain. In Germany the deposits in the savings banks are three times as much as, they are in the United Kingdom. In the face of statistics such as these, it is absurd to pretend that the German workman's lot is what Mr Churchill would have the British working classes believe it to be. Since Germany adopted a policy of protection she h?s advanced in wealth by leaps and bounds. She has become transformed from a purely agricultural country into one of the workshops of the world. She has risen to the position of a great industrial Power. And it is because her shrewd merchants and manufacturers see that a change in Gieat Britain's fiscal policy would seriously affect Germany's commercial position that they are s"> anxious for the success at the polls of the Asquith Administration. German prosperity is largely owing to Great Britain remaining a dumping ground for foreign goods. And in order to keep it a dumping ground Mr Churchill is only ready to paint pictures of the German workman living on but is probably prepared to represent him as reduced to the plight of Nebuchadnezzar, and eating the gras3 of the fields.