In a little railway junction in Baden a girl porter put my two very heavy bags on to the train. I wanted to help her with them. She laughed at me. She has a tanned face, smooth blonde hair and shoulders like an ox.
“How much?” I asked her.
“Fifty marks,” she said.
Demands a Real Tip.
At Mannheim a porter carried my bags from one track to another in the station. When I asked him how much, he demanded a thousand marks. The last porter I had seen had been the girl in Baden so I protested.
“A bottle of beer costs fifteen hundred marks here,” he replied, “a glass of schnapps, twelve hundred.”
That is the way the prices fluctuate all over Germany. It all depends on whether the prices went up to the top when the mark had its terrific fall last winter to around 70,000 to the dollar. If the prices went up they never come down. In the big cities, of course, they went up. A full meal in the country costs 2,000 marks. On the train a ham sandwich costs 3,000 marks.
Last week, investigating the actual living conditions, I talked to, among others, a small factory owner, several workmen, a hotelkeeper and a high school professor.
The factory owner said: “We have enough coal and coke for a few weeks longer, but are short on all raw materials. We cannot pay the prices they ask now. We sold to exporters. They got the dollar prices. We didn’t. We can buy coal from Czecho-Slovakia, where they have German mines they got under the peace treaty, but they want pay in Czech money, which is at par and we can’t afford to pay. We are starting to lay off workmen, and as they have nothing saved there is liable to be trouble.”
How a Workman Fares.
A workman said: “I cannot keep my family on the money that I am making now. I have mortgaged my house to the bank and the bank charges me 10 per cent. interest on the loan. You see, workmen who have plenty of money to spend, but they are the young men who are living at home. They get their board and room free and their laundry. Maybe they pay a little something on their board. They are the men you see around the wine and beerstubes. Maybe their father has some property in the country, a farm, then they are all right. All the farmers have money.”
The hotelkeeper said: “All summer the hotel was full. We had a good season. I worked all summer in the high season from six o’clock in the morning until midnight. Every room was crowded. We had people sleeping in the billiard rooms on cots. It was the best year we ever had. In October the mark started to fail, and in December all the money we had taken in all summer was not enough to buy our preserves and jelly for next season. I have a little capital in Switzerland, otherwise we would have had to close. Every other summer hotel in this town has closed for good. The proprietor of the big hotel on the hill there committed suicide last week.”
A Professor’s Salary.
The high school professor said: “I get 200,000 marks a month. That sounds like a good salary. But there is no way I can increase it. One egg costs 4,000 marks. A shirt costs 85,000 marks. We are living now, our family of four, on two meals a day. We are very lucky to have that. I owe the bank money.
“People here in town cannot change their marks into dollars, and Swiss francs so as to have them when the mark falls again, as it will as soon as they settle this Ruhr affair. The banks will not give out any dollars or Swiss or Dutch money. They hang on to all they can get. The people can’t do anything.
“The merchants have no confidence in the money, and will not bring their prices down. The wealthy people are the farmers who got the high prices for their crops which were marketed just after the mark fell last fall and the big manufacturers. The big manufacturers sell abroad for foreign money, and pay their labor in marks. And the banks. The banks are always wealthy. The banks are like the government. They get good money for bad, and hang on to the good money.”
The school teacher was a tall, thin man with thin, nervous hands. For pleasure he played the flute. I had heard him playing as I came to his door. His two children did not look undernourished, but he and his frayed looking wife did.
Can’t Trust Government.
“But how will it all come out?” I asked him.
“We can only trust in God,” he said. Then he smiled. “We used to trust in God and the government, we Germans. Now I no longer trust the government.”
“I heard you playing very beautifully on the flute when I came to the door,” I said rising to go.
“You know the flute? You like the flute? I will play for you.”
“If it would not be asking too much.”
So we sat in the dusk in the ugly little parlor and the schoolmaster played very beautifully on the flute. Outside people were going by in the main street of the town. The children came in silently and sat down. After a time the schoolmaster stopped and stood up very embarrassedly.
“It is a very nice instrument, the flute,” he said.
Amateur Starvers Keep Out of View in Germany
Tourists See No Hunger or Distress Except That Shown by Professional Beggars—Middle Classes With Fixed Income Are the Real Sufferers.
GERMAN POLICE SALUTE BRITISH RIGIDLY
The following is the eighth of a series of articles by Ernest M. Hemingway, staff correspondent of The Star, on the Franco-German situation.
By ERNEST M. HEMINGWAY. Special to The Star.
Cologne, April 27.—Traveling on fast trains, stopping at the hotels selected for him by the Messrs. Cook, usually speaking no language but his own, the tourist sees no suffering in Europe.
If he comes to Germany, even traveling quite extensively, he will see no suffering. There are no beggars. No horrible examples on view. No visible famine sufferers nor hungry children that besiege railway stations.
The tourist leaves Germany wondering what all this starving business is about. The country looks prosperous. On the contrary in Naples he has seen crowds of ragged, filthy beggars, sore-eyed children, a hungry looking horde. Tourists see the professional beggars, but they do not see the amateur starvers.
For every ten professional beggars in Italy there are a hundred amateur starvers in Germany. An amateur starver does not starve in public.
On the contrary no one knows the amateur is starving until they find him. They usually find him in bed. Every hungry person does not walk the streets after a certain length of time. It sharpens that feeling that is dulled by bed. In writing of amateur starvers no reference is meant to the inhabitants of bread lines, soup kitchens or rescue missions. They have violated their strictly amateur standing.
Amateur Starvers.
A few case histories of amateur starvers are appended.
No. 1: Frau B. is the widow of the owner of an apothecary shop, who died before the war. She has a yearly income of 26,400 marks, the interest on mortgages. Before the war this yielded $100 a week. Her 29-year-old daughter is suffering from lung trouble and cannot work. Her 21-year-old son passed the final examination at the grammar school, but cannot go to the university, and is earning his living as a miner. Another 13-year-old is in school. The family was formerly very well-to-do. To-day their income for one year is the minimum for the existence of a family of four persons for a period of two weeks.
No. 2: The married couple P., 64 years old, who have been blind for the last ten years, receive from their capital, which they earned by hard work, an income of 3,400 marks a year. They were formerly able to live comfortably on this income. To-day it represents half a week’s wages of an unskilled laborer.
No. 3: Frau B., widow of an architect, is obliged to live with her two children of 9 and 6 years on a yearly income of 2,400 marks. This represents less than two days’ earnings of a laborer.
No. 4: The married couple K. receive 500 marks a month from the rent of their house. The husband, formerly a farmer, is suffering from heart trouble. A short time ago he was in bed a number of weeks as a result of poisoning. For six months the wife has been almost completely paralyzed. The medicines necessary to their illness cost more than their income. In normal times the income derived from the rent would have afforded these people a comfortable existence.
No. 5: The widow H., 48 years old, has four children, three of whom still attend school. She has a capital of 100,000 marks. This gives her 15,000 marks yearly. On this the family can live for one week.
Not Exceptional Cases.
These cases are not exceptional or isolated. They are typical of the situation of these people in the middle class in Germany who are dependent on a fixed income from savings. Neither are they German propaganda cases. All are taken from an appeal for the starving of Cologne signed by Mr. J. I. Piggott, commissioner, the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission, and Mr. D. W. P. Thurston, C.M.C., H. M. consul general, Cologne.
Cologne itself looks prosperous. The shop windows are brilliant. Streets are clean. British officers and men move smartly along through the crowds. The green
