The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-10-22
Teuton Women Save Much Money As Men
 Fight For Country

ji Berlin. Oct. 20.-Labor statisticians, who have been watching the situation
 closely and critically as the months of war have passed. agree with a fair degree of unaniInity the gem eraI effect of the conflict on wages, but disagre to some extent on the relation between the wages paid to- day and the cost of 1iYing-as to whether or not the workin gman's pay has increased as fast as prices of foodstuffs have.
 They agree that the men in the f'war materials trades, and the wo- men for that matter, today are re- ceiving 50, TO and even 100 per cent. more than they ever did before. In most cases the advance is nearer to i1O0 per cnt. thean 50 or TO because , there is no limit to the amount of work to do, there is unlimited oppor- tunity for overtime work, wages are higher than usual and help is scarce. In other skilled trades that supply ordinary needs-the printing and car penter trade for instance-the ad- vance, 1t is agreed, is neither so great nor so even- The printer is making from to 5 marks day more than he used to; the carpenters gain de- bends on how much work he has the strength or the inclination to do; the brewer is getting an even 10 marks more a week; the leather worker, like the carpenter, can be guaged only by his capacity.
 The benefits accruing to the un- skilled workers simply cannot be es- timated because they are so variable and so dependent upon employers generosity, chance circumstances and the like. The authorities are agreed that these workers have been less benefited than any others, but find fO dGfH inc he of benefit
 Alvin Koersten, Secretary of the Central Employment Bureau of the Berlin trades, who might be termed a walking statistical office, and who 1 is constantly in close touch with workers of all kinds, is positive that living costs have advanced faster than wages, and that the war ma terials'' workers are the only ones
 who have kept up
 | He is convinced that food prices
 have risen from 80 to 100 per cent.
 unskilled labor or of those branches i of skilled labor not engaged in nak- ling war materials. Though far from being a pessinist, his inclination is to look at the matter from the stand point of the many who have had a minimum of gain out of higher wages.
 Max Steffen, head of the huge em- l
 men, even less than MT. Koersten, be- 1teves that prices have outstripped
 wages, chiefly because he is in closest
 touch with the great mass of men,
 and women, on whom the effect of the war has been more to give them
 work than to raise the wages they
 had been getting.
 He has seen most of the thousands
 who drift into his enormous estab-
 Iishment placed where they can earn
 a livelihood more readily than ever
 before,~ but he also has heard from
 countless lips the story of the diff
 cu1ty of making both ends meet. His
 own experiences with the cost of 1iv- | ing has made him loathe to believe
 the war has been an unmixed benefit
 for the worker who stays at home. Quite of a different opinion is pr. O. Becker, head of the Association of | German Employment Bureaus, who
 forms his opinion from facts and fig
 ures gathered from all parts of the German empire, and who, in conse-