The Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1912-1917, 1916-07-04
IN THE FATHERLAND
INTERESTING BITS OF NEWS
rROM THE GREAT GERMAN
EMPIRE.
WHAT'S DOING IN OLD HOME
Summary of the Most important Hap
penings in the Land of the Kaiser
Readers.

distribution of electricity in the state.
Coal fields and one big generating sta
ton have already been acquired and
the Saxon Landtag has voted sew
| eral million dollars for further out
| lays. Eventually it is expected that
! the whole electrical supply in the
! kingdom will be taken from the state
| system SO that the government will
| be able to fix the lowest possible
/ charges. At the same time the gov
| eminent has no intention Of prevent
| ing local public bodies or private cor
| pOratiOns and individuals from pro-
| dUcing their own electrical power.
| AS beginning the government has
| purchased for $4,000 the steam gen
! Grating station at Hirschfelde, on the
! River NeisSe, belonging to a Berlin
! company. This station has already
! u capacity Of $4,000 kiIOwatts and the
! plant is quite new. Moreover, it is
| close 10 one of the coal fields bought
! by the state. Later the government
! Will erect new works near the west
! ern coal fields, where there are al
| ready stations with which negOtia-
! tionS are now going on to arrange the
! necessary cooperation. A new de-
! partment Of the government to be
! called the direction of the state cleo
! tricity works." will be established to
! manage the scheme. 1t will include
! the technical adviser of the ministry
| of finance as director and two other
! engineers.
AS one means of bringing about
! much-needed reforms in conditions
! prevailing among petty officeholders
and officials in Germany-thOSe who
| hold such positions as postal and tele
| graph employees-the Union of Ger
man Official Associations is calling
| especial attention to the eXtraOrdi-
nary 'child-poverty" in German Off
cialdom. This poverty is largely due.
| ii is declared, to the long training pc
! RODS now necessary, which make it
all but impossible for officials to mar
! ~ until they are in their late twen-
! ties or even thirty years old. In con-
! sequence officials have smaller fami-
! lies than almost any other branch of
! employees in Germany. In their
! ranks. it is found, the lower officials
| have an average of "a children per
! family; the middle officials but Is
! children and the higher officials only
| IL. The figures become more Strik-
! ing when compared with the average
Tor all marriages in Germany-which
on an average are blessed with SO
| IL. i a.
war is TO increase rather than dimin-
! ish the number of petty officials in
Germany, for it is the ambition of a
great number of wounded men unfit
Ted for their old occupations to settle
down in some little position which
gives him the prestige of a little title
and the right to call himself Beam
ter" The fuller the ranks get, the
greater, of course, is the tendency
for salaries to drop.
The reconstruction of the destroyed
cities and towns of Belgium will be
drO'ted by an advisory board COM
posed of a number of the foremost
architects and engineers in Germany.
! L HIS pan WIS pIOpOStu W IIle CIV
eminent some time ago by the So
ciety of Architects and Building Engi-
neerS and has now been sanctioned by
General Won Kissing, governor gen
eral of Belgium. The governor gen
eral appointed members of the board,
DR.. J. Duelfer of Dresden, Prof. DR..
A. X. FrentZen of Aachen, Prof. DR..
| Of GO
ran and Dr. S. Stuebben of Berlin.
They will serve without pay and some
of them will pay their own travelling
expenses Their only aim is to make
the historic Belgian towns more beau
tiful than they were before the war.
|
One of the features of the German
war exhibition held in Hamburg late
in May was an exhibit called The
Gold Booty from the Moewe," the Ger
man commerce raider Three of the
Il original cases in which the gold
was taken from the British steamship,
Appam, was packed, were displayed,
/ the cases being filed with imitation
gold bars.
New proposals by the German gov
eminent to the United States concern
ing American relief in the parts of
| Poland occupied by the German army
have been transmitted TO AmbasSa-
dor Gerard. according to semiofficial
news agencies. "They embody," says
The agency. the utmost concessions
which Germany is able TO make"
The managing committee of the
| Berlin BOurse adopted the outlines of
a plan TO restrict speculation, which
has grown remarkably active in re-
cent months. The committee ordered
that all transactions shall be on
strictly cash basis and with the date
OF delivery strictly prescribed. Option
and time trading will be prohibited
The action taken by the Bourse CO.
incides with the wishes of the gov
| ernlAent ana the leading banks, which
regard it inopportune that wild spec
uIatien should disturb the money mar
| ket during the war.
Reports have reached Zurich from
RomanshoTn, a Swiss town on Lake
Constance. that new super-Zeppelin.