Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1918-06-28
Germany's
Treatment of the
Workingman
eAr
By DANIEL LOUIS HANSON
OF The VigiI0ntes

as does father his children. / build
beautiful homes for them, pay widows
pensions; also pension for old age,
sickness, loss of work and increases in
families. pay high wages, limit work
ing hours, make loans easy to farmers.
L have no slums as do America and
Great.Britain; l adjudicate all strikes.
Mine is the land of the care-free and
happy workingman.'
That is the boiled-down-to-a-fe
fences propaganda that Germany COW
cred the whole world with before the
war with the ostensible purpose of
weakening the morale of her enemies
in the war she then was planning.
Great credit is due to Chairman Eas-
ley of the National Civic Federation in
his published refutation of Germany's
claims; just a few items from that
valuable document will prove illumi-
mating:
Widows pensions in Germany dur
ing series of years averaged 80 cents
a week; sick pensions 90 cents week !;
invalidity pension the same; orphans
pensions 81 cents a week. Wages
averaged per day for carpenters $1.45 !;
plumbers $1.25; railway employees
engineers and conductors on state rail-
ways, 20 cents; shop workers $1.O2 !;
male farm labor u cents; female farm
labor AZ cents.
And this in land where govern
ment statistics placed average cost of
keeping families at over $500 per year.
How did they make both ends meet?
BY working the whole family; every
second woman in Germany worked dur
ing the before-the-war periOd-nearly
100000 all told-and as the writer
can testify from an extended trip
throughout the empire, at the hardest
labor.
AS to hours: those of skilled labor
ran, about So per week, in textile and
other lines from II to IA per day. In
| 1911 the big stores of Berlin kept open
till 8 at night and some hours on Sun
| days-though that last was remedied
| the following year. The smaller stores
| were even worse as to hours. A bank
| ing concern across from my hotel
worked from in the morning to at
night.
Regarding strikes which Germany
claimed to always adjudicate; that
year I saw the beginning of such a
disturbance in the Moabit section of
| Berlin-and the end, for the authorities
| settled it in true Homestead fashion
| by shooting down the ringieaders. 1t
| lasted only two days and the press
was allowed to say nothing about it.
| However, the Vorwaerts referred to it
| and was suppressed for three days as
punishment. According to Mr.. Eas-
| ley's statistics, more than two-thirds
| the strikes in 1912 were unsuccessful
| end labor unions only allowed to meet
under government supervision.
AS to slums-whOever has smelled
| the horrible odors in Cologne-until
| 1914 the filthiest city in Europe in
| some of it's residence sections, will
| laugh at Germany's claim to being slum-
! less. And what about the foulness of
| Madgeburg and DantZig? East London
| is Paradise alley by comparison. Ber-
lin, the show city of the empire, looks
| like town of palaces with the streets
lined by stucco-fronted houses, but
| back of thenl-and this condition is
| much worse in Hamburg, Cologne,
Frankfort and other large towns
stand the serried ranks of poverty's
tenements, row upon row. Berlin has
| more one-room tenements than any
| Ia = he yo1.lI EoT
six and seven herding in one apart
ment and hall bathroom doing serv-
ice for half dozen such families.
AS to land distribution: over a third
of Germany's farms are less than IA
acres in size; 22.6 per cent between
III and. 5 acres; 17.5 per cent, to II
acres; 1876 per cent, II to 80 acres
while 23,566 junkers, the Land barons,
own nearly 25,000,000 acres, running
from go to 500 acres and more each.
The above is only small part OF
the picture which Germany actually
presented to the world in the before
| the-war period. Not of course what
she claimed, but nevertheless collated
| from her official records-au except
| the filth of her large cities. 1t sounds
| inviting to an American workingman,
| does it not And since then, of course,
| conditions have gotten even worse with
| women doing work that would stoop
| the shoulders of the strongest man.
Oppression of farmers, underpaid
workers, enSlavement of women and
| children industrially, shocking housing
| conditions, chronic underfeeding with
resultant fearful infant mortality,
| counterfeit social insurancezare few
| counts in the indictment made by Mr..
Easley against Germany before the
war.
German efficiency goes to appalling
| lengths. whether it is breeding German
subjects from the enslaved young
| women of France and Belgium; or IN
issuing lying propaganda with which
TO break down the morale OF the
worlds democracy. Nothing is too low,
nothing too awful for the Potsdam
spawn not to attempt.