The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-09-10

People telephone to the city from tiny villages to know how the dol lar stands and fix butter, milk and egg prices accordingly. Of course, they do not lower prices when the dollar falls. but boost them every time 1t shows m upward tendency. If any one asks them if their cows and chickens, etc, were bought with dollars. and If their servants and laborers are paid in dollars. he is grumpily answered that the farmer must pay higher and higher prices for everything he buys.
 Bread Riots Predicted
 If present conditions continue In Germany, the winter will bring, not revolution. for our workers are too weary and disappointed for that. but bread riots and the destruction of markets and stores and attacks on the coal reserves. The daily anxie- ty about the dollar rate arises from sound instincts and not alone from a desire for gain among the thou sands who today are speculating with American stocks in the hope of ircreasing their insufficient in- comes.
 Instinct teaches and business ex- perience confirms that the greatest trouble will come when the dollar falls to about 600 marks, for besides n lack of credit we shall then have the impossibility of price competl- tion abroad, unemployment at home and state bankruptcy.
 Germany's situation unfortunately Is not quite so good as some earnest American observers conclude after a short stay here and conversations Ill t,.tx, {x.I. -t.,I leaders and bankers. We need first to realize that the Versailles treaty. which as yet has not been applied in It's financial and economic clauses. Is not and cannot be the ,ause of our present difficulties.
 Meantime the prosperity of the farmers seems to have been paral- leled to a degree by the town trades- men, who must have earned tremen- dously Otherwise. how explain the preposterous the luxury seen very where, the crowded tourist agencies. the crowded gourmet restaurants, the damned boxing spectacles and the over-run pleasure resorts?
 Foreign Hatred Stirred
 selfish policy explains this par tially, for when a man knows that two-thirds of his earnings will be taken by state and only an in signih- cant fraction remain for his child ren after the inheritance taxes are paid, he has no incentive to save. On the other hand. he tries. at any cost, to buy the maximum of pleas ures for himself and for his family.
 Yet our victors are held respon- sible for the whole financial dis order and hatred against foreigners is stirred up by the lie that those whom people see wasting and revel- ling are all foreigners.
 It Is not Frances fault that tho world does not realize that the tre- mendous increase of German labor necessary to clear an enormous debt would ruin the creditors markets.
 Instead of frankly opening the books and showing this truth, the German government has let 1t ap- pear that the Germans are indoient and are craftily escaping debt by fraudulent bankruptcy
 But a people. whose sons in tho thfrd year of motorless airplanes, can remain a thousand feet in the air for three hours and more, have not lost the moral courage to face painful realities even if the chan cellor publicly declares to the con trary.
 repeat that consistent official lies have deprived our whole people of the power of thinking. The oth- CT day when the reparations com missions for the thirteenth time post