The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-11

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 Cheap Transportation.
 As to matters of transportation. Germany has the advantage over most other countries of Aurope. It's northern part is a level plain and practically the whole of it is a gentle slope toward the Baltic. Rail roads can be cheaply built and cheap ly run. The country now has enough roads to make thirteen solid trunk lines from Boston to San Francisco, and the passenger rates are lower than In any other part of Europe One can travel clear across Germany for less than two dollars. and the taxi to the station often costs more than a trip of two hundred miles on the railroad.
 The slopes are such that the coun- try has a vast net of interior water ways It has three navagible rivers which are connected by so many canals that if you could make a great subway through the center of the earth from one side to the other it would not be so long as these waterways upon which freight is carried. I have no figures for the present, but in 1913 more than 100 million tons of goods were carried on the rivers and inland canals of Ger many. More than one-half of this amount was made up of domestic manufactures. I do not know the wages paid on the interior water ways, but those of the seamen who handle the big ocean ships are so low that in making trip from Ham, burg to Calcutta. the sailors found teir total wage for the voyage was not enough to allow one to hire a "sampan" to take him on shore and pay the postage on letter to his people in Germany. I have this on the authority of the Assistant Secre- tary of our Department of Commerce who has just passed through Berlin on his way home from India.
 Coal and Iron.
 A captain of industry whose com pany has controlled more than sixty thousand men in the Valley of the Ruhr tells me that more than forty per cent of Germany's coal reserves were lost by the treaty. This may be true but in 1913 the Valley of the Ruhr, which Germany still has, although in French hands. contribut- ed sixty per cent of her output of soft coal while the fields she has lost had only about thirty per cent. The Ruhur Is just about as big as Rhode Island and it has over fifty billion tons of coal still to be mined. Today Germany has more coal than any country in Europe except Great Bri- tain, but by the treaty of Versailles she has to give so much to France that she is now importing coal, buy ing back through Holland. at times the very coal she shipped to France. 1t returns labeled English coal" but I am told 1t is often in the same cars in which it was shipped away.
 As to iron, in 1913 Germany was producing only three-fourths of what she consumed. She has lost great deal, and will now have to buy in much larger quantities. She is get ting her iron from Sweden and Spain, but the market is compe titive, and it merely puts her on the same plane as those of many other manu- featuring countries of Europe.
 Nation in Ruins. s
 With country and a plant like this, it seems impossible that the owners could be financially ruined. but that is the actual condition of the Germans of today. They num- ber more than 60,o00,0o0 and I ven ture over 59,0O0,000 have lost prac- tically every cent of their savings. This includes investments in all sorts of gilt-edged securities and all municipal and government bonds. It includes stocks of all kinds and even pensions and life insurance policies. In order to get the actual value of any such investment you must divide it by 5000 and the result will give you what 1t is worth today. If you own a per cent mortgage of $2.000. the mortgagee can satisfy it by pay ment of 40 cents gold value. and if it still runs the interest will be re- duced from $120 to less than 2h cents. If the government is paying you a pension of $500 per year, you will get that amount in paper. but when you turn it into goods it will be worth only 10 cents. If you are d a $10,000 life insurance policy which you can cash in today. the insurance company will give you the money but its gold purchasing value will be no more than two dollars. It Is the same with every kind of investment All the solid accumulations of the past which have not been put into machinery or material properties have gone up in smoke, and all rent ed buildings have been practically given over to the tenants by the so- cialistic government.
 Girls Eating Their DOwrles.
 This means that men who, before the war, were worth millions now have to work for their bread. I know of business managers, who a short time ago had salaries from s5,000 to s10,000 year. and who are now getting SIP month. I hear of baronesses and countesses who are feeding upon their jewels which have who to buy food are selling the clothes and linen they have saved for their dowries. l have gone through factories where tens of thousands of expert workmen are la boring at 25 cents day, and have talked with all classes who are earn ing barely enough for their food and cannot purchase new clothes. Real estate here in Berlin is being sold for a song, and valuable industrial properties are being peddled out to