The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-18

made the investment, but should you take it to the store, the grocer would tell yo~ that his prices had risen. and that butter now had g gold value of thirty cents or three thou sand dollars per pound. If you looked at a juicy tenderlion steak, it would take twice your investment to pay for it and bushel of potatoes might cost four times that amount, ar the sum you now pay for the highest priced automobile. In other words your three thousand dollars over night has falleE to purchasing value of just about 80 cents. It seems incredible. but this is the actual condition of al. such investments all over Germany. sa e that the night Of long.
 Retired On seventeen Cents . Year.
 As one crosses the Atlantic on a great ocean liner, he estcems 1t an honor to know the captain and have a seat at his table. The captain Is king of the ship. The vessel he navi- gates Is worth millions, and he is of- ten responsible for the lives of four or Ave thousand people. Nevertheless his salary is small and the Germans, who. as every one knows. almost led the race for freight and passenger traffic before the war, have held their sea captains by giving them pensions. Every large company that sent ships out of Hamburg gave itS captains d nsion of eight thousand ns rks year after the age of re- tirement. This was practically gold, and it meant two thousand dollars per annum. Most of the captains were thrifty and the AvCr".e man had saved enough to have an income of ten thousand marks or twenty-five hundred dollars a year additional. so that when he left the steamer he could sit down to what he thought was comfortable old age on an in- come of is.000 marks or forty-five hundred dollars. There were many such captains. What is their condi- tion today? They have still the same pensions and the same income In marks. but the marks are in paper and their purchasing power has fallen from forty-five hundred dol- lars year to about 40 cents or less than one cent & week. This is tho income of the man who has been thrifty and saving. The man who has only his pension has an income of about 17 cents.
 What can Sucn men uO. lHey might live off tAeir relatives, but their families have also been ruined. The answer is difficult. Some of the old sea captains are acting as night watehmen. others are door-keepers in business establishments, and others are trying to learn petty trades which old men can follow. This is merely one class of the vast number of people who have been ruined by the breaking down of the financial system of Germany.
 New Ways 1T. Fay oi1 Debts.
 The fall of the mark has meant life to the debtor and death to the creditor. It has affected every mort s&ge by forcing its holder to take one dollar, gold value, for every thousand dollars he got as loan before or durinc the war To give a concrete instance. there is a piece O. property here in Berlin which had a ten years mortgage put on it in 1918. The mortgage was for one hun dred thousand marks or what was then equal to twenty-five thousand dollars in gold. That mortgage ccmsA due this year and it's owner can collect no more than one hundred thousand marks. He will get it in paper and it will have a gold value of only two or three dollars. In the meantime I happen to know that the man who borrowed this one hundred thousand marks has used it to buy other properties, which, if Germany comes back, will sell for more than twenty-five thousand dollars. In that