The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-05-13
| Cover the World
by WILLIAM PHILIP s1MMs

A/ASHINGTON, May Is. Printing press
w money in Europe made paupers and near
pauperS Of men and women with pensions. an
nuitleS or other fixed income, and destroyed the
value of millions of insurance policies.
| knew German widow of middle age who
had used her husbands insurance to buy a
'viagere," or life annuity. It brought her 1900
marks month-about $780, On this she lived
very comfortably.
After Germany started printing fiat money,
the lady was left destitute. dependent on friends
who shared what little they had left to keep her
from becoming public charge. Her entire an
nuity of $4,000 marks would not begin to buy a
postage stamp
In France I knew an old history professor,
formerly Of the Sorbonne who had put his entire
savings into a similar annuity. In 1925, the
French initiation resulted in francs losing 80 per
cent of their value The professors $1O0 a
month became $40 a month.
When I saw him last at Y, he was trying to
teach French in a quavery voice to an occasional
foreigner, to keep himself from slow starvation.
Old sOldiers-pensoned veterans of French
and German warS-became pitiful figures. You
will find many of the younger ones even now,
their chests ablaze with medals won on the bat
tleleld, working as doormen, messengers and at
other mental tasks.
IN the United States there are today approx
Il mately 100000 old soldiers, widows of soldiers,
and nurses, drawing pensions as from the Mexi-
sion amounts to about $3.50 year.
Should the greenback plan of paying the
soldier bonus lead eventually to imitation even
ON the French scale, these half-million eft-overs
from other wars would be destitute.
Records show that life insurance is an out
standing form of saving in the United States
There are some SO million ordinary policies in
force in this country. The average is for less
than $500, indicating that the vast majority are
held by people Of very modest means.
Imitation resulting in nothing worse than
what happened in France would reduce the value
of such policy to less than $500. French hold
ers of course still collected the full face value of
their policies, but the purchasing power of the
money they received was reduced 80 per cent.
Some % of the 49 states have enacted old-age
pension laws. In some states the age set is 65
In others, 70.
THESE states have almost entirely abandoned
the poorhouse system. Pensions permit the
aged to live at home and retain their sef-respect
Imitation, beginning it did in Europe with fiat
money to meet government obligations risks
throwing these Americans back into the poor
house
If fiat money should nave the same effect
over here that it proved 10 have in Europe, the
Patman greenback bonus would be a boomerang
on the ex-soldiers themselves Not only would
payment to some four million ex-service men be
at the expense of several times that number of
other Americans in the same general class of So
eiety, but the greenbacks they themselves re-
ceived would steadily shrink in value as time
went on.
In Germany the value Of paper money
reached zero. France, by making Raymond
Poiroare dictator, halted imitation after money
had lost four-ffths of its purchasing power.