UNABLE TO HELP HERSELF
“Poland is quite unable to help herself. Most of the mills—probably all of the mills—are owned by Russian and German and French capitalists. The banks are all branches of foreign institutions. These concerns are all conducted by resident managers. Some of the managers have—on their own responsibility—given their work people two and a half and three cents a day each for food. Some have added a trifle for the children also. But this has practically come to an end. The managers have exhausted their supply of cash. They cannot get more. There are no mails. The towns of Poland are each printing their own paper money—not by consent of the Russian bureaucrats, but in defiance of them—but this money circulates only within the town’s borders. It is highly improbable it will ever be redeemed in real money. Meanwhile the price of food commodities has risen fifty per cent in two months. By the time this reaches America the prices may have doubled.