The Iron Ration: Three Years in Warring Central Europe

by George Abel Schreiner

Some manufacturers had indeed clung to that policy—of which the old warehouses and their counting-rooms along the Weser in Bremen are truly and beautifully emblematic. But most of them were seized with a mania for volume in export and ever-growing personal wealth.

Germany's population had failed to get its share of this wealth. Though the Arbeiter-Verbände—unions—had seen to it that the workers were not entirely ignored, it was a fact that a large class was living in that peculiar sort of misery which comes from being the chattel of the state, on the one hand, and the beast of burden of the captains of industry, on the other. The government has indeed provided sick benefits and old-age pensions, but these, in effect, were little more than a promise that when the man was worked to the bone he would still be able to drag on existence. The several institutions of governmental paternalism in Germany are what heaven is to the livelong invalid. And to me it seems that there is no necessity for being bedridden through life when the physician is able to cure. In this instance, we must doubt that the physician was willing to cure.

The good idealists who may differ with me on that point have probably never had the chance to study at the closest range the sinister purpose that lies behind all governmental effort that occupies itself with the welfare of the individual. The sphere of a government should begin and end with the care for the aggregate. The government that must care for the individual has no raison d'être, and the same must be said of the individual who needs such care. One should be permitted to perish with the other.

The deeper I got into this New Germany, the less I was favorably impressed by it. I soon found that the greed manifested had led to results highly detrimental to the race. The working classes of the large industrial centers were well housed and well fed, indeed. But it was a barrack life they led. At best the income was small, and usually it was all spent, especially if a man wanted to do his best by his children. It was indeed true that the deposits in the German savings-banks were unusually high, but investigation showed that the depositors were mostly small business people and farmers. These alone had both the incentive and the chance to save. For all others, be they the employees of the government or the workers of industry, the sick benefit and old-age pension had to provide if they were not to become public charges when usefulness should have come to an end.

I found that Germany's magnificent socio-economic edifice was inhabited mostly by members of the parvenu class, by men and women who dressed in bad taste, talked too much and too loud, and were forever painfully in evidence.

For the purpose of illustrating the relative position of the two worlds I found in Germany, I may use the simile that the new world inhabited all the better floors, while the old was content with the cellar and the attic. In the cellar lived the actual producers, and in the garret the intellectuals, poor aristocracy, government officials, professional men, and army officers.

Food being the thing everybody needs, and, which needing, he or she must have at any price, the men who in the past had "saturated" foreign markets turned of a sudden their attention to matters at home. The British blockade had made exports impossible. The overseas channel of income was closed. Exploitation had to be directed into other fields.

The German government saw this coming, and, under the plea of military necessity, which really existed, of course, began to apply a policy of restriction in railroad traffic. More will be said of this elsewhere. Here I will state that from the very first military emergency was well merged with socio-economic exigency.

The high priest of greed found that the government, by virtue of being the owner of the railroads, was putting a damper on the concentration of life's necessities and commodities. But that, after all, was not a serious matter. So long as the food shark and commodity-grabber owned an article he would always find the means to make the public pay for it. Whether he sold a thing in Cologne, Hanover, Berlin, or Stettin made little difference in the end, so long as prices were good. All that was necessary was to establish a Filiale—a branch house—at the point and all was well.

But as yet there was no actual shortage. Things were only beginning to be scarce at times and intervals.