Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and Heard

by Mary Ethel McAuley

The clothes Schein is especially designed to limit the sale of woolen goods, and many German women who had never worn silk before in their lives are wearing it now, because wool is so expensive. The ticket is very hard on the dry-goods merchants, the tailors and the men's furnishers, and they complain that their business is frightful, but Germany doesn't care for the individuals, she is looking out for the country as a whole.

MY TYPEWRITER.

It is not only clothes that are getting scarce in Germany, but every kind of manufactured articles as well. Many articles of furniture cannot be bought at all now, even second-hand, and the prices for things still in stock are enormous. A German girl I know was going to be married, and she wanted twin brass beds. She tried all over Dresden but could not get two single brass beds alike. She could not even order them, because she was told by the merchants that they were not being made any more. A perfectly plain brass bed, single size, was 390 marks.

All the old stock of manufactured articles, furniture, cooking utensils, goods by the yard, tablecloths, towels and sheets are being bought up by the people, because they say that the new stock which will be manufactured after the war will be of an inferior quality, and it will be years before they can get the good grade of goods again.

Just to illustrate the scarcity of manufactured articles I will tell the story about my typewriter. When I first went to Germany I rented a Smith Premier for three months for thirty marks. Every one said that this was a great bargain. When the three months were over I sent the typewriter firm a check in payment for three months more. I didn't hear anything from them for about a month, when one day a young man called on me and said that he had come for the typewriter, that his firm was not renting typewriters any more, but that I could buy it if I wished, for 390 marks. Reckoning a mark as a quarter as the Germans do, that meant nearly one hundred dollars for a very old rattle-trap typewriter that any one could buy in America for fifteen dollars.

I told the young man that I would not be threatened into buying his typewriter, and that if he took it away he would have to give me back my entire thirty marks even though I had had it a month. We argued for about an hour, and then he went away. The next day I got a letter saying that I could keep the typewriter the remaining two months, but that at the end of that time I must either give it up or buy it. At the end of the two months I sent another check for thirty marks, but the next day a girl messenger dressed as a boy appeared, handed me back my check, took my typewriter under her arm and disappeared. I hoped carrying it would make her good and tired.

I did not want to lay out 400 or 500 marks for a typewriter, and I had an awful time. It was absolutely impossible to rent a typewriter anywhere in Berlin, and I went everywhere. I put an advertisement in the paper and I got only six answers and upon going to all of these six places, I found that at each place the typewriter was a "Mignon," a little toy machine where you had to turn a wheel whenever you struck a letter.

After spending four days hunting, I finally bought a "Pittsburg Visible." I paid sixty-five marks for it, and it wasn't like any typewriter I have seen before—or since. It was very curious to look at—a long, thin affair with very weak prongs that were always getting twisted around each other. It must have been twenty-five or thirty years old. I was always in terror for fear something would happen to it, and whenever we had a guest I yelled, "Be careful and don't bump the typewriter," or "Don't lay your hat on the typewriter." When I first used it, it had the bad habit of getting stuck in the middle of a line, but after I had had it a year, it worked pretty well and I became very much attached to my little "Pittsburg Visible."

During the year I had my typewriter, typewriters became scarcer and dearer than ever, indeed it was impossible to buy any kind of a second-hand visible typewriter, and the new ones were about 600 marks. New correspondents coming over had an awful time and most of them had to borrow typewriters from friends. As most of the typewriters were of American make, it was hard to get a typewriter repaired, as the parts came from America. Ribbons and carbon paper were very expensive, and although typewriter paper doubled its price, it was cheaper than the paper here in America.

At the time I sold my little Pittsburg Visible in June 1917, I was living in a German boarding-house in Berlin. I believe in advertising, so I put an "ad" in the "Lokal-Anzeiger" which read: "For sale—cheap, visible typewriter, Pension Kostermann, Savigny-Platz 5." I thought that it was a very nice "ad" and it cost me one mark ninety pfennigs.