CHAPTER VII

LABOR IN EUROPE

While in Europe we endeavored to make a brief survey of labor conditions in Germany, France and Italy, and to study the development of the International Labor Movement at the Labor Office of the League of Nations at Geneva, the International Federation of Trade Unions at Amsterdam, and the Red Trade Union International at Moscow. Lack of space compels us to confine ourselves to the barest outline of the present situation of labor in Europe.

As the industrial heart of Germany, the bone of contention between France and other nations, and the danger zone of Europe which menaces the world with future war, the writer visited the Ruhr and spent a week investigating the political and industrial situation there. We feel the necessity of describing this situation because it is the key not only of Germany, but also of the industrial situation in Europe, and is the chief menace to world peace.

France had tightened her last strangle hold upon Germany's jugular vein in the Ruhr. She had already, through the terms of the Treaty, obtained possession of Germany's entire coal fields of the Saar. She had seen Germany dispossessed of three-fourths of her coal in Upper Silesia, despite the fact that 60 per cent of the entire population voted in the plebiscite that the territory should go to Germany. Germany then had left the single large coal field in the Ruhr, producing 72 per cent of her remaining

supply of coal. If this could be taken and kept, her economic ruin would be assured. For this was her vital industrial district and contained her most valuable mines, steel, iron and other industries.

I write as a friend and admirer of the French people. During the war I wrote the strongest condemnation of Prussian militarism of which I was capable. Space forbids a full statement of the French case-the suffering of France in the devastated areas, her rightful demand for just reparations and adequate security, her memory of the wrongs of the German occupation of Belgium and Northern France during the war. The nature of the occupation in the Ruhr is not caused by any cruelty of the French people. It is only a part of the system of militarism with its inevitable inhumanity and injustice and menace of future war for the world.

But I must state now frankly the painful impressions I have received after visiting the principal cities in the Ruhr. I found the protest of Germany and the British, Dutch and neutral witnesses of the French occupation centering in the following seven points:

1. The blockade or paralysis of railways, posts, telegraph and telephones, and the military occupation of all the best and largest schools, so that thousands of children were prevented from attending school more than two or three hours a day in the few remaining overcrowded buildings.

2. The stifling of industry. I found tracks leading to the larger industrial works that had been torn up by the French soldiers so that coal could not go in nor the manufactured product be shipped out. Whether rightly or wrongly, the people seemed unanimously to believe in the deliberate attempt of the French to weaken their economic resources, and I found no Germans and few neutrals in all the Ruhr or in all Europe who believed that France's real purpose

was merely to collect reparations. Many admit to me that Germany could pay large sums. No one believes, however, she could pay the impossible sums thus far proposed. The industrialists are not eager to come forward to pay reparations or indefinite and incalculable claims which they believe will not hasten Germany's release but her ruin, and which they feel have been deliberately planned and carefully calculated as impossible of fulfillment, to prevent her recovery and insure her downfall or dismemberment.

3. The deporting of leaders in the Ruhr in all ranks and walks of life. At the date of my visit it was reliably reported that sixty-four Germans had already been shot, hundreds were in prison, and 78,537 had been evicted or expelled from the territory. And the numbers were growing daily.

4. The repeated and systematic seizing of private money from banks, treasuries of city halls, from printing presses and in several cities even the robbing of private individuals upon the streets. In every city I visited I found that one or more of the banks had had all the money and treasure taken from them by the French authorities. Some of these were the commercial and private banks, and some the private Reichsbanks. For instance, at Essen ninety-two milliards of marks were taken from the bank. All of this was private money kept on hand for several hundred thousand workers who are dependent upon this bank for the payment of their wages.

On Saturday, June 23, 1923, when I arrived in Mulheim I learned that the bank had just been rifled that morning. I found the French soldiers still in possession. I was too late to see the treasure taken away. I learned, however, that another robbery was taking place at that very moment just up the street. I proceeded at once to the Ernst Marks Printing Press, which has been printing twenty-thousand

mark notes for the banks and industrial works. Sixteen French officers and soldiers were in possession of the property, with an automobile and a large auto truck waiting at the door to take away the money. A large crowd had gathered outside. Finally the officers and soldiers came out. I was pushed back with the crowd as the soldiers cleared the sidewalk. The man on my right showed the suggestion of a smile, apparently at their failure to obtain the money for which they were looking. A French officer seized and shook him, saying, "Were you laughing at me?" The man replied, "No, I was not." He was then picked up bodily and thrown into the truck and taken away to prison.

While in Paris I talked with members of the Rhineland Commission. They admit the repeated taking of money from the banks in the Ruhr. In Gelsenkirchen I found that during eight days of a reign of terror private citizens were held up and robbed upon the streets by French officers and soldiers. I have in my possession a list of fortyfour men with the exact amount taken from each, totaling 8,783,292 marks. Upon inquiry at the Rhineland Commission in Paris I found that they admit individuals had all their money seized in the streets of Gelsenkirchen, that it was a "mistake" of the commanding French officer, who misunderstood his orders, and that the money will be credited to reparations. This is no "credit" but a debit to the honor of France and caused burning indignation of the whole population of Germany. The witness who told me of the robberies and crimes committed in Gelsenkirchen said, "Do you wonder that, when I had to save my wife three times in one day from violence at the hands of French soldiers, my son is growing up with all the other children to hate the French?"

5. In certain cities in the Ruhr the Germans have been

deeply stirred by the needless and gratuitous indignities and insults connected with arrests, personal violence and the beating of their citizens. I saw an aged banker who had been beaten with such violence that his ear drum was broken, his nose swollen and bleeding, and he will suffer for some time from the effects of his injuries. He wept as he described to me his beating and debasing imprisonment. I have myself investigated enough cases in person and seen enough of the bruised bodies of men to be convinced beyond any shadow of doubt of deliberate, intentional cruelty, insult and beating in certain cities that was wholly unnecessary. But in other cities I found the Germans testifying that their prisoners had been treated with consideration.

6. There is overwhelming evidence of the tightening grip of a terrible "hunger blockade" upon this last vital economic center of Germany. The people of the Ruhr know too well the meaning of this menace. They well remember the terrible years when the Allied hunger blockade was killing a hundred thousand women, children and old men a year in Germany. Even now in several cities in the Ruhr I found the bread line waiting, trying to buy food in gradually diminishing quantities. The French have never forbidden all food supplies, but these have not been sufficient to meet the needs of the population. Hunger strikes below the belt of every laboring man, every mother and every child. I have seen some children in the hospitals underfed, sick or dying from the use of spoiled milk held up too long in transit. I saw the bent, bow-legs of the children of the workers with softened bones, suffering from rickets due to undernourishment during the war. The doctor in charge of the hospital told me that 90 per cent of the children whom he had examined after the war were suffering from rickets and 10 per cent were left perma