Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and HeardMcAuley, Mary Ethel
History
Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and Heard
McAuley, Mary Ethel
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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