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
For the community of workers there are many stores, twenty-five grocery
stores, two slaughter-houses, a bakery, a flour mill, an ice plant, a
brush factory, two tailors, two shoemakers, a laundry, a hotel, eleven
restaurants, three cafés, nine beerhalls and two clubhouses.
[Illustration: _A Street in Essen at the Entrance of the Krupp Works._]
There is a whole staff of doctors to look after the workmen and
their families, and the strict medical treatment prevents contagious
diseases. The laws of the German empire require certain classes of
workmen to be insured against old age and broken-down constitutions.
This came through the efforts of Bismarck, and it applies to all
workmen with a salary not exceeding $500 a year. Alfred Krupp gave
$250,000 to the workmen, the interest of which is used as a fund to
encourage them to build their own houses and as a help for the needy.
It is loaned to the workmen at a very small rate of interest.
Besides these benefits he established private schools the purpose
of which is to qualify the children of the workmen to earn honest
profitable livings. A fee of five cents a month is charged to each
pupil, but if the child remains fifteen months, seventy-five cents is
placed in the savings bank to his credit.
Krupp realized that a contented body of workmen brings about better
results than unhappy ones, and he felt that his scheme was not only a
philanthropic one but also a good business investment.
In the war of 1870 Krupp guns were used, and in this present war they
have played a star role. The Kaiser sent his personal thanks to the
house of Krupp for all that they have done for Germany. Frau Bertha
is very proud of her works and also of the nickname of her howitzers:
"Busy Berthas."
MUNICH IN WAR TIME.
No matter what you want to do in Germany if you are a foreigner, even
a neutral, you have to go to the police. If you want to take a trip,
the first thing that you do is to go to the police and ask them if you
are allowed to go where you want to go, and then if you are allowed to
go you must return to the police exactly twenty-four hours before you
start and get your passport stamped.
Then you take your bread card, your butter card, your meat card and
your potato card to the bread commission. They cut off tickets for as
long as you are to be away, and in return they give you a traveling
bread card, a little book with twenty tickets in it. Each ticket is
good for either a roll or a piece of black bread, and for each week you
receive forty tickets. In the hotels where you stop you receive a meat
card on the days when meat is served.
[Illustration: _The Son of the Bavarian Crown Prince._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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