Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/251

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trade was doing, but incidentally and as by a side-wind, he blew to bits the contention of Messrs. Kitson and Johnston that there was no unemployment in Germany. They were quite right in a sense because the unemployed were got rid of by putting two men to do one job. "Government offices," he says, "are enormously over-staffed, and the late Dr. Rathenau estimated the number of 'Invisible unemployed' at four millions. Taking into consideration the decreased area of Germany, officialdom experienced an increase of 49 per cent. in 1920, compared with 1914—a remarkable figure considering the disappearance of the army and navy." It certainly is a remarkable figure and helps to account for many things. But it was on the point of capital expenditure that we turned to Mr. Dane. "Capital construction," he says, "is being indulged in on a colossal scale; one sees new factories and buildings, the latest machines, and improvements everywhere. Germany is, in fact, going through much the same phase in an intenser form as we experienced in the days of E.P.D. The causes in her case are the finance policy, the non-collection of taxes and the ever-rising prices, which make construction cheaper to-day than it will be to-morrow. . . . We have the anomaly of a