Because manufacturers, financiers!
and business men. large and small, see
that capital Is shrinking with the!
franc and tlint consequently the life
blood of industry is drying up. Per
sons on e. fixed income are becoming
Impoverished. Salaries have lost the ‘
vast bulk of their purchasing power.
There have been attempts at salary
readjustment, but these could not
keep pace with the sinking franc.
Persons with incomes dependent upon
bonds and other investments of inflexi
ble return are facing ruin. How these
so-called rentiers are suffering is illus
trated thus: One who had 200,000
francs, or about $20.000, before the
war. now has only about $3,000. He
could live comfortably on his invest
ments before the franc fell, but now
he cannot live at all upon them.
If not many persons sympathize
with the rentier and hold that it will
be good for him to work, it still re
mains true that his capital has dis
appeared from industry and that in
dustry is just so much the poorer.
All classes are adversely affected,
artisans, workers and the middle class,
the middle class worst of all. Every.
industry and every line of business
Is threatened with paralysis. Even |
the farmers, the most favored pro-j
diners, are feeling the pinch of con
tracting capital. They sell tlieir prod- |
u< t for higher prices, but the money
they get lias relatively little value.
Inflation Is Blamed.
Onlv physical properties are secure
and what would be the economic good
of these in a nation economically at
a standstill? Inflating, say the econ
omists. caused all the trouble. In
flation is so easy, so tempting, so
fatal. But the politicians were not
so sunk In opportunism as they look.
