Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Twelve Days in Germany (1921).pdf/62

 looking closer, however, to see who forms this animated crowd, we clearly perceive one and the same thing everywhere; it is only a small class of profiteers, rich men, their mistresses, retainers and flunkeys; children are hardly noticeable in the streets, especially the children of the workers. The workers have sallow complexions and look sick. Wild luxury reigns in the streets, excellent shops, packed with goods but where no working man can afford to buy anything. Free trade and profiteering also flourishes in the working men’s districts, but there are no respectable shops there, and a whole street possesses only one wretched miserable shop. This is easily explained—in workers' districts there is no one who can afford to buy things.

At the Parteitag I asked many workers how a working man lives in Germany at the present time: worse or better than before the war? The general answer was, undoubtedly worse than before the war. The average earnings of a working man are now 250 marks a week, there are some who earn only 220–230 marks a week. Prices are enormous. There can be no question of buying meat. They do not get sufficient bread. The State distribution of necessaries is almost reduced to naught owing to the influence of profiteers. In Germany every bourgeois has now the unlimited right to "speculate," to sweat the workers, and the workers have an equally unlimited right—to starve. Comrades told me that the workers cannot obtain clothing, shirts, that their linen is worn out, they cannot obtain clothing for their children; the housing conditions, especially in big cities, are terrible. Unemployment increases daily, extending now to hundreds of thousands of people. Those workers who have not lost their employment altogether mostly work only three days a week, and consequently obtain half the salary mentioned above.

The movement of the unemployed is increasing daily. So far the government has not ventured to adopt repressive measures, but of late it is obviously preparing for them. On Sunday when we were in Berlin at the "Neue Welt," there was a small but gruesome demonstration of blind people—men and women numbering several hundreds. Imagine two hundred soldiers of the Reichswehr and police armed to the teeth surrounding this