American Agriculturist 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man ”—Washington 
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
Volume 111 
For the Week Ending May 12, 1923 
Number 19 
The Festering Sore in Civilization 
Three Hundred Million People Facing Ruin 
War. 
T he present European population is 
about 450 millions, or more than 
four times the population of the 
United States. Of this vast num¬ 
ber over three hundred millions are in a 
worse than subnormal economic and social 
condition as a result of the World 
Those of you w'ho have been 
reading the newspapers know “ 
that the finances of practically 
all the European countries are 
almost hopeless. It takes 33,000 
German marks or 71,000 Austrian 
crowns to make one dollar; and 
it takes 5,400 Hungarian crowns 
or 45,000 Polish marks to do the 
same; as far as Russia is con¬ 
cerned, it takes an inconceivable 
amount of rubles to equal a dollar. 
Even in the countries that are 
not so badly off, like Italy, France 
and Belgium, the present cur- i i n - 
rency is from one-fourth to one- 
third of its par value. I give up the attempt 
to make my readers understand what it 
means to live under a currency so changed 
as Germany’s, where it is 1/8000 of what it 
formerly was; but we can try to grasp con¬ 
ditions in France, Belgium and Italy. 
Just to bring this home to you: What would 
it mean to you if the dollars that you have 
in your bank, or that you have invested in 
first class securities, 
or in your farm, 
should suddenly depre¬ 
ciate so that they 
would be worth only 
one-fourth of their 
former value? Sup¬ 
pose. your former in¬ 
come was $800 a year, 
and that you were 
suddenly confronted 
with the necessity of 
adjusting your ex¬ 
penses to an income of 
one-fourth of this, or 
only $200. The ques¬ 
tion would not be 
what would you de¬ 
prive yourself of, but 
what your reduced 
income still permitted 
you to spend for your¬ 
self, your children 
and your family, and 
for your farm to use. 
The difficulties in 
these countries with 
the declining currency 
are simply heart-rend¬ 
ing. All the people of the middle class have 
been compelled to dispose gradually of most 
of their furniture, extra clothing,^ jewelry, 
silverware and pictures, at very insignificant 
prices. So that millions are living in bare 
rooms with empty larders and without more 
clothes than they have on their backs; and 
I am reliably informed that in Berlin alone 
every day at least fifty of these much-to-be- 
pitied high spirited middle-class people, in¬ 
capable of soliciting charity, are driven to 
commit suicide. 
By HENRY MORGENTHAU 
But the picture is still incomplete without 
considering what becomes of these people’s 
children who would have been their succes¬ 
sors, who would have made up the middle 
class of the future, and carried on the civili¬ 
The Truth About Europe 
I F you want a clear-cut, concise picture of the European chaos, you 
will get it in this article by Ex-ambassador Morgenthau. It is 
another one in the series that we are giving to state and interpret 
the plain facts about great world events in which farmers are in¬ 
terested. These articles are attracting a great deal of attention. We 
have received many letters, a few of them criticising, but the most 
of them commending our idea, that one purpose of an agricultural 
newspaper is to discuss and interpret some things besides farming in 
which farm people are interested.—The Editors. ^ 
zation. These children are not sent to school 
because they cannot be fed nor clothed by 
their parents. They are compelled at ten 
years of age to go and attempt to earn a 
living. Though they have inherited the 
taste for education, music, painting and other 
high attainments, they are absolutely and 
completely deprived of developing this ten¬ 
dency and of perpetuating the bulwark 
As has always been the case in history, the castle dwellers of Europe started controversies and wars 
that the middle classes had to finish and pay for 
of Europe, which has been the middle class. 
The teachers and scientists, and in fact 
almost all of the entire vast class that did 
the brain work of Europe (and do not let us 
forget how much they have contributed 
towards the progress of arts and sciences, 
and what tremendous benefits we have had 
therefrom), have had almost to cease their 
activities through inability to secure books 
and instruments to pursue their studies and 
experiments, and food to keep them alive. 
Their entire yearly compensation now just 
about suffices to buy them one suit of clothes 
or ten pounds of butter. 
But recently I had verbal reports from a 
man from Petrograd. He told me that its 
3,000,000 inhabitants has shrunk to about 
700,000; that hardly a single structure in 
the city has had any repairs since 1915, that 
the numerical as well as the physi- 
. cal decline of the population has 
been followed by the still greater 
decay of the great city itself. To 
a greater or lesser degree, this 
prevails all over Europe. The 
picture painted by Goldsmith, of 
“The Deserted Village,” though 
drab indeed, shrinks into a poetic 
effusion when compared with the 
tremendous tragedy that has just 
been enacted in Europe. 
Last year I had a conference 
with a group of Germans. They 
all were leaders in their various 
trades or professions. These men 
were between fifty and sixty years of age. 
Each one admitted that he had lost all hope 
of ever recovering from his present depres¬ 
sing financial status. The general story was 
that they had accumulated during their long 
active career by careful saving and judicious 
and fortunate investments from two hun¬ 
dred to three hundred thousand marks, and 
that their annual income from this amount 
was about fifteen 
thousand marks. Be¬ 
fore the war, this was 
a competency; now it 
means just one half a 
dollar! 
I asked the doctor 
present whether i t 
affected him, and I 
stated that he no 
doubt was an excep¬ 
tion because he could 
charge his patients 
modern fees. He ans¬ 
wered me, “Would you 
have the heart to 
charge your friends 
anything, when you 
know that they have 
nothing?” No doubt 
some of us have de¬ 
spondent moments, 
but these men, and all 
of their kind living in 
most of the European 
countries, are suffer¬ 
ing from permanent 
despondency. 
If one reads an ac¬ 
count of the Thirty Years’ War, when Ger¬ 
many’s population was reduced to one-third 
and its w^ealth to one-fourth, and the terri¬ 
ble results that followed this economic 
decline, famine and disease, he will be struck 
by the similarity of those awful times to 
those that now prevail in Europe. It is con¬ 
ditions such as these, just a few of which 
I have mentioned, that constitute a problem 
that is troubling every thinking person in 
the world, including our American financiers, 
{Continued on page 418) 
