Prosperity Through Competition

NOTES

1 Wirtschaft ohne Wunder, 1953, Eugen-Rentsch Verlag, Erlenbach/ Zurich.

2 ‘Government Appropriations for Relief in Occupied Areas’, which provided some ‘first-aid’, as Germany was, of course, not covered by UNNRA.

3 On the day of the announcement of currency reform all banking and savings accounts were frozen, to be re-opened only several weeks later. The result, briefly, was to wipe out 90% of all savings, since every RM 100 in the old account became DM 10 in the new when accounts were finally freed.

4 While all accounts remained frozen, German Food Offices issued DM 60 per head of population on two separate occasions. This was done to enable people to pay for the necessities of life until the currency operation was completed.

5 Bills of exchange of the Metallurgische Forschungsanstalt’ were in troduced by Dr. Schacht, who used them to finance German re armament.

6 Mitbestimmung, or joint management, is a method of giving workers a share in management at several levels. Originally first put forward in the Works Council Law of 1920, it went into cold storage under Hitler to be revived and developed under Allied Occupation after 1945. Legis lation which made detailed stipulation about joint management was passed by the German Parliament in 1951 and 1952. Joint management is fully effective only in the coal and steel industries, where one-half (but one-third only in other industries) of the Supervisory Board is elected by the Works Council (itself elected by the workers). The Works Coun cil also elects one of the three members—the Labour Director—of the Board of Management.

7 The law was based on the old German ‘Guild Statutes’ of each individual trade which, in modified form, have survived into the pres ent time from the Middle Ages.

8 The German Council of the Trades Union formulated a law which would have protected trade occupational designations. For example, no one could have called himself a carpenter without having passed an approved apprenticeship and otherwise conforming to an established standard.

9 New legislation concerning insurance was passed early in 1957 by the German Parliament. One of its important provisions is that all social payments are adjustable with variations in the cost of living.

10This would correspond to something like Britain’s National Income and Expenditure Account which has been issued as a Government publi- Gation annually since the war.