Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 86, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1917 — BABIES STARVE IN THE STREETS [ARTICLE]

BABIES STARVE IN THE STREETS

Neutral Traveler Paints Harrowing Picture of Pitiful Con-, ditions in Vienna. ONLY THE WEALTHY GET FOOD and Children Succumb to Hun§tetand Want—Gloom and on People. London.—From a \eutral who has spent prolonged periods in AustriaHungary several time* since the war a Berne corresponded learns that never has the AustriaAcapital been in such a plight as now. \ftlen, women and even children succumbed to hunger and waut, and he is asstired that children have been literally dying in the streets. Nowhere Is there enough to eat, he says, except among the wealthy classes and the well-to-do farmers. The organization for the distribution of provisions is wretched, despite the fact that a “People’s Food Office” has existed in Vicuna since December 1 last. According to the organ of the Wholesale Purchasing Association of Austrian Consumers’ associations, prices have risen, taking Austria as a whole, by 104.67 per cent since the war began, but in Vienna proportionately far more. It is not merely that all necessities have become so exceedingly expensive, but that they are not procurable. The few who have money still contrive to purchase enough, but the great majority who have not money either go constantly hungry or depend on public kitchens, which since their creation have supplied the poorer classes in Vienna alone with 38,253,815 meals, at a total cost of about $2,165,000. 474,300 Dependents. At the end of 1910 there were also, in Vienna alone, 474,300 persons in receipt of government relief —grants of assistance —in other words, about one in four of the entire population of the Austrian capital. These government grants since the start of the war until the end of last year had reached the sura of $50,000,000, besides which there is a large number of destitute refugees in Vienna who have cost the State since the war began $11,625,000. And yet the burgermeister of Vienna has just been warning the public that they must be prepared for worse times still to come in the next two months. The clothing question, especially the problem of how to provide any kind ■of'boots or shoes,“is utmost as “difficult’ of solution as the food question. Actresses and others, who before the war went about in elegant fanciful shoes, now are glad to wear any castoff footgear, or even clothing, they can get, as also are many girls and women earning their living in offices. Even more acute is the fuel question in Austria-Hungary. The gloom and depression of Vienna, in short, with its restricted train service, restricted electric lighting — even in private houses —limited gas consumption and, worst of all, restrict-

cd heating, with a degree of cold seldom experienced, is so distressing that the neutral .who tells this story said if he had not been able to leave he would have lost his reason. The public and private, are all overfilled, and death Is reaping proportionately as great a harvest among, the civilian populatloa_JUk among the soldiers at.the front. ... In Vienna, and, indeed, in all the larger Austrian cities, there are now large numbers of houses and business premises to let. Moreover, as little removing as possible is done, because this has become so costly owing to the shortage of labor, of vans and of horses. In many cases young married women have returned to live with their parents, or several women friends have clubbed together to take a flat or house. It is not dwellings alone, however, which are everywhere to let, but rows of business premises, shops, etc., also are standing empty. The fifth Austrian war loan, which was to have closed on January 10 last, and which before that date was announced as so brilliant a financial success, has not yet been closed, and the hanks in Switzerland are being inundated with circulars, some of them marked “confidential,” and issued by the Vienna Banking association, offering all manners of inducements to the Swiss fly to Walk into the Austrian spider’s parlor. There is not a single Swiss managed bank in Switzerland which lias been tempted by these reiterated offers of Austrian war loan stock. —Austria, as a matter of fact," is already bankrupt. Her government does not allow any money to leave the country, even to pay for goods purchased in Switzerland since the war.