Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 94, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1920 — PAINTS VIENNA FORLORN CITY [ARTICLE]

PAINTS VIENNA FORLORN CITY

Pojish Artist Tells of Misery, Especially Among Middle Classes. FOOD OUT OF THEIR REACH Workers Make Apparently Huge Amounts, but Are Obliged to Spend It All on Their LivingChildren Suffer Most. New York—Nicol Schatenstein, a Polish portrait painter, who has just arrived from Vienna, said that the reason why he left the Austrian capital to come to America was because of the misery he had witnessed for four years and his desire to join his family, who are American citizens. He expects to become an American citizen, too. “The worst sufferers In Vienna,” the painter said In an Interview, “are those of the middle class, because they cannot afford to pay the high prices demanded for food. The working man is well paid, but he has to spend It on food to keep himself and his famfly, Thousands of the children of the masses have been sent to Italy and Switzerland to be fed, but the unfortunate children of the iplddle class remain in Vienna to share the hunger of their parents. When I passed through Holland two weeks ago the working people there were giving one guilder, or 40 cents American money, for the starving children of Vienna. Pay Barber More Than Professor. “A barber’s assistant In Vienna,” Mr. Schatenstein continued, “receives 46,000 kroner a year (about $9,000 in prewar days), ahd has to spend it all to live in an ordinary way. Compare this with the 12,000 kroner paid so professors of the universities In Austria and the 5,000 to 8,000 kroner a year paid to schoolmasters and office cterkw — a city •where food is scarce and dearer than It is in New York? I had plenty of money, but did not have an egg once a month. Milk I never saw. Butter was rare and dear. Meat could be had in the restaurants in small portions and potatoes on rare occasions. Bread was scarce and so poor that only persons with the digestion of ostriches could eat IL I could never find out exactly what it was composed of except that there was scarcely any flour. Wood, ’ straw, rye and dried bushes were all chopped up fine and baked Into a hard cake to be sold as bread. “The poor could eat dog sausage, and the rich could buy horse sausage.

but I could never accustom myself to eat such food. Instead, I went hungry often wlth'money In my pocket “During oue of the hunger riots in the city last winter, I saw the mob knock a police officer off his horse and shoot the animal. Half an hour later the carcass had been cut up and carried off by the famine-stricken cttizens. — “One chief source of the misery in Vienna was the lack of coal, because the poor could have neither heat nor light The glassware, porcelain and leather factories were unable to keep going because there was no fuel to drive their machinery. Only the wealthy have a warm bath once a week and burn one electric light for five hours a day when there is enough coal to drive the dynamos in the power houses. Multi-millionaires told me that I was a fortunate man when I was leaving for America. “I was not In sympathy with Austria in the war, but I think that in the name of our common humanity something should be done for the starving men, women and children of Vienna, especially the middle classes, who are the greatest sufferers. “Just before I left the capital city the doctors in the hospitals went on strike because scrubwomen received higher pay than physicians, or surgeons. “The peasants in the country have

food, but they will not send it to Vienna because they do not like a socialist form of government. Some of the best stores in Vienna keep open in the daytime and have fine artistic articles displayed In the windows, but If one enters to buy them the proprietor, or one of his clerks, says that they are not for sale. He will take orders for goods to be delivered when coal arrives and the factories start up again.”