Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

126 DER FUEHRERthe story of the blowing away of money in other countries, Austria,Poland, Hungary, France, Italy, Spain; and later, there were beginningsof the process in England, and even the United States. This was thetwilight of the age of progress: the death of money.On Friday afternoons in 1923, long lines of manual and white-collarworkers waited outside the pay-windows of the big German factories,department stores, banks, offices: dead-tired workingmen in grimyshirts open at the neck; gentlemen in shiny blue suits, saved from beforethe war, in mended white collars, too big for their shrunken necks;young girls, some of them with the new bobbed heads; young men inputtees and gray jackets, from which the tailor had removed the redseams and regimentals, embittered against the girls who had taken theirjobs. They all stood in lines outside the pay-windows, staringimpatiently at the electric wall clock, slowly advancing until at last theyreached the window and received a bag full of paper notes. Accordingto the figures inscribed on them, the paper notes amounted to sevenhundred thousand or five hundred million, or three hundred and eightybillion, or eighteen trillion marks — the figures rose from month tomonth, then from week to week, finally from day to day. With theirbags the people moved quickly to the doors, all in haste, the youngerones running. They dashed to the nearest food store, where a line hadalready formed. Again they moved slowly, oh, how slowly, forward.When you reached the store, a pound of sugar might have beenobtainable for two millions; but, by the time you came to the counter, allyou could get for two millions was half a pound, and the saleswomansaid the dollar had just gone up again. With the millions or billions youbought sardines, sausages, sugar, perhaps even a little butter, but as arule the cheaper margarine — always things that would keep for a week,until next pay-day, until the next stage in the fall of the mark.For money could not keep, the most secure of all values had becomethe most insecure. The mark wasn't just low, it was slipping steadilydownward. Goods were still available, but there was no money; therewas still labor and consumption, but no economy; you could provide forthe moment, but you couldn't plan for the future. It was the end ofmoney. It was the end of the old shining