Saxon Experiment

"Make the unemployed earn their Dole!" clamored Saxon conservatives last Spring, forced the Saxon Government of Premier Schieck into a significant experiment. Results were made known at Dresden last week.

The Experiment. A call for Saxons to work in "labor platoons" was sounded by the Government. The work offered, it was clearly stated, would be hard, manual. Dikes would be built along two small Saxon rivers whose chronic tendency is to overflow. No labor-saving devices would be used, labor being the project's main object. Each platoonsman would receive a wage of 50 pfennigs (12-c-) per day, could eat as much as he liked thrice daily, must sleep in labor platoon barracks, seeing his family only on weekends.

The Result. Five thousand Saxon jobless promptly volunteered. Many were of the class called "loafers on the Dole" (an average German dole-drawer draws two marks [48-c-] per day). Others were too young to draw dole payments, or disqualified. Out of all the clamoring 5,000 volunteers (many white-collar men and former clerks) the Government selected 120 Saxons for its experimental platoons, sent them to dig wet mud.

The Results, All summer Saxony's toiling 120 have marched out to her dikes each day in squads. Sometimes waist deep in water, they have driven piles with heavy mallets, carted sand and stones in awkward wooden trays. Cost to the Saxon Government has worked out at 3 marks per day. Of this, 50 pfennigs represents the man's wage, plus 2 marks 50 pfennigs for his food. As former Saxon army barracks were used, and as the 120 washed their own bedding, the cost of lodging them was figured as nil.

The Conclusions-- Moneyed Saxons called labor platoons a success last week, rejoiced at getting some work done by men who would otherwise have squandered their Dole in idleness.

Saxon Laborites drew different conclusions: 1) The experiment has proved that thousands of unemployed are not "loafers on the dole" but men pitifully eager to do hardest work for lowest pay; 2) The fact that 120 men eating food bought wholesale and cooked in bulk ate 2 marks 50 pfennigs worth of food per day suggests that this is the minimum cost of adequately feeding adult males. How then can a Saxon on the dole, who only gets two marks per day, adequately feed and lodge himself?

Denouncing work under labor platoon conditions as "State slavery," Saxon Labor leaders demanded last week either "work at honest pay or an increase in the Dole!"

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