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ALAS, SO SOON! 57
has been in the finn for fifteen years - and against whom until recently no
complaint could be made in either a practical or a personal respect - does
not fully comply in one position with what is asked of her. All possibilities
should then have been exhausted, in order to employ her in another position
in which she could carry out her work in a way that was profitable for the
finn.
The former shorthand typist received compensation.
All possibilities should indeed have been exhausted, since the real
misfortune of older people is that, having once been made redundant,
they are unlikely to be employed again. As though they were afflicted
with leprosy, the gates of the firm are barred against them. At the risk
of boring the reader, I shall cite a number of replies given by
unemployed people to a questionnaire organized by the Gewerkschaftsbund
der Angestellten (and processed in the GdAjournal on 1 February
1929).
1. Former manager with approx. 400 Reichsmark salary. Obliged to
sell furniture and fur coat and let out a room. I am forty years old and
married. Father of two children (boy three-and-a-half, girl six months).
Unemployed since 1 April 1925.
2. Thirty-nine, married, three children (fourteen, twelve, nine).
Three years earned nothing. Future? Work, madhouse, or turn on the
gas.
3. Made redundant, because military candidates were taken on. I
sold my furniture. Before the war several businesses of my own , which I
had to give up as a result of the war and my call-up. When I came home
my Wife died. All my savings were stolen away by the great national
fraud (inflation). Now I am fifty-one years old, so everywhere I hear:
'We don't take on people of that age.' The final step for me is suicide.
The German state is our murderer.
4. I am spiritually broken and sometimes entertain thoughts
suicide. Moreover, I have lost confidence in all men. Thirty-eight yec
old, divorced, four children.
5. Future? Hopeless, if something is not done soon in some way or
another for employees like us, older but fully trained and still quite
capable o[working. Forty-four, married.
6. Future hopeless and without prospects. Early death would be best.
. rhis is written by a 32-year-old [!], married and father of two children.
The employers counter these tearful confessions with an assault upon
age settlements, whose inflexibility does indeed provoke many diffintIties
today. 'The present structure of wage settlements, which in