Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/420

20 million quintals less than in 1913. Three fourths of the Czechoslovak crop is available for export. The latest reports state that it will be marketed through the Credit Lyonnais and the Živnostenská Bank of Prague. There is a difficult winter ahead of Czechoslovakia, what with the lack of coal and raw materials, and with crops not equal to the needs of the population. Yet it will be far less difficult than last winter. Unemployment has greatly decreased. Thus in the city of Prague, not including the suburbs, there were last winter 3242 persons drawing the unemployment grant, but on Oct. 31 only 785 were on the list. There is no political disorder and there are no strikes. The governmental machine is working much smoother, the boundaries are settled, except in the case of Teschen, there are no war clouds on the horizon, and bolshevism has ceased to be the bogeyman. On can hardly expect much improvement during the winter, but when spring comes around again, things should mend very rapidly.

Czechoslovakia is probably the only country in Europe which did not increase its stock of paper money during the past year. Of the money circulating in the country as a legacy of the Austrian regime about one third has been definitely retired and a good deal was hidden by Slovak peasants, so that today the financial columns of Prague papers speak of tight money. The interest rate on deposits has been raised by the banks to 3%, mounting to ⁠3+1/4⁠ on four months’ notice and ⁠3+1/2⁠ on six months’ notice. Banks are increasing their capital one after the other, thus the Bohemian Industrial Bank from 100 to 150 million crowns, the Agrarian Bank from 20 to 40 million. Much foreign capital, principally French and Dutch, is being invested in Czechoslovak industrial concerns. The Industrial Bank in connection with the Nederlandsche Handel Maatschappy of Amsterdam organized in Prague the Holland Czechoslovak Commercial Corporation Holbo, with capital of three million Holland gulden. The Czechoslovak crown is slowly climbing upward in the exchange markets. On November 20 it was quoted in Chicago at $1.70, the lowest quotation to which it sank; on December 1 it climbed up to $2.12 per hundred crowns, only about 11 percent of its normal value, but in comparison with its neighbors it is doing well. It manages to keep step with the German mark and it is far ahead of the currencies of the other portions of the former empire. Thus on December 1 Austrian crowns were worth only 86 cents per hundred, Jugoslav crowns $1.10, Magyar and Polish crowns had no value at all, and even the Polish mark which until recently enjoyed a higher quotation than the Czechoslovak crown went down to $1.70. When the world realizes that the Czechoslovak government is firmly established, that it will go slow on social and economic experiments, that the country has had a favorable balance in its foreign trade for the first nine months of the current year, Czechoslovak credit will improve rapidly.

The present ministry may not last until the elections which were planned for January. There is increasing disharmony between the two socialist parties, the social democrats and the Czechoslovak socialists. The latter complain that the social democratic party is taking no steps to silence the extremists in its ranks and that the national socialists do not get a square deal in shops and mines, where the trade unions are controlled by social democrats. There was a meeting of all the coalition parties on November 17, presided over by former minister Vrbenský, a Czechoslovak socialist; at this meeting the governmental parties which include the two socialist parties, the republicans (agrarians), the Slovaks and the progressives, agreed to continue their coalition in the interest of the country. But since then cable dispatches say that a real break has come between the two socialist parties. If that is true, Tuasr’s government will be reconstructed and national democrats will probably be included in the new cabinet.