13. 4. 1922.
↑Dear Miss Addams↓
I cannot remember whether I sent you this set of photographs which I now enclose. If I have already done so, please forgive me.
They were taken during February, when Vienna was still in the grip of winter, at a function which the Mission arranged to interest some prominent Austrians in the work their own fellow-workers are doing for increasing food production by the Land Settlement Movement, and I thought perhaps you would be interested in them.
The development of the Land Settlement Movement is an extraordinarily satisfactory and encouraging thing, and gives us more hope than anything else that Vienna will yet recover.
I enclose some of our latest Leaflets, which will show you that we feel the promotion of this Movement to be the soundest way of relieving this Mission ↑the conditions↓ here.
The period of unemployment which everyone expected would come as soon as Austria should receive Credits has not yet become acute. It is a great thing that it has been this much delayed, because it will not be so disastrous in summer as it would be in winter, but none of us quite understand what the position today really is.
The value of the money has kept very stable for some weeks and has not varied much more than from 32,000 to 34,000 Kronen to the £.
Prices have also become more stable lately. The cost of living as regards food and rent is not above the capacity of the average working-man to pay. It is always difficult to say how they manage to buy any clothing, but it is quite clear that they do do so, and at the present moment, I should say that the position of the working-class as a whole was tolerable, ↑though at a very low standard.↓
That part of them ↑it↓ which is incapacitated from earning full wages is of course in great distress on account of the high prices.
Salaries have for the most part gone up, so that ↑middle class↓ people who are in full work are not actually seriously short of food, but the distress among those who cannot earn keeps increasing, ↑& some employments are still very badly paid even at the Austrian standard.↓ [page 2]
We have had a spell of cold weather, which shows no sign yet of changing to real spring, and this adds of course very much to people’s misery.
People are very gloomy about next winter, as they do not expect to be able to keep up the present level of trade activity, but there has been so much prophecy of catastrophe that one hesitates to repeat the warning that a collapse must come unless things are put on a sounder economic basis.
Meanwhile, I can only repeat that the Land Settlement Movement is the soundest way for the Austrians to tide over the difficult period of [reestablishing] trade, and we believe that help given to this will bring back one-hundredfold return in the prevention of destitution and illness next winter.
All the visitors whom we take to see the Settlements are enormously impressed with the courage and energy of the men who are starting [them] and who are working against such fearful difficulties. It makes people [realize] what a capacity for recovering there is in the people here, and how well worth helping they are.
I am also sending you a copy of the plan we have made for developing permanent international work here, following on from our Relief Work.
We want, in every way possible, to work through existing [organizations] rather than to create new ones, and the W.I.L. will certainly be one of the most important of these.
Of course, what we can do will depend very much on the people who are able to stay on here or to come out next winter. The main part of the Mission Work is closing in May. Some of it, especially the Mass Distribution of Food Packets for Young Children, we do not anticipate resuming next winter.
The provision and distribution of milk, we propose to continue till October.
In May, the Government is dropping its policy of a maximum price for milk, and we believe that this will have the effect of greatly increasing the milk supply, and that our present methods of securing fresh milk will no longer be practicable. ↑necessary↓.
The difficulty will then be one of finding money to subsidize the milk for the mothers who cannot pay the market prices.
We shall continue during the summer to help the Land Settlements and to spread publicity about them, feeling that this is an excellent way of spreading international interest among working people.
So far as we can see for next winter, the chief need will be to supply clothing, and to help the Hospitals, Children’s Homes and Anti-Tuberculosis Work. We also want to continue help for individual cases, especially among the professional and salaried classes and for old people.
We want to extend the Adoption Scheme, and as conditions improve, to have it developed into a Correspondence Scheme which will keep children of different countries in touch with each other. [page 3]
Unless there is severe unemployment, we do not think that Mass Feeding should be necessary, and it is extremely unlikely that funds will be forthcoming. Unemployment is too serious in England and America to make it possible to raise funds to help distress due to it here.
The American Friends’ Service Committee is, I believe, hoping to send two or three workers and more funds for next winter, and we shall be sending out an appeal in September, describing what the conditions are and how much help is really urgently needed.
In view of the terrible conditions in Russia, we are of course extremely anxious not to ask for a penny more than is actually necessary here to save the people whom we have been helping so long.
↑Please give my love to Miss Smith. Edith Pye is still in England & not in very good health I am sorry to say. Miss Courtney is also not very well. She has just come back after a month in England on business. Dorothy North is shortly leaving us for Russia where the conditions are so terrible that our workers say no report can possibly exaggerate them. You will have heard probably that we have lost two workers in Russia & two ↑one↓ in Poland from Typhus, but the danger from that will be practically over now thank goodness.
Dorothy Detzer is away on a holiday in Italy -- I think she will be going back to America early in June.
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