London, Jan. 22.
Radio statements by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, that the German worker is better off than the British, are chal-longed by Mr. P. J. Dollan, second Labour Provost of Glasgow, in an article published here.
Mr. Dollan, who was one of the driving forces behind the British Empire Exhibition in 1938 and has been remarkably successful in attracting new industry to Clydeside, produces facts and figures from German sources to prove conclusively that British workers enjoy an income, a food supply and a social service organization which finds no parallel in Germany.
The best guide to the standard of living in a country, Mr. Dollan says, is the national income per head, the average income received by every member of the community. In Britain this is £112 per year. In Germany, the average is 1,046 Reichsmarks. The German official statisticians say that a fair exchange rate is seventeen Reichsmarks to the pound. At this rate, the average income per head of the German people is £61, or just a little more than half the British figure.
Quoting German statistics, Mr. Dollan points out that the average consumption of meat per head of the German population in 1997 was 45.9 kilogramms while the average for Britain in 1936 was 65.1 kilogramms, or nearly half as much again as the German.
The average Briton consumed 80 per cent, more sugar than the average German, 75 per cent, more fish, and between 25 and 30 per cent, more butter and eggs. Believe it or not, he also drinks more beer.
A British miner, who is anion the lowest paid people in the community, in the first quarter of 1939, earned a little less than twelve shillings a shift, the German earned hardly more than eight shillings. The textile worker is another relatively poorly paid group in Britain. In. Germany in 1937, the average weekly earnings of textile workers worked out at 29 shillings; in Britain as far back as 1935, the average was 36s. 6d, and there have been substantial increases
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