Word: ruhr
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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With such solemn phrases, Adenauer appealed to the West German Republic last week to pledge its most precious asset, the Ruhr, to the great task of building a European community. Up for vote was German ratification of the Schuman Plan, which would put the coal and steel of Germany and France and their neighbors into an industrial super-government until the year...
Principles & Politics. Konrad Adenauer, who combines rigid principle with flexible political skill, had worked deftly to achieve an unexpectedly sweeping victory. The Ruhr capitalists, who compose the right wing of his coalition, yielded when he wangled from the allies a promise to speed up the end of occupation controls over coal exports and steel capacity. He had won other votes by his courage in replying to demagogic Communist taunts. He stated bluntly that the Schuman Plan would incidentally mean that the heartfelt issue of German reunification had to come second to Germany's joining in the West...
West German coal production is increasing by leaps & bounds (since 1946, output has jumped 300%). But though the International Ruhr Authority still earmarks 25% of German output for export (mainly to France), French steelmen complain that Ruhr shipments of coke and coal have fallen by 25% since 1949. And German nationalists are whipping up resentment against compulsory coal exports: they accuse the Allies of sending Ruhr coal abroad, and compelling Germany to import more expensive U.S. coal...
West Germany has abundant labor (1,300,000 unemployed), but output per man shift is 30% lower than it was prewar. A fourth of the Ruhr miners' homes were destroyed during the war. Today one in every ten miners is forced to leave his family in some other part of Germany, while he lives in a barn or an old air-raid shelter near the pits. At the Zollverein mine, near Essen, 1,500 homeless miners live in bleak, clapboard cabins sprawling in the shadow of the pithead. The turnover among them is immense. "They don't budge...
Battles to Be Won. Ruhr industrialists, French steel kings, militant trade unionists, patriotic Germans, patriotic French-could they work together for the common good? The amount of resistance to the Schuman Plan is a measure of how much it asks. The Dutch have approved it; the Italians are ready to. But Belgium and Luxembourg resist. So does West Germany, biggest steel and coal producer in continental Europe. Konrad Adenauer was forced last week to postpone a vote on the Schuman Plan until January, and without Germany the Plan will not work. Yet France had been the highest hurdle. Clearing...