Word: westernisms
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last spring, Western Germany's economy was smothered by masses of inflated marks in which no one had any confidence and which bought almost nothing. No one felt like working, or selling, for piles of nearly valueless paper money. In one drastic piece of surgery, Bizonia's economic authorities called in all the old currency, issued only one new mark for ten of the old. Along with this severe bloodletting, the patient was given his economic freedom: all price ceilings were lifted, except for basic foods, coal, iron and steel...
Hurrah for Uncle Autumn. Western Germany last week was full of hope. The summer had been cold and rainy, but it had been followed by a glorious golden autumn. On the freshly harvested fields, which had yielded a bumper crop, children launched their kites into the brisk wind; it seemed, sometimes, as though the gaily colored Drachen rode high enough to touch the C-54s which droned overhead in their ceaseless shuttle to Berlin...
Second-grade pupils were learning a poem which summed up much of Western Germany's mood: "Speckled autumn moves through the country with long steps and mighty hand. It bends the slender trees and it rustles the stout ones. Then the ripe apples and pears and apricots come tumbling down. The boys and girls shout: 'Hurrah, Uncle Autumn is here...
Musical Chairs. About 22,000 students -twice the prewar total-have crammed into the universities* in Germany's western zones. Frankfurt alone has 5,000, and 4,000 waiting to get in. Because there were not enough seats, students have had to lug their chairs from class to class. The space shortage has caused an academic revolution: in the old days, any qualified student could attend lectures for four years without showing his stuff until final examinations; today he is graded on his performance in a weekly Praktikum (quiz section), may be flunked at the end of a semester...
...soft spots were also changing the wage pattern. In Haverhill, Mass., shoe companies asked 5,000 workers to take a "drastic wage reduction." The same day some 2,000 workers in the Western Electric Co. plant at Haverhill got raises of 8^ to 13(# an hour...