Saturday, November 19, 2011

Occupy Wall Street Paris 1936. There clearly could have been no fascism without a failure to regulate capitalism.

Between 1918-1939 the French France lost 9/10 its value.
World War 1 had been completely fought on credit. Between 1929 and 1936 unemployment quadrupled (partial unemployment increased even faster and work hours became shorter)
1 of 6 Frenchmen out of work.
Statistic from The Hollow Times.

"Between 1930 and 1935 the French, especially those earning less or thrown on charity or on the dole, drew in their belts, cut down on inessential expenditures. Clothes worn for a longer time, were mended more often; walls went unpainted; upkeep was put off. Fewer children attended holiday camper, fewer families went on holiday, and more admitted they hadn't gone. There was less entertainment, less smoking (tobacco down 9 percent), less correspondence (letters sent down 5 percent), less heating (gas consumption down 5 percent). Saving and deposits feel steeply. But food consumption remained the same or rose: more meal, milk, coffee, sugar, fruit, significantly less beer,but wine made up for it. Calorie intake, though lower for the unemployed, remained above the dietitians' minimum twenty-seven hundred calories a day - in the provinces encouragingly higher. Suicides climbed, but the mortality rate kept falling, infant mortality by about one third over the first half of the thirties." (Ibid pgs. 34-35)

Between mid February 1934 and May 1936 there were 1.063 riotous assemblies. processions or demonstrations.
(Ibid)

An amusing antidote from the time period:
"A riot in France is one of the most remarkable things in the world. The frenzied combatants maintain perfect discipline. but there was no fighting at all about between bout seven-thirty P.M. and nine, when everyone took time out for dinner. When it started, no one thoughts of revolution; it was just a nice big riot. Communists, royalists, Fascists, socialists, fought shoulder to shoulder under both red flag and tricolor against the police and Garde Mobile. The fighting stopped on the stroke of twelve, because the Paris Metro stops running at twelve-thirty, and no one wanted to walk all the way home. Bloody, bandaged, fighters and police jostled their way into the trains together. Promptly at seven-thirty next morning the fighting started again." - John Gunther Inside Europe. The 1938 Edition.

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