state contains 75% of the industrial life of the former empire, and our natural market is found in the lands that were formerly provinces of Austria-Hungary.
Here is our great financial problem. We must pay for needed raw materials in western European and American exchange, while we sell our product for the most part to the East, and we cannot buy dollars and francs with Polish or Magyar money. When this problem is solved, we shall be able to import raw materials freely and there will not be such violent fluctuations in the value of our money.
The second difficulty consists in insufficient communications. Our railroads, used for four years and a half exclusively with a view to military emergencies, are run down and there is danger of a complete break down. A large part of the rolling stock came into the hands of the Allied armies after the defeat of the Central Powers; what was left was in bad condition. We worked with great zeal to overcome this trouble, and the Republic .spent 100 million crowns for new cars and locomotives and for repairs. That we did not labor in vain will be admitted by everyone who has passed over our railroads and the railroads of the other countries of former empire. But even hardest work and greatest financial sacrifices will have to continue for a long time, before the railroad catastrophe is fully obliterated.
Even now the progress is striking, but it will be at least a year, before our railroads can take care of the necessary traffic. In addition to repairing old cars we build 1000 new cars every month. Boats are running on the Elbe and we are ready to start water transportation on the Danube, as soon as the Magyar political problem is out of the way.
There is one thing of which the Czechoslovak Republic may justly be proud: we did not resort to the printing of additional paper money, as all the other new states have done. The needs of the state were provided for by taxes and internal loans, and we even succeeded in taking out of circulation two billion crowns without any untoward effects.
I am not a natural optimist and I realize fully, what a lot of troubles we have still ahead of us. I merely tried to give you an outline of the problems which we have to deal with, when we gained independence. We lost no time, tackled the difficulties and have greatly improved our situation. I am not anxious to get everything righted at once, for that would be surely followed by a reaction which would be dangerous for our weak organization. But hard work will bring the republic back to normal life. Since we are to a very large extent an industrial state, reconstructions with us a much more complicated problem than with the purely agricultural countries of eastern Europe. And yet we are today far better off than they.
ANNIVERSARY OF INDENPENDENCE.
In every Bohemian and Slovak settlement in the United States October 28 was observed as the first anniversary of Czechoslovak independence. In the old country the day has been made a national holiday, together with May First (Labor Day) and July Sixth (memorial day of John Hus).
In Chicago the celebration took place on the Sunday preceding the great day and was in charge of the Sokols. A large and picturesque procession paraded through the Bohemian streets and proceeded to Douglas Park, where addresses were made before the statue of Karel Havlíček. In the evening a play was produced written for the occasion by R. Jaromír Pšenka. In New York and most other cities the celebration was held on Tuesday, in the midst of great crowd and much enthusiasm. In Washington Colonel V. S . Hurban, military attaché of the Czechoslovak Legation, gave a luncheon on that day to military representatives of the Allied states; Americans of Czechoslovak birth were represented by Albert Mamatey, first vice-president of the Czechoslovak National Council of America.
Reports of rejoicing in the old country are not yet at hand, but great preparations were to celebrate independence day.
Long live the Czechoslovak Republic!
LABOR CONFERENCE DELEGATION.
At the international labor conference which opened its sessions in Washington on October 29, there was in attendance also an official delegation of the Czechoslovak Republic. The delegation consists of Jakub Soušek, bureau chief of the ministry of social welfare and Karel Špinka, factory inspector, for the government; Dr. František Hodáč, secretary of the Central Manufacturers Association, Jindřich Valdes, a manufacturer, and Antonín Kříž, merchant tailor, for the employers; Rudolf Teyerle, secretary of the Czechoslovak Labor Federation, J. Štastný, secretary of the Metalworkers’ Union, and V. Dundr, secretary of the Prague Federation of Labor, for the employees. In addition two distinguished women came with the delegation to attend the Woman’s Labor Congress in Washington, Mrs. Marie Meyerová, member of the Prague City Council and noted author, and Mrs. Louise Landová-Štychová, member of the National Assembly.
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