STATE SECRETARY FOR THE RUSSIAN PROTECTOR IN THINGS AND IN MORAVA, PRAGUE, inv. 387, sig. 109-4/132

Page 69

English Translation

90 We workers, who are only dependent on the merit of our work, are extremely disturbed by the price-sharing and the trade of the creeps. We cannot buy from our earners for usury prices. Only Jews and chain traders who earn simply and without work can afford this. For this reason, we fully agree with the determination that you, Excellency, have taken against the exploiters and decomposing individuals, who take prey on underwork and honest merits. In this respect, the Czech workers will be fully available to you as employees and will lead to all the consequences of the fight against chain traders and Jews, who have been proclaimed on their behalf by the National Trade Union Centre of Workers. We will not shy away from the extreme means. Exploiters and idlers have no place in our ranks and have nothing to do with the protectorate. If the profit hunters are eliminated by their intervention, Excellency, they will not be comitated by any of us workers. In wage policy there are large divisions in labour services. The wages of individual groups of workers are very low and in terrible disproportion to the top earnings of other groups. By calling for a compensation of this imbalance, you would make yourself Excellency to earn a social uplift and political satisfaction of the broadest working classes. With appreciation we can explain that it is in the Protectorate for the implementation of drastic changes which are extremely beneficial for the workers. No Czech worker can deny that conditions have improved. It is only our wish that the supervision of compliance with wage declarations is so effective that every worker ./.