RELATIONS OF THE RURAL COMMUNITY 731 



God create him in his wrath?" The answer is: "Rents! Rents! 

 Rents!" says Byron of the English landlord. And, in fact, rents 

 are the economic basis of all aristocracies that need a gentlemanly, 

 workless income for their existence. But exactly because the Prus- 

 sian ''Junker" despises the urban possession of money, capitalism 

 makes him the rent-debtor. A strong, growing tension between 

 city and country results therefrom. The conflict between capitalism 

 and tradition is now tinged politically, for the question arises, if the 

 economic and political power shall definitely pass over into the hands 

 of the urban capitalism, whether the small rural centres of political 

 intelligence with their peculiarly tinged social culture shall decay and 

 the cities, as the only carriers of political, social, and esthetic culture, 

 shall occupy the field of the combat. And this question is identical 

 with the question whether people who were able to live for politics 

 and the state, as the old, economically independent land aristo- 

 cracy, shall be replaced by the exclusive domination of professional 

 politicians who must live on politics and on the state. In the 

 United States this question has been decided, at any rate for present 

 days, by one of the bloodiest wars of modern times, which ended 

 with the destruction of the aristocratic, social, and political centres of 

 the rural districts. Even in America, with its democratic traditions 

 handed down by Puritanism as an everlasting heirloom, the victory 

 over the planters' aristocracy was difficult and was gained with great 

 political and social sacrifices. But in countries with old civilization 

 matters are much more complicated. For there the struggle between 

 the power of the historical notions and the pressure of the capitalistic 

 interests summon social forces to battle, as adversaries of civil 

 capitalism, which in the United States were partly unknown, or 

 stood partly on the side of the North. 



A few remarks concerning this: 



In the countries of old civilization and of limited possibilities of 

 economic expansion money-making and its representatives play 

 necessarily a considerably smaller social role than in a country that is 

 still new. The importance of the class of state officials is and must 

 be much greater in Europe than in the United States. The much 

 more complicated social organization makes a host of specially 

 trained officials, employed for lifetime, indispensable in Europe, 

 which will exist in the United States only in a much smaller number 

 even after the movement of civil service reform shall have attained 

 all its aims. The jurist and officer of administration in Germany, in 

 spite of the shorter and more intensive German college education for 

 the university, is about thirty-five years old when his time of prepara- 

 tion and his unsalaried activity is completed and he obtains a salaried 

 office. Therefore he can come only from wealthy circles. On the 

 other hand, he is trained to unsalaried or low-salaried service, which 



