i8 



material of agricultural production. There are also some 

 indirect ways in which Protection works — more subtly, 

 it is true, but none the less powerfully. We shall single 

 out only one, but that one is already playing havoc with 

 the entire agricultural system of Germany. We mean 

 the way in which the protective duties, by increasing the 

 prices for agricultural produce, enhance almost to a pro- 

 hibitive extent the rents, and ultimately, through the 

 rents, drive the land values (which, of course, are nothing 

 but capitalised rents) to a tremendous height. A few in- 

 stances will suffice to illustrate this important movement. 

 In the course of 1909 and the present year a number of 

 leases of Prussian State Domains fell in and were renewed, 

 and the rents, according to a return made to the Prussian 

 Landtag, moved upwards in the following manner.* One 

 estate used to pay formerly 24.2 marks per hectare; now 

 it will pay 30.5 marks. The rent of another brought in 

 formerly 19.3 marks, and now it will amount to 28.7 

 marks. A third estate was held on lease in 1873 to 1891 

 at a rent of 108.9 marks per hectare; from 1891 to 1909 the 

 tenant paid 120.2 marks; and the new lease was granted 

 at 139 marks. Yet a fourth used to yield 84.4 marks per 

 hectare; now it will yield 113.3 marks. The other dayf 

 the same administration leased out two other domains; 

 one, which formerly yielded only 12,000 marks, was now 

 leased out for 25,100 marks, and the other, which hitherto 

 carried a rent of 13,000 marks, will now bring in 30,256 

 marks. Similarly with the purchase prices of land. A 

 nobleman's estate (Rittergut) was bought twelve years ago 

 for 270,000 marks. That was the time of Capri vi's era of 

 commercial treaties. In 1908, however, two years after 

 the introduction of the new tariff, it was sold for 500,000 

 marks, and at the beginning of the present year it was 

 sold once more for 750,000 marks. J Within a dozen years 



* " Berliner Tageblatt," January 15, 1910. 

 t " Frankfurter Zeitung," July rj, iqio. 

 + " Frankfurter Zeitung," July 19, 1910. 



