berg-Biidingen, put the matter in a nutshell when it said : 

 "A portion at least of the small farmers have now at last 

 realised that they had been duped by the Union of 

 Farmers and had been sacrificed in the interests of the 

 large landlords." Those who have followed German home 

 politics during the last decade will not need to be told 

 what this means. It means that the small farmers have 

 become disappointed with the Agrarian tariff of 1902, 

 which they had been induced to support as a measure 

 calculated to further their interests, but which has ulti- 

 mately turned out to be to their disadvantage and to 

 further the interests only of the large landed proprietor. 

 It is, then, according to the Socialist organ, the discovery 

 that high Protection has brought them great harm that 

 has induced the small farmers to revolt against the Junkers 

 and is driving them into the most uncompromising oppo- 

 sition to the present order of things. 



There is a good deal of truth in this view, for though 

 the last Agrarian tariff has only been in operation four 

 years, its detrimental effect on the economic condition of 

 the small landholder and farmer is becoming patent to all 

 students of German agriculture. It is desirable that in 

 this country, too, the public should know what this effect 

 is, seeing that our Tariff Reformers lay great stress on 

 the benefits which small farming would derive from pro- 

 tective duties on agricultural produce, and even profess 

 to see in them the basis on which a class of peasant pro- 

 prietors could be created and reared afresh in this country. 



There was a time, as everybody knows, when the 

 German Agrarians were most passionate Free Traders. 

 "It is true," said Herr von Wedell, the leader of the 

 Conservatives in the Reichstag, as late as 1877,* "that 

 there are duties on some agricultural produce, such as 

 hops, butter, cheese, and pigs. But these duties are 

 purely financial, and I can tell you— I think all the German 



* Janssen, " Liberate Bauernpolitik," Berlin, 1910, p. 53. 



