The Influence of Protection on 

 Agriculture in Germany 



Nothing in German political history of to-day has 

 been more remarkable than the results of the recent 

 by-elections to the Reichstag, at Usedom-Wollin and 

 Friedberg-Biidingen. Both are essentially agrarian con- 

 stituencies, and the latter specially was represented for 

 seventeen years by one of the chief Agrarian leaders in 

 Germany, Count Oriola, a pillar of the formidable Union 

 of Farmers, the organisation of Prussian and other 

 Junkers. Yet in both the Agrarian candidates have sus- 

 tained a crushing defeat, and that at the hands of the 

 Social Democrats. Seeing that the latter had at no time 

 in the course of their previous history been able to obtain 

 anything like a solid footing in the agricultural districts, 

 and at the general election of 1907 lost enormously pre- 

 cisely in the rural and semi-rural constituencies, the present 

 remarkable swing of political opinion among the agricul- 

 tural population cannot but be regarded as a symptom 

 of profound unrest, due to some formidable cause. A 

 peasant population, which in Germany, as elsewhere, is 

 not only dominated by the squire and parson, but by the 

 whole chain of traditions and conceptions handed down 

 from centuries before, is not easily moved even on the 

 road which lies nearest to it, and when we see it swing- 

 ing round within a short period of three years from 

 extreme conservatism to extreme revolutionism, flouting, 

 as it were, all authority and all traditions, we are entitled 

 to suppose some very powerful agency at work. 



What is that agency? The Socialist Vorw'drts* in 

 commenting upon the result of the by-election at Fried- 



* June 25, 1910. 



