RELATIONS OF THE RURAL COMMUNITY 745 



peasants who have fewer wants than the Germans, seem to gain 

 the upper hand. 



While thus under the pressure of conjuncture the frugal Slavonian 

 small farmer gains territory from the German, the advance of 

 culture toward the east, during the Middle Ages, founded upon the 

 superiority of the older and higher culture, has changed completely 

 to the contrary under the dominion of the capitalistic principle of the \ 

 " cheaper hand." Whether 'also the United States will have to 

 wrestle with similar problems in the future, nobody can foretell. 

 The diminution of the agricultural operations in the wheat-producing 

 states results, at present, from the growing intensity of the operation 

 and from division of labor. But also the number of negro farms is 

 growing and the migration from the country into the cities. If, 

 thereby, the expansive power of the Anglo-Saxon-German settlement 

 of the rural districts and, besides, the number of children of the old, 

 inborn population are on the wane, and if, at the same time, the 

 enormous immigration of uncivilized elements from eastern Europe 

 grows, also here a rural population might soon arise which could not 

 be assimilated by the historically transmitted culture of this country; 

 this population would change forever the standard of the United 

 States and would gradually form a community of a quite different 

 type from the great creation of the Anglo-Saxon spirit. 



For Germany, all fateful questions of our economic and social 

 politics and of our national interests are closely connected with that 

 contrast between the rural constitution of the east and that of the 

 west and with its further development. To discuss here, in a 

 foreign country, the practical problems arising therefrom I should 

 not consider correct. Destiny which has incumbered us with a 

 history of thousands of years, which has placed us in a country 

 with a dense population and an intensive culture, which has forced 

 us to maintain the splendor of our old culture, so to say, in an 

 armed camp within a world bristling with arms, has placed before us 

 these problems. We must match them. 



The friendly nation whose guests we are does not yet know such 

 problems ; several of them this nation will probably never encounter. 

 It has no old aristocracy; hence there do not exist the tensions caused 

 by the contrast between authoritative tradition and the purely 

 commercial character of modern economic conditions. Rightly it 

 celebrates the purchase of the immense territory in whose centre we 

 are here, as the real historical seal imprinted upon its democratic 

 institutions; without this acquisition, with powerful and warlike 

 neighbors at its side, it would be forced to wear the coat of mail like 

 ourselves, who constantly keep in the drawer of our desks the 

 march order in case of war. But on the other hand, the greater 

 part of the problems for whose solution we are now working will 



