GERMANY. 



31 



the first year a higher speed than 10 kilometres an 

 hour, and t> reduce I lie tolls for vessels which save 

 the least by following this route in preferen 

 that of the Scandinavian st raits. 



The imperial post "Mice in ls<(4 carried 1.117.742.- 

 678 letter-. 407.u09.652 postal cards, 51i>.n'.i:5.58l cir- 

 culars, pamphlets, and books. :;_>. !i^.-">^() samples, 

 and stil.77N.:!29 ne\vspa]!ers. and money orders 

 amounting to 19.371.152.127 marks. The Bavarian 

 post ollice carrieil 118.130.150 letters. 26.307.720 

 postal cards. 42.375.440 circulars, etc.. 2.6<>'- 

 samples. 12n.94N.4<)!i journals, and money orders of 

 the amount of 1.736.6M.951 marks. The bu- 

 of the Wiirtemberg post ollice comprised 46.281.572 

 letters. 14.sn6.5n>< p.^tal cards. 22.769.779 circulars, 

 etc.. 1,069,640 samples, 45,859,834 journals, and [ 

 245.936 mark? of remittances. The receipts of the 

 imperial post office were 269.77 S .002 marks, and 

 expenses 24'.i.360.749 marks; the receipts of the Ba- 

 varian post office were 23. 977.433 marks, and ex- 

 penses 21.966.266 marks; the \Vilrtemberg post 

 office took in 11,906,133 marks and expended 10,- 

 357.150 marks. 



The telegraphs of the imperial post office had in 

 1^.14 a total length of 68.108 miles, with 256.0:34 

 miles of wire ; the number of internal dispatches in 

 1894 was 19.842.797. and of international dispatches 

 -.728. The Bavarian telegraph lines have a 

 length of 7.907 miles, with 24,825 miles of wire, 

 and in 1894 they transmitted 1.746.610 internal and 

 5nii,285 foreign messages. \Viirtemberg has 3.052 

 miles of lines, with 7.906 miles of wires, over which 

 during the year 609,767 internal and 170,285 foreign 

 messages were sent. 



Currency. After the establishment of the em- 

 pire an imperial currency system was adopted and 

 the former currencies of the individual states were 

 called in. Gold was made the sole standard, whereas 

 silver had been the principal medium of internal 

 payments, and the new mark currency was coined 

 from 1872 out of gold paid by France as war in- 

 demnity. When it was found that a large propor- 

 tion of the gold left the country the decree abolishing 

 the legal-tender quality of the thaler, the former 

 unit of value in the" German monetary union, 

 was suspended, and a large quantity of thalers that 

 had been redeemed were reissued. In later years 

 the thalers. while still legal tender, were gradually 

 withdrawn from circulation, so that there remained 

 in 1895 only about 400.000.000 marks of the old 

 currency, of "which 51.500.000 marks were Austrian 

 thalers." coined before 1867. Of the new German 

 currency. 2.891.452.900 marks had up to the end of 

 1S94 been coir.ed since 1872 and remained in circu- 

 lation, except the indeterminate amount exported 

 and melted. Of the new silver subsidiary currency, 

 475.493.900 marks had been coined and" not with- 

 drawn: of nickel coins, 52.429.000 marks: and of 

 copper, 12.660.700 marks making the total amount 

 of the new imperial coin a ire 8,432,036,500 marks. 

 The treasury notes, amounting to 120.000.000 marks, 

 are not leiral tender. The number of banks of 

 decreased from 13 in 1890 to 8 in 1894, owing to the 

 heavy tax on emissions exceeding the coin reserve. 

 The bank notes in circulation at the end of 1894 

 amounted to 1.173.629.000 marks, of which 45.986,- 

 000 marks were covered by the reserve funds. The 

 20-mark piece, or double" krone, contains T'96495 

 grammes of gold 900 fine, equal to 7 1 16846 grammes 

 of pure gold. The silver mark weighs 5'5 grammes 

 and contains 5 grammes of pure silver. The mark 

 is divided into 100 pfennige. There are 5-mark and 

 2-mark silver coins, as well as mark pieces and frac- 

 tional coins worth 50 and 20 pfennige. The value 

 of the mark is 23'8 cents in United States currency. 



The Reichstag. The 397 members of the Reich- 

 stag in 1896 were divided in respect to party as fol- 



low : German Conservatives, 58: Rcichspartei, or 



1 'ons. 'natives. 27 ; National Liberal- 

 man Reformel party, i: J >: Anti-Semites. 2 : Liberal 

 I'liion. 14: People's party. 25: Farmer:-' I'liion, 4; 

 Center, or Clerical party, 96; Gm-lphs. 7 : |- 

 19; Alsatians. 9 ; Danes. l : Social Democrat - 

 Independents. 10: vaeancie-. I. 



The rejection by the Reichstag of the antirevo- 

 lutionary bills introduced in ls,t.j by Prince llohcn- 

 lohe impelled the Government to apply with greater 

 rigor any provisions in existing laws that were cal- 

 culated to hamper the activity of the Socialist {.ar- 

 ty. The growing frequency of prosecutions for 

 li' imtjvxte and the restriction as far as the law 

 permitted of the liberty of speech and of combina- 

 tion and meeting caused more alarm among the 

 Liberals than among the Socialists. The Anti- 

 Semitic and Christian Socialist movements ended 

 by being tributary feeders to the Socialist agitation. 

 Dr. Stocker, forced to resign from the Conservative- 

 party, added, from the few adherents who clung to 

 him. the new group of the Christian Socialists to 

 the long list of German political parties. They re- 

 mained antagonistic to the Social Democrats, "with 

 whom the Radical Young Christian Socialists affil- 

 iated. The Extreme Conservatives were dismayed 

 by the misdeeds and flight of their former leader, 

 Baron von Ilammerstein. who was arrested at Athens 

 and finally tried and convicted of forgery and em- 

 bezzlement on April 22. The National Liberals re- 

 mained without purpose or initiative. Radicalism 

 was permanently disabled by the split in its ranks 

 by the secession of 1893, and has not been able to 

 recover lost ground, except the branch called the 

 People's party, which flourishes in south Germany. 

 The Roman Catholic Center still presented an un- 

 broken front to its adversaries both of the Right 

 and of the Left, and still held the balance of power. 

 The Social Democrats, with 2.250.1 00 voters behind 

 them, formed a solid phalanx that no other j arty 

 could rival for discipline or numbers. The most ag- 

 gressive element in politics was the Agrarian group. 

 On Jan. 16 Graf Kanitz and his friends introduced in 

 the Reichstag a bill for the establishment of a state 

 monopoly of imported cereals, a proposal that had 

 already been twice rejected. Its Conservative and 

 Anti-Semitic supporters could now muster only 97 

 votes, while 219 were cast adversely. The Colonial 

 party, greatly encouraged by the Emperors mes- 

 sage to President Kriiger of the Transvaal and by 

 the tcast which he proposed to a greater German 

 Empire beyond the seas, clamored for a stronger 

 navy. A bill for increasing the taxation and boun- 

 ties on sugar, introduced on March 2, was the first 

 measure that the Government ever presented after 

 carrying it through the Federal Council by a nar- 

 row majority. Against this measure for the benefit 

 of the sugar growers and refiners of Saxony, Han- 

 over, Brunswick, and Anhalt were arrayed all the 

 south German states except Hesse and four of the 

 north German states, as well as the two llanse 

 towns. Not in this measure alone, but in a mar- 

 garine bill, rendering the manufacture and sale of 

 this article of food for the poorer classes as difficult 

 as possible by the insertion of numerous restrictions 

 and regulations, and most of all in the Stock Ex- 

 change Reform bill, did the Government bow to the 

 demands of the Agrarian League. The margarine 

 bill was intended by the Government as an extension 

 of the law of 1887, which had proved inadequate 

 to prevent the sale of that product as real but- 

 ter. In its final form some of the vexatious amend- 

 ments tacked on by the Agrarians for the purpose of 

 crushing the margarine industry were stricken out. 

 The ministry accepted a regulation forbidding the 

 sale of butter and margarine in the same room. An- 

 other important point is the prohibition of the use 



