358 



GEEMANY. 



The Director-General of the German Post- 

 Office, Herr Stephan, in a lecture on postal 

 and telegraphic communication in Germany, 

 stated that the number of letters posted daily 

 in Berlin is 240,000, and that 40,000 of these 

 are town-letters. This makes one letter for 

 every three persons. About 86,000,000 news- 

 papers were sent by post from Berlin alone 

 during the past year. The number of official 

 letters posted yearly at Berlin is 75,000,000. 

 Of the 500,000,000 letters dispatched by the 

 Berlin post during the past year, 15 per cent. 

 were official, 5 per cent, were addressed to 

 persons connected with art and science, 35 

 per cent, to commercial men and manufact- 

 urers, and 45 per cent, to private persons. 

 During the same period 10,000,000 telegrams 

 were sent from Berlin. Of these 4 per cent, 

 were official, 1 per cent, were newspaper tele- 

 grams, and 66 per cent, related to matters 

 connected with commerce and the Stock Ex- 

 change. It is estimated that each betrothal 

 in the educated classes brings in to the state, 

 on the average, a sum of 100 marks for post- 

 age and telegrams. If the 350,000 betrothals 

 which take place in Germany yearly (includ- 

 ing 12,000 in Berlin) were all among persons 

 of the educated class, this alone would repre- 

 sent a state revenue of 10,000,000 thalers. 

 The amount of money sent daily through the 

 post is 12,500,000 thalers, or 900 thalers a 

 minute; 500,000,000 letters were sent abroad 

 from Germany last year, and the gross yearly 

 receipts of the German Post-Office amount to 

 32,000,000 thalers. The total income of all 

 the post-offices of Europe is 125,000,000 tha- 

 lers, and their expenditure 100,000,000; the 

 difference of 25,000,000 is mainly shared be- 

 tween England and France. These post-of- 

 fices have 180,000 employes, 33,000 of whom 

 are in England, 27,000 in France, and 60,000 

 in Germany. Two-thirds of the German em- 

 ployes are married, and last year they had 

 107,000 children. Of the 3,300,000,000 letters 

 posted yearly all over the world, 490,000,000 

 are forwarded to their destinations by means 

 of international conventions, of which there 

 are nearly 1,000. A letter from Ohristiania 

 addressed to Melbourne has to pass through 

 from twenty to thirty post-offices, belonging 

 to nine different governments, speaking seven 

 different languages. 



The first legislative period of the German 

 Eeichstag having ended in 1873, a general 

 election for a new Eeichstag was held, on Jan- 

 uary 10, 1874, in all the German states except 

 in Alsace-Lorraine, where it was postponed 

 until February 1st. The most remarkable 

 feature of these elections was the large in- 



crease of the Centre, or Catholic party. In 

 the severe conflict which, during the preced- 

 ing year, had been carried on between the 

 German Governments and the heads of the 

 Catholic Church, the people of the Catholic 

 districts, in an overwhelming majority, sided 

 with the Church. In the first Eeichstag, the 

 Centre had numbered 57 members ; in the sec- 

 ond, it had 102, an increse of nearly 100 per 

 cent. The victory of the party was not lim- 

 ited to one or a few portions of the empire, 

 but a clean sweep had been made of nearly 

 every district in which the Catholic popula- 

 tion had a majority. Thus, Silesia sent 10 

 Catholic deputies against 1 in 1871 ; the Prus- 

 sian Ehine province, 27 against 20 ; Bavaria, 

 32 against 15 ; "Wurtemburg, 3 against 1. Only 

 the grand-duchy of Baden made an exception. 

 There, also, 2 Catholic deputies were elected 

 instead of 1 in 1871, but as this state sends 18 

 deputies, and as two-thirds of the entire popu- 

 lation are Catholic, the Catholic party was 

 again defeated in the large majority of the 

 Catholic districts. Besides the Catholics, the 

 Socialists (Social-Democraten) could boast of a 

 remarkable success. In 1871 they only elect- 

 ed 2 of their candidates, in January 1874, 9. 

 Of these no less than 6 belonged to the king- 

 dom of Saxony, where the socialist party devel- 

 oped a strength which greatly surprised its 

 opponents. They not only elected more than 

 one-fourth of the entire representation, but 

 the votes cast for their defeated candidates in 

 other districts were so considerable, that their 

 aggregate vote was estimated at more than 

 36 per cent, of the votes cast. To the Impe- 

 rial Government and its supporters the re- 

 iharkable success of the two parties which 

 preeminently were designated as " hostile to 

 the empire" (reichsfeindlich) was a cause of 

 deep regret and some alarm. A consolation, 

 however, was found in the fact that the ruling 

 party of the first Eeichstag, in whose platform 

 the consolidation of the national unity was the 

 chief plank, the National Liberals, had also in- 

 creased about 30 per cent, (from 116 to 150 

 members). The party of Progress (Fortschritts- 

 partei) numbered 48 against 44 members. The 

 number of Poles remained the same, that of 

 the Conservatives decreased from 40 to 21 , that 

 of the Free Conservatives or German Impe- 

 rial party from 38 to 25. The Liberal Impe- 

 rial party, consisting chiefly of Liberals of the 

 middle states, became entirely extinct. North- 

 ern Schleswig again sent 1 Dane, but the elec- 

 toral statistics showed the Danish majority to 

 be on the wane. Of the 15 deputies elected 

 by the new Eeichsland Alsace-Lorraine, about 

 one-half were in full sympathy with the Catho- 



