GERMANY 



3495 



GERMANY 



however, upwards of 1,750,000 

 Deople who tilled the soil in ad- 

 lition to following a trade of some 

 sort. In the north the farmers 

 ..ere obliged to employ a great deal 

 of foreign labour from Russia and 

 Austria. Vast numbers of Italian, 

 Polish, Russians, and other Slav 

 peoples were employed as un- 

 skilled labourers and in coal mines. 

 In such conditions there was little 

 emigration. The flow of Germans to 

 the United States, which had been 

 a feature of the later 19th century, 

 and to South America, where they 

 established flourishing settlements 

 early in the 20th century, almost 

 entirely ceased in spite of the rapid 

 growth of the population. 



In 1871 the Empire had 

 41,000,000 inhabitants ; this num- 

 ber rose steadily until in 1910 

 there were close on 65,000,000, and 

 if a census had been taken in 1915 

 it would certainly have shown 

 70,000,000. This increase at the 

 rate of about a million a year 

 created in a short time a great 

 many large towns. In 1871 there 

 were only eight which had over 

 100,000 inhabitants ; in 1914 there 

 were more than fifty, and instead 

 of accommodating 4 p.c. of the 

 entire population, they were occu- 

 pied by 21 p.c. 



INDUSTRIES. Nature gave Ger- 

 many most of the elements re- 

 quired for industrial progress. In 

 the first place, the German coal- 

 fields were numerous and rich. In 

 the Rhine province, in Westphalia, 

 in Upper Silesia and on the Saar, 

 the output supplied 90 p.c. of the 

 country's needs. The mines of the 

 Ruhr basin are the richest and 

 have the Rhine close at hand for 

 transport. The French have a claim 

 upon them and other coalfields as 

 recompense for the damage done to 

 French mines during the Great 

 War, but this enforced export 

 ought easily to be borne, for it 

 has been estimated that there is 

 coal enough in Germany to last for 

 1,300 years at the present rate of 

 consumption. 



Iron and Steel 



For iron the Germans have never 

 been so well off as they are for coal, 

 and since they lost the ironfields of 

 Alsace-Lorraine, which were speci- 

 ally valuable because they lay close 

 to coal, they have far less than they 

 had before the war. Their ore is 

 also of a poor quality ; they were 

 obliged -even before 1914 to im- 

 port a vast amount, something 

 like 10,000,000 tons a year. Yet 

 their production of steel and manu- 

 factured iron went ahead so quickly 

 during the last two decades of the 

 19th centuiy that, whereas in 1882 

 British foundries turned out twice 

 as much pig-iron as Germany, by 



1912 the Germans were producing 

 half as much again as Great Bri- 

 tain. Thus within a generation 

 Germany forced itself into the 

 front rank of industrial nations. 



Two movements accompanied 

 this transformation, one a move- 

 ment of capital into groups con- 

 trolling vast sums of money and 

 the operations of armies of work- 

 people ; the other, a growing 

 dissatisfaction amongst the middle 

 and labouring classes, which took 

 shape in the development of the 

 socialistic party. Founded to all 

 appearance upon the doctrine of 

 Karl Marx, this was indeed a Cave 

 of Adullam to which all resorted 

 who for any reason were discon- 

 tented and desirous of change. As 

 the trade unions became stronger, 

 the socialists polled at every elec- 

 tion a larger number of votes, until 

 in 1912 they had the largest single 

 party hi the Reichstag. 



Between them the trade unions 

 and the socialist organization did 

 a great deal to prepare the way 

 for the change of system from 

 monarchy to republic which oc- 

 cured in 1918. They set up librar- 

 ies, evening schools, colleges for 

 manual workers, inquiry offices 

 which supplied information on all 

 manner of subjects, and made con- 

 verts by all means possible. 



Capital and Combines 

 The party also controlled a num- 

 ber of newspapers, of which the 

 most powerful, Vorwarts, made it- 

 self feared as well as hated by the 

 authorities. Thus the voice of the 

 discontented was loud in the land, 

 though it had little influence upon 

 the direction of aifairs, chiefly be- 

 cause the socialists mostly put 

 patriotism before principle, and let 

 themselves be deluded like the rest 

 of the population. At the same 

 time the employers formed them- 

 selves into associations for the pur- 

 pose of resisting demands for in- 

 creased wages and shorter hours. 



This was made easier by the 

 grouping which already existed of 

 all the larger capitalists and many 

 small ones anxious for protection. 

 Such companies as Krupp's, the 

 Allgemeine - Elektricitats - Gesell- 

 schaft, the Hamburg-Amerika 

 and Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping 

 trusts, the colliery combination 

 and the banking combines, had 

 made themselves immensely strong. 

 Individual captains of industry 

 and financiers gained great per- 

 sonal power. Hugo Stinnes, who 

 became prominent during the re- 

 construction period after the war, 

 was one of the most influential of 

 these, and maintained bis influence 

 in spite of tne revolution. There 

 were also among the employers 

 syndicates in a number of trades 



which were called cartels and exer- 

 cised a widespread control over in- 

 dustry. Sometimes they merely 

 aimed at inducing manufacturers 

 to sell at the same price, so as not 

 to compete against each other ; 

 sometimes they took entire charge 

 of the whole output, arranged for 

 its sale, and relieved the individual 

 factory-owner of any concern, 

 beyond producing the articles 

 required. 



These served in some directions 

 a useful purpose, but the feeling 

 against them steadily grew more 

 hostile ; they were denounced like 

 the trusts in America, and the 

 state was called upon to regulate 

 or abolish them. There were some, 

 however, and even some socialists, 

 who declared that the cartels repre- 

 sented the next step forward in 

 industrial progress, since they were 

 bound to be turned into state 

 monopolies for the benefit of the 

 people as a whole. 



Cheap Electricity 



It is certainly doubtful whether, 

 without the electrical combines, 

 Germany could have got such cheap 

 light and power spread so widely 

 over the land. A good many muni- 

 cipalities which had established 

 electrical undertakings found that 

 the public were better served either 

 by selling to or buying current 

 from a private company. Many a 

 village, many a farmhouse, which 

 could never have enjoyed the bene- 

 fits of electric light, electric power, 

 or electric heating if small enter- 

 prise had been alone in the field, 

 had reason to be thankful for the 

 far-reaching tentacles of Siemens- 

 Schuckert or the A.E.G. Especi- 

 ally valuable were these advan- 

 tages to those villagers who worked 

 in their own homes at such trades 

 as weaving, glass-making, toy- 

 making, embroidery, basket-weav- 

 ing, wood-carving, straw-hat mak- 

 ing, and so on. 



Half a million people are occu- 

 pied or partly occupied in home 

 industries altogether, a good many 

 of them in the towns, where they 

 are engaged in tailoring, cigar- 

 making, and the silk and hosiery 

 trades. Most of these occupations 

 are badly paid, 9s. to 18s. a week 

 being reckoned in some districts 

 a fair wage for a whole family 

 working from 10 to 12 hours a day. 

 When German goods began to find 

 their way into England again after 

 the war it was the products of 

 these home industries which came 

 first, and, owing to their cheapness, 

 had the readiest sale. 



Not far behind them came dyes, 

 in which the Germans had made 

 themselves pre-eminent, owing to 

 their willingness to spend money 

 on chemical research. In the early 



