252 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



of this inner colonization can only be the application of the rural 

 system of the Northwest to that of the Northeast, beginning with 

 the transitional domains, such as the Altmark or the province 

 of Saxony : the establishment, therefore, of larger closed peasant 

 farms intermingled with large estates, but not of small peasant 

 farms with free divisibility as in the Southwest. The Western- 

 izing can therefore be only a Northwesternizing, never a South- 

 westernizing. For only historical differences, such as exist between 

 the Northwest and the Northeast, can be permanently bridged 

 over by artificial governmental measures, but not natural differ- 

 ences, like that between the lowland of Northern Germany and 

 the mountainous region of Central Germany. Although in the 

 modern political economy industrial development has, in conse- 

 quence of the improvement in means of communication and in 

 manufactures, become more independent of the configuration of 

 the land, and is frequently attracted by commercial centers, this 

 deep-seated difference can never be wholly obliterated. The most 

 recent development, with the increasing importance of electricity, 

 takes industry back again to the natural water powers. 



The significance of this domestic colonization is great enough 

 for the entire political economy of the German Empire. It means, 

 on the one hand, the only possible cure for the present agrarian 

 crisis, by means of compulsory liquidation of the large farming 

 estates which are most in debt ; on the other hand, a solution of 

 the question of rural labor, by keeping in the country the work- 

 ingmen who now emigrate, and finally an outlet for the surplus 

 population of the Southwest, and thus the elimination of the 

 threatening excessive division of landed property. Already na- 

 tives of Baden and Wiirttemberg have found a new home in the 

 distant Northeast. It is a particularly fascinating problem of the 

 domestic colonization, that human material of the Southwest is to 

 give to the Northeast the rural system of the Northwest. If we 

 thus succeed in stopping the flight from the country to the city, 

 and from the East to the West, there will result a retardation if 

 not a suspension of the growth of the large cities and of the de- 

 velopment to the industrial state, the rapid pace of which has in 



