History of the German Empire

William Dawson

• Publisher: Ozymandias Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781531281731
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

AT the opening of the nineteenth century the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation still existed, after a thousand years of chequered life. Long decadent, it was now moribund, however, and perpetuated only in name an august sovereignty which at one time extended over a large part of the European Continent. Diverse in race, language, religion, and political forms, having no common bond in administration, law, justice, or military organization, the many parts of the imperial dominion were kept together in firm union only so long as they were subject to a strong rule, and when once the centre of authority had become weakened, decline and disintegration ran their certain course.

EMPEROR WILLIAM II. DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, 1900-1914 - THE REACTION

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DURING THE REMAINING YEARS COVERED by this survey of domestic affairs the spirit which rested upon German political life was in the main a spirit of reaction, notwithstanding that the elections to the Imperial Diet in the middle of the period produced one of those recurrent revulsions of national feeling which, impressive though they may appear to outsiders, merely emphasize the impotence of the democratic parties in an undemocratic parliamentary system. The new Chancellor was Count Bernhard von Bülow, who since June 28, 1897, had been Foreign Secretary in succession to Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, on his appointment to the embassy at Constantinople. With the choice of Bülow a new type of Minister entered German parliamentary life. Both Bismarck and Hohenlohe had graduated in the diplomatic service, but of neither of them could it be said as of Bülow that he was a diplomat pure and simple. Gifted in a rare degree with the courtier’s temperament, a polished man of the world of brilliant intellectual parts and fascinating address, and an accomplished orator, whose fluent periods hypnotized rather than persuaded, his strength lay less in force of conviction or will than in a large fund of astuteness, a thorough knowledge of human nature, and, above all, an incomparable acquaintance with every device and resource of the craft of politics. His defects are perhaps best indicated when it is said that, while he had none of Bismarck’s rough, downright strength of character, he lacked also Caprivi’s moral earnestness and Hohenlohe’s grave outlook upon life and the world.

Bülow was in no doubt as to the influences which had precipitated his predecessor’s retirement. The strongest of these was agrarianism, and against that rock he was determined not to break himself. The first domestic problem with which he was faced compelled him to choose whether he would have the agrarians as friends or as enemies, and as became a practised diplomat, he decided for peace. The Caprivi commercial treaties were to expire at the end of 1903. What was then to take their place? The question was one of immense importance for agriculture, and ever since the beginning of 1893 the Agrarian League had been preparing for the inevitable renewal of the fight between country and town. The question of prolonging these treaties was discussed in the Diet as early as 1897, at which time the Government set on foot the preparatory inquiries. For the conduct of these an Economic Committee was appointed, consisting of thirty persons, fifteen nominated by the Executive and five each by the Central Association of German Industrialists, the German Agricultural Council, and the German Commercial Diet. This revisory committee, of whose members the great majority were avowed Protectionists, elaborated the tariff with a view to a greater differentiation as between various classes of goods belonging to the same group. Hence it came about that when the tariff was issued in draft form it particularized nearly a thousand classes of goods. Upon the basis of this now highly specialized “autonomous” tariff, fixing maximum rates, negotiation was to take place with each country individually. Maximum rates were well enough. But now the agrarians raised the cry for minimum rates as well. What was the good, they asked, of enacting maximum duties when it was known that they would not be maintained against a single State? It was cold comfort to talk to the farmer of a protection which was beyond his reach; he would much prefer to know the protection of which he could be quite certain.

This demand of minimum duties the Government eventually conceded in principle in the case of agriculture, and henceforth it became the purpose of agrarian agitation to fix the irreducible duties as high as possible. In this the landed party was aided by a formal concordat with the Central Association of German Industrialists, a Protectionist organization representing especially the large iron and textile trades, the terms of which were that the agrarians should support higher industrial duties, in return for which the Association would not be found averse to an increase of the agricultural duties. The pressure which assailed the Government was thus pressure from two sides.

Early in January, 1901, the agrarians gave the Government to understand that when the commercial treaties came to be revised they would expect a substantial increase of the duties on corn, live stock, and all agricultural produce, and later in that month Bülow formally gave the desired assurances on the point. When the bill was produced in July it proved to be almost as highly protective to industry as it was to agriculture. About two hundred classes of goods were allowed to remain free of duty; in a number of others – notably raw materials and partially manufactured articles – the existing duties were reduced, but in the great majority of cases there was an increase. The duties on corn, live stock, and meat were raised all round, and the agrarians were relieved of duties on certain articles of importance for agriculture.

The new tariff obviously marked a clear departure from the policy pursued with so much success by Caprivi. It was the object of that policy to do equal justice to agriculture and industry, while making due allowance for the fact that Germany was becoming more and more an industrial country, and that the vital condition of that transition was cheap food for the working classes. Bülow professed that it was likewise his desire to show fair play to both of these great factors in the productive life of the nation – in his words, to “strike the balance between interests that are in many instances opposed to each other” – but with him agriculture had prior consideration. The proceeds of the old duties as a whole averaged in 1902 19 per cent. of the aggregate value of the imports taxed. It was estimated that the new duties would add a further 17 per cent. to the taxation of agricultural produce and 6 per cent. to that of industrial goods.

A long and bitter struggle over the tariff took place in committee, a struggle in which all sorts of antagonisms came to light – town against country, landowner against tenant, large cultivator against small, industry against industry, and capital of all kinds against labour. So long did the proceedings drag on, that no time remained for a full consideration of the tariff bill in the full House if it was to be passed before the end of the session. Hence came the irritating mimic coup d’état of December 13th, when, in accordance with prior agreement, a majority consisting of the Clerical, Conservative, and National Liberal parties passed the bill en bloc as revised by committee, directly the schedule of agricultural duties had been disposed of. The effect was to prevent discussion of any one of the seven hundred duties affecting industry and manufacture.

The new tariff was a triumph for the agrarians, and particularly the large corn-growers of the East of Prussia. They did not get all they wanted, but they got more than they expected, and on the whole they were well satisfied, for the corn duties, reduced in 1892, were now raised beyond the earlier level; those on wheat ranged from £2 15s. to £3 5s. a ton, those on rye and oats from £2 10s. to £3, those on barley from £2 10s. to £4, and the duty on flour was fixed at £9 7s. 6d. By way of concession to the working classes, whose staple food articles were again to become dearer, the Government agreed to add to the new Tariff Law a clause (the “Trimborn clause"), proposed by the Clericals, providing that any increase in the revenue from the duties on corn, flour, and meat in excess of the average amount yielded during the years 1898 to 1903 (as calculated per head of the population) should be passed to a fund which should be used at some future time for the benefit of the survivors of persons coming under the Industrial Insurance Laws.

The man who reaped least credit for the tariff was its author which could not be said of Caprivi in 1892. Bülow’s case was a hard one. Clinging to the Ministerial superstition that in Germany in general, but in Prussia in particular, Junkerdom was the foundation of monarchy and the bulwark of law and order, and therefore that political interest required that the State should do for Junkerdom what it was prepared to do for no other section of the community, he had exerted himself, at no small sacrifice of popularity elsewhere, to satisfy the demands of the agrarian classes, yet he received only ingratitude and reproach that he had not done more. “It will be a long time,” he lamented, “before an Imperial Chancellor will do again for agriculture what I have done.”

In the later negotiations over the new commercial treaties Germany enforced the minimum rates for corn, while corn-exporting States, like Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Roumania, in return increased their duties on industrial articles. Most of the new treaties came into force in March, 1906, with duration until the end of 1917. Higher corn duties were not, however, the only concession required by the agricultural party in return for its support in the Diets of Prussia and the Empire. In the early years of Bülow’s Government a drastic law regulating the inspection of imported cattle and meat was also passed, the effect of which was to restrict greatly supplies from abroad. On the other hand, the Sugar Taxation and Sugar Convention Bills, under which export bounties were abolished, were carried in 1902 in the face of resolute agrarian opposition.

The revision of the customs tariff in the interest of agriculture had an important sequel in the Prussian Diet when several years later the Government brought forward a large scheme of canal construction. The first effect of the railways upon river and canal traffic in Germany had been injurious, and there was a disposition in the middle of the century to assume that the canal had become obsolete. For many years there was little new canal building, the rivers were neglected, and it was only in the last quarter of the century, when it became recognized that the two systems of transport were complementary and not antagonistic, and that there was room and need for both, that active interest in inland navigation was revived. A new era in canal construction opened during the later years of William I’s reign. The Dortmund-Ems Canal was begun in 1886 and completed in 1899, and with it the development of a large industrial district, with immense natural resources, received a new impetus. A year later a canal connecting the Elbe and the Trave was opened, bringing the North and Baltic Seas into communication before the Kiel Canal, opened in June, 1895, accomplished the same end on a bolder scale. In 1899 a bill was introduced in the Diet to empower the Government to construct a series of canals connecting the Rhine with the Elbe, a deep canal navigable for large vessels from Berlin to Stettin, with smaller connecting waterways, and extensive works of rectification on some of the shallower streams. Fearing that the extension of inland waterways, by cheapening the carriage of imported corn, would lower the price of this commodity to the industrial districts in the west and centre of the kingdom, and so to some extent neutralize the new tariff, the agrarians rejected the bill.

The project was one in which the Emperor-King was specially interested, and the rebellion of the great landowners drew from him a severe rebuke and led to the removal from office of certain Landrats who were among the ringleaders. It was 1905 before a compromise was reached and the bill was passed in a somewhat curtailed form, the waterway from Hanover to the Elbe being omitted, and the condition being introduced that before the canals were opened to traffic the Government should take steps to impose dues upon the navigable rivers of the monarchy, a transparent device for increasing the cost of waterborne imported grain. This proposal likewise roused bitter controversy, this time in the Imperial Diet, since it involved an amendment of the constitution, and when some years later (1911) opposition was withdrawn, it was subject to stipulations which defeated the hopes of the agrarians.

Most of the canal works authorized by the law of 1905 have since been completed, in some cases on a larger scale than was originally contemplated. While spending money thus lavishly upon canal construction the Prussian Government usually leaves the working of the canals, together with the cost of their maintenance, to the provincial authorities. In the case of some of the later canals, however, the towing service has been monopolized by the State, and the same arrangement has been introduced by the Imperial Government on the Kiel Canal. This is not the only peculiarity of State canal enterprise as carried out in Germany in modern times. In the old days the landowners only allowed railways and canals to be built by sufferance and on the payment of heavy tribute. Now the tables have been turned. It is a feature of recent canal projects that the adjacent owners have been required to contribute towards the cost. In some cases the contributions have been paid partly in land and partly in money. In other cases the State has expropriated the adjacent proprietors altogether, with a view to securing to the community all future increase in land values. Thus the Canal Law of 1905 empowered the State to expropriate owners of land within one kilometre (five-eighths of a mile) of the Rhine-Weser Canal, such power to be exercised in favour of the provinces of Westphalia, Rhineland, and Hanover, and the State of Bremen, with a view to securing to them the increased value which might accrue to the land owing to the works carried out.

All the large German canals intersect the great northern plain; owing to the configuration of the land the artificial waterways of the south and centre of the country are of minor importance. On the other hand, the navigation of the rivers and their tributaries has been greatly improved in all parts of the country. Counting the cost of the Kiel Canal, the expenditure incurred by the States in canal construction and extension and the deepening and regulation of rivers during the reign of the present Emperor has been estimated at over forty million pounds, while schemes are still in course of execution or contemplated which will cost an equal sum.

While the States have as a rule undertaken the cost of river improvements, the riparian towns have emulated each other in the construction of harbour and docks, and to-day the Rhine from its entrance into Germany at the Swiss frontier is lined by an imposing succession of busy harbours, docks, and quays, upon the construction and equipment of which many millions of pounds have been expended during the past twenty years. On the seaboard ports like Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck have renewed their ancient fame, and outdistanced their olden prosperity, while other ports, like Emden, have come to the front and given hostages to a prosperous future. In consequence of the constant endeavour to keep the canals and rivers in an efficient condition from one-fifth to one-fourth of the inland goods traffic of the country has for several decades been regularly carried by water.

There has been a large simultaneous increase in the mercantile marine. The total tonnage of German sea-going ships had been doubled during the twenty years 1850 to 1870 (from half a million to a million tons) and it doubled again during the following three decades. The same period also witnessed a large concentration of shipping in a few powerful companies of Hamburg and Bremen, which, having unlimited capital at command, came to dominate the German shipping trade. Another notable transformation has been the gradual transfer of shipping to the North Sea from the Baltic, some of whose ports as a consequence have lost much of their ancient commercial importance.

In 1909 a successful attempt was made to abolish the chaos in railway rates and tariffs which had increased since Bismarck’s premature endeavour thirty years before to acquire the railways for the Empire. Something was also done at the same time to reorganize traffic management in the direction of uniformity and to overcome the particularist spirit which had hitherto led the railway-owning States to work their lines with a too exclusive regard for their own interests.

All these developments in transport and the mechanism of distribution generally reflected a corresponding expansion of industry and commerce. Germany had become one of the most important workshops of the world; her products invaded every market and her argosies were found on every sea. In few of the staple industries of the great commercial countries did she lag behind, while in some she overtook, and even outdistanced, far older competitors. Like England before her, yet without England’s wealth of mineral resources, Germany has to a large extent built up her industrial prosperity and reputation upon coal and iron. Still following far behind her principal European rival in the production of coal, she surpassed the United Kingdom in the production of pig-iron in 1903, and with every succeeding year increased her advantage, though the United States continued to maintain the lead which they obtained in the first year of the century. More significant than the mere volume of production, however, was the fact that the home consumption of this metal had increased by two-thirds during the twenty years 1890-1910, an increase due in large measure to the great demand for steel caused by the unexampled expansion of the engineering and shipbuilding industries. In the production of steel Germany had likewise outdistanced all competitors except one. Up to 1892 the United Kingdom still held the second place, though at a great distance behind the United States. In the following year Germany replaced her, and the position thus gained has been held and strengthened ever since.

In the first half of the nineteenth century Germany’s most important contributions to civilization were in the domain of philosophy and letters. In the second half of the century her principal achievements were won in the realm of science and material values. To a profound belief in science and to its systematic and unremitting application in the service of industry, more than to any other causes, is due the prominent position which has been gained in the world markets by not a few of her great staple trades, and particularly the chemical and electrical trades, whose present stage of development is a standing testimony to the value and necessity for modern industry of intelligently directed research. A passionate devotion to material pursuits, not without danger for her intellectual life and the high national ideals of the past, led her to dispute the pre-eminence of the older industrial countries in the markets of the world. Here the system of protection introduced in 1879 undoubtedly proved for a long time of great indirect assistance. The home trade having been reserved to home production by high tariffs, it provided at once a foundation upon which to build prosperous industries and a base from which to conduct operations in foreign markets. For, enjoying a quasi-statutory guarantee of remunerative prices for the goods sold at home, her manufacturers were able to sell more cheaply abroad, and thus supplant their rivals in some branches of production in which exceptional technical skill and more efficient methods of distribution already placed them at a natural advantage.

These efforts to capture foreign trade were supplemented by other measures, such as the formation of syndicates and other industrial combinations, to be mentioned later, the co-operation of the large banks, preferential railway rates for exported goods, and, not least, the encouragement given to German enterprise abroad by the Empire’s diplomatic representatives.

Although the protective system had been carried to such excess that it pressed heavily upon the salaried classes and the poor, organized labour in general shared in the country’s increasing prosperity, to which its higher standard of life in turn contributed. One important consequence of Germany’s development on industrial lines was the almost entire cessation of emigration. Ten years after the Franco-German War the number of emigrants exceeded 200,000 a year, but a gradual decline during the succeeding twenty years brought the number to one-tenth of that figure. In later years, indeed, Germany has imported instead of exported labour, and for a long time the alien element in her industrial and agricultural army of workers – chiefly Russians, Poles, Italians, and Austrians – has been estimated at little short of a million.

When inaugurating the era of social legislation Bismarck predicted that it would survive his generation, and a series of laws passed in the early years of the century confirmed this prophecy. Following the amendment in 1899 of the Old Age and Invalidity Insurance Law, greatly to the benefit of the workers who came under it, the Accident Insurance legislation was applied to new groups of occupations in 1900, and in 1903 the Sickness Insurance Law was amended so as to afford longer (twenty-six instead of thirteen weeks) and more generous help to those cast aside by ill-health.

In 1903 also an important law was passed for the protection of children against exploitation by their parents and guardians. As a result of a Government investigation it had been found that more than half a million children of school age were in regular employment, 307,000 in industry (for the most part as outworkers), 172,000 as messengers, errand boys, and the like, 22,000 in public-houses, and 18,000 in shops. A large number of these little bread-winners were employed before and after school hours, and often employment lasted far into the night. Five years later an important law was passed restricting the hours of labour of young people and women engaged in factories and workshops. While children under thirteen years might not be so employed at all, a maximum work-day of six hours was fixed for those between thirteen and fourteen years and one of ten hours for young persons between fourteen and sixteen years. In the case of women the maximum work-day was fixed at ten hours, with eight hours on Saturdays; their employment during night hours was prohibited; and the close time already prescribed for women at child-birth was prolonged to eight weeks. The effect of t...

Table of contents

• THE GERMANIC FEDERATION, 1806-1848
• THE FRANKFORT NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, 1848-1851
• BISMARCK - THE FIRST PHASE, 1851-1861
• THE PRUSSIAN CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT, 1858-1863
• THE ELBE DUCHIES AND THE DANISH WAR, 1846-1865
• THE EXTRUSION OF AUSTRIA, 1865-1866
• THE NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION, 1866-1867
• THE HOHENZOLLERN CANDIDATURE, 1867-1870
• THE WAR WITH FRANCE, 1870-1871
• THE NEW EMPIRE, 1870-1874
• CHURCH AND STATE, 1868-1883
• SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, 1848-1888
• PROTECTION AND FISCAL REFORM, 1879-1887
• SOCIAL ADJUSTMENTS, 1871-1888
• FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1871-1887 - FRANCE
• FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1875-1885 - THE EASTERN QUESTION
• THE COLONIAL ERA, 1880-1890
• BISMARCK - THE LAST PHASE, 1888-1890
• EMPEROR WILLIAM II. DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, 1890-1900 - THE NEW COURSE
• EMPEROR WILLIAM II. DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, 1900-1914 - THE REACTION
• FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1890-1904 - WELTPOLITIK
• FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1904-1906 - MOROCCO
• FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1906-1913 - THE TRIPLE ENTENTE
• FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1913-1914 - THE LATTER DAYS
• APPENDIX A. THE FRANCO-RUSSIAN ALLIANCE
• APPENDIX B. THE RUSSO-GERMAN REINSURANCE TREATY OF 1884-90