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“Agrarians” Versus “Industrializers”

Social Conservative Resistance to Industrialism and Capitalism in Late Nineteenth Century Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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In his book Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution Thorstein Veblen argued that the relative lateness of the advent of German industrialization permitted her to avoid “the penalty of taking the lead”. She could borrow on a massive scale from the accumulated knowledge and technology of already industrialized societies. While this judgment may hold true on the purely technological level, it is not true that German society made the transition from the basically agrarian-commercial society of the mid-nineteenth century to the predominantly industrial society of the twentieth century without penalties. In recent years specialists on the developing nations have directed our attention to the dislocation, hardships, and complexity which the processes of industrialisation, urbanization, and modernization are introducing into traditional societies. In our scholarly concern for the problems of development in the non-Western world, we have, until quite recently, tended to forget that large segments of the populations of European societies had to be “dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century”, to use Adlai Stevenson's telling phrase. In the case of Germany around 1900 only part of the nation was brought into the new era while another sizeable portion of the population, to Germany's later misfortune, was aided by the Imperial Establishment in its efforts to build a protective wall around itself to keep out the new machine age. I shall argue that the strongest part of that wall was erected in the years between 1894 and 1902, between the fall of Caprivi and the passage of the protective tariff of 1902. In these years German society endured an economic and intellectual crisis which extended beyond merely the selfish attempts of the East Elbian Junkers to maintain their economic and political position. Peasant proprietors were deeply involved. Artisans were affected. And even the leading theoreticians of the Social Democratic party stood confused before the crisis.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1967

References

page 31 note 1 Thorstein Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1915), pp. 1741Google Scholar. Veblen was of course aware that there were social penalties; however, he predicted the payment of the penalties for a later, more advanced, period. He did not detect Germany's grave social malaise of the years before the war.

page 31 note 2 See e.g., Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (Glencoe, Ill., 1958)Google Scholar, and Amitai, and Etzioni, Eva, Social Change (New York and London, 1964), esp. essay by Reinhard Bendix, “Industrialization, Ideologies, and Social Structure”, pp. 300–09.Google Scholar

page 31 note 3 That this recognition has come in United States history is evidenced in the excellent interpretation by Hays, Samuel P., The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914 (Chicago, 1957)Google Scholar. For an earlier period of social crisis precipitated by rapid industrial advance see Smelser, Neil, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution: An Application of Theory to the British Cotton Industry (Chicago, 1959)Google Scholar.

page 32 note 1 In his brilliant study Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1943)Google Scholar Alexander Gerschenkron made a strong case for the decisiveness of the Junkers in the perversion of the economic and political development of Germany such that the flowering of democracy before World War I was inhibited and the first attempt at republican government was undermined. The nearly twenty-five years which have passed since Professor Gerschenkron's study appeared have given us a new perspective on the problem. We no longer can lay the blame solely on the Junkers; and Professor Gerschenkron himself in his Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), esp. ch. IGoogle Scholar, has helped deepen our understanding of the complex of factors involved in the problems of European economic backwardness.

page 33 note 1 I hope to show that more was at stake in this dispute between “agrarians” and “industrializers” than “haggling for…a [tariff] compromise” between industry and agriculture as ProfessorGerschenkron, contends (Bread and Democracy, pp. 5960)Google Scholar, or sheer romantic nonsense as Eckart Kehr implies in his otherwise incisive Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik, 1894–1901 (Berlin, 1930)Google Scholar, or even trade policy in general as assumed by Eulenburg, Franz in his “Aussenhandel und Aussenhandelspolitik”, in: Grundriss der Sozialökonomik (Tübingen, 1929), vol. VIIIGoogle Scholar.

page 33 note 2 Born, Karl Erich, “Der soziale und wirtschaftliche Strukturwandel Deutschlands am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts”, in: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, I (1963), pp. 361–76.Google Scholar

page 33 note 3 See, e.g., Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press paperback, 1962), pp. 910, 59–72.Google Scholar

page 33 note 4 Statistisches Reichsamt, Deutsche Wirtschaftskunde (Berlin, 1930), p. 1Google Scholar; see further Bechtel, Heinrich, Wirtschaftsgeschichte Deutschlands (3 vols.; Munich, 1956), III, p. 286.Google Scholar

page 33 note 5 Wirtschaftskunde, Deutsche, pp. 89.Google Scholar

page 33 note 6 Schumpeter, Joseph, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (2 vols.; New York and London, 1939), I, pp. 439–44.Google Scholar

page 34 note 1 In the case of some grains the transition from net exports to net imports took place earlier. Rye imports exceeded exports already in the period 1843–1852; barley, 1867; oats, 1872; and wheat, 1875. Haushofer, Heinz, Die deutsche Land-wirtschaft im technischen Zeitalter, vol. V of the series Deutsche Agrargeschichte, ed. by Franz, Günther (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 179.Google Scholar

page 34 note 2 Schumpeter's estimate of total agricultural indebtedness around the turn of the century was 17.5 billion gold marks. Business Cycles, II, p. 740Google Scholar. See further August Skalweit, Agrarpolitik (Berlin, 1924), p. 203Google Scholar, and the article by Ritter, Kurt, “Getreideproduktion”, in: Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (4th ed., Jena, 19231929), IV, p. 916.Google Scholar

page 34 note 3 Sartorius von Waltershausen, A., Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1815–1914 (2nd expanded ed., Jena, 1923), pp. 486, 492Google Scholar; Wirtschaftskunde, Deutsche, pp. 173ff.Google Scholar

page 34 note 4 Rostow, 's description of German economic development dates the “take off” between the years 18501873 (p. 38)Google Scholar, the period of the “drive to maturity” in the years between 1873 and 1910 (see chart facing p. 1). As a “rough symbolic date” he offers 1910 as the point at which Germany may be described as having attained “technological maturity” (p. 59).

page 34 note 5 Cf., e.g., Stolper, Gustav, German Economy, 1870–1940 (New York, 1940), Part II, esp. pp. 4044Google Scholar; Clough, Shepard B. and Cole, Charles W., Economic History of Europe (Boston, 1941), esp. ch. XX.Google Scholar

page 34 note 6 This data is based on the calculations of Bogart, Ernst L., Economic History of Europe, 1760–1939 (London, New York, Toronto, 1942), p. 275Google Scholar, based in turn on the census returns of the two years. However his estimate of the extent of the decline of the agricultural population between 1882 and 1895 seems too great. His figure for 1895 is 29.6 percent of the total, which conflicts with my computations based on the returns in the Wirtschaftskunde, Deutsche, p. 1Google Scholar and with Waltershausen, , p. 486.Google Scholar

page 35 note 1 Clapham, John, Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815–1914 (4th ed., Cambridge, Eng., 1955), pp. 205–08.Google Scholar

page 35 note 2 Waltershausen, , p. 465Google Scholar; cf. also the table in Bogart, , p. 276Google Scholar. A hectare is equal to approximately 2.47 acres.

page 35 note 3 Between the two census years large landowners, owning 0.5 percent of the farms continued to cultivate approximately one quarter of the land (24.4 percent in 1882; 24.1 percent in 1895). It was these cultivators, as Clapham has demonstrated, who worked the landmost efficiently and increased their yield per acre most dramatically in the years between 1860 and 1910. Clapham, , p. 219Google Scholar; Bogart and Waltershausen, loc. cit.

page 35 note 4 Computed from tabulations of Waltershausen, , p. 486.Google Scholar

page 35 note 5 Paul, Voigt, “Das deutsche Handwerk nach den Berufzählungen von 1882 und 1895”Google Scholar, ch. XVII of the Untersuchungen über die Lage des Handwerks in Deutschland mit besonderer Rücksicht auf seine Konkurrenzfähigkeit gegenüber der Grossindustrie, Bücher, Karl, general ed., Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik (Leipzig, 1897), LXX, p. 641Google Scholar. The study comprised nine volumes of the Verein Schriften (62nd to 70th), appearing between 1895 and 1897, of which this last is largely a summary of the findings.

page 36 note 1 See the table in Waltershausen, , p. 489.Google Scholar

page 36 note 2 Voigt, , pp. 663–64.Google Scholar

page 36 note 3 Ibid., pp. 665–70. The problem of determining the alterations in the structure of artisan industry and commerce is quite complex. Industrialism had already gone a long way in the elimination of artisan industry in textiles, for example. One need only recall the protest movement of the Silesian weavers as far back as 1844, which Gerhart Hauptmann dramatized in his play of 1892, “The Weavers”, written significantly during the crisis decade of the 90's. In newer skilled industries, such as machine tools, the decline of artisan labor was slower. Some of the needle trades had gone over to mass production technology, but custom tailoring held its own. Watchmakers, upholsterers, bakers, butchers, barbers, and many specialists in the building trades were increasing at a rate proportionate to the growth of population. See further the tables in Voigt, , pp. 635–40.Google Scholar

page 36 note 4 Karl Bücher estimated in 1897 that more than half of the country's artisans lived and worked in the countryside and that a significant number continued to practice their crafts in small towns. Because customs changed less rapidly in the countryside, because artisans could always take in repair work (even if only farm machinery), because the local artisan was a friend and neighbor to many people, and finally, because he and his family could cultivate a little agricultural plot on the side, Bücher concluded optimistically that by and large rural crafts men “were secure for the foreseeable future”. “Die Handwerkerfrage”, in: Verhandlungen der vom 23. bis 25. September 1897 in Köln abgehaltenen Generalversammlung des Vereins für Sozialpolitik, Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik (Leipzig, 1898), LXXVI, pp. 3033.Google Scholar

page 36 note 5 This admittedly crude estimate breaks down:

page 37 note 1 Peasants, fishermen, lumber workers, and their families (excluding large landowners) comprised 17.6 millions. With 11 million artisans and dependents the total is 28.7 millions. This works out as roughly 55 percent of a population of 52.3 million. The margin of error is surely enormous; the data here was compiled solely to give the reader a feeling for the magnitude of the pre-industrial population. I wish to establish here that there were enough peasants and artisans in 1895 for a government to devote some attention to their economic and social conditions out of considerations of sheer numbers alone. A better perspective on the meaning of this data might be gained if we had some studies of this population in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States to serve as a control by comparison. I know of no such work of a utility comparable to the German inquiries.

page 37 note 2 Tirrell, Sarah Rebecca, German Agrarian Politics After Bismarck's Fall: The Formation of the Farmers' League, no. 566 of the Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law (New York, 1951), pp. 2122Google Scholar. See further Dade, Heinrich, “Die Agrarzölle”, in: Beiträge zur neuesten Handelspolitik Deutschlands, Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik (Leipzig, 1901), XCI, pp. 6667Google Scholar. On the other hand, the prices of commodities and livestock (cattle, hogs, fowl, eggs, hops, tobacco) frequently produced by peasants did not suffer the declines experienced by wheat and rye prices in the last quarter of the century. Dade, , pp. 612.Google Scholar

page 37 note 3 By 1895 nearly half of the smaller cultivators and over three quarters of the larger ones were using some sort of machinery on their farms. Tirrell, , p. 23.Google Scholar

page 37 note 4 After 1890 agrarians received some tax relief in Prussia. Ibid., pp. 28–29. See also Dawson, William H., The Evolution of Modern Germany (London and New York, 1908), pp. 245–47.Google Scholar

page 37 note 5 Croner, Johannes, Die Geschichte der agrarischen Bewegung in Deutschland (Berlin, 1909), pp. 193241Google Scholar. The American Populists entertained the same sorts of inflationary expectations in the 1890's with their demands for the coinage of silver at a ratio of 16:1. In both cases the representatives of the industrial age, i.e., industrialists and workers, held out for a “hard currency”. In Germany the last silver Taler was withdrawn in 1907.

page 37 note 6 Ibid., p. 176.

page 38 note 1 Bücher, Karl, Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik, LXXVI, pp. 2223.Google Scholar

page 38 note 2 Ibid., pp. 24–29.

page 39 note 1 Stieda, Wilhelm, article “Handwerk” in the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (3rd ed., Jena, 1910), V, pp. 377–93, esp. p. 385.Google Scholar

page 39 note 2 Brady, Robert A., “The Economic Impact of Imperial Germany: Industrial Policy”, in: The Task of Economic History; Papers presented at the Third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, Princeton, 3–4 09 1943, reprinted in the Supplement for Dec. 1943 of the Journal of Economic History, p. 108Google Scholar; Lambi, Ivo Nikolai, Free Trade and Protection in Germany, 1868–1879, Beiheft no. 44 of Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Wiesbaden, 1963), pp. 226–40.Google Scholar

page 40 note 1 Rosenberg, Arthur, Imperial Germany: The Birth of the German Republic, 1871–1918, trans. Morrow, Ian F. D. (Boston: Beacon press paperback, 1964), ch. IGoogle Scholar. See further Struve, Walter, Elite versus Democracy: The Conflict of Elite Theories with the Ideals of Political Democracy in Germany, 1918–1933 (Yale University doctoral diss., 1962), ch. II.Google Scholar

page 40 note 2 Croner, , p. 104Google Scholar; Gerschenkron, , Bread and Democracy, pp. 44, 57Google Scholar. Lambi, (pp. 163–90)Google Scholar argues that he was never ideologically a free trader. In other words, his approach to trade questions did not follow from abstract theoretical premises, but rather from considerations of interest politics.

page 40 note 3 Clapham, , Economic Development of France and Germany, pp. 209–11Google Scholar; Croner, , pp. 104–28.Google Scholar

page 41 note 1 Croner, , pp. 176–79Google Scholar; Gerschenkron, , Bread and Democracy, pp. 44ff.Google Scholar

page 41 note 2 There are fine summaries of this legislation by scholars who lived through the crisis years; see Meyer, George and Loening, Edgar, “Gewerbegesetzgebung (Deutschland)”, IV, pp. 902–03Google Scholar and Biermer, M., “Mittelstandsbewegung”, VI, p. 739Google Scholar, both in the 3rd: 1910 ed. of the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. The government acted on the promptings of the Verein selbstandiger Hand-werker und Fabrikanten [Union of Independent Artisans and Manufacturers]. Waltershausen, , Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte, p. 495Google Scholar. Voigt calculated that by 1895 321,219 masters, or 25 percent of all artisan masters, belonged to gilds. Voigt, , Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik, LXX, p. 663Google Scholar.

page 42 note 1 His social legislation of the 1880's was less effective in co-opting the industrial workers, perhaps because at the same time he was attempting outright suppression of the Socialist movement. When both courses had manifestly failed, his thinking turned to ideas of coup d'état. On the failure of the Antisocialist Law of 1878 see, e.g., Landauer, Carl, European Socialism (2 vols.; Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), I: From the Industrial Revolution to the First World War and its Aftermath, pp. 267–77Google Scholar. Most useful on Bismarck's coup d'etat plans, especially in respect to his dread of revolution and his toying with the idea of the dissolution of the Imperial political structure in order to avoid worse transformations, see Pöls, Werner, Sozialistenfrage und Revolutionsfurcht in ihrem Zusmmenhang mit den angeblichen Staatsstreichplänen Bismarcks, Historische Studien, Heft 377 (Lübeck and Hamburg, 1960), pp. 2583, 96–99.Google Scholar

page 42 note 2 Rosenberg, Hans, “Political and Social Consequences of the Great Depression of 1873–1896 in Central Europe”, in: Economic History Review, XIII (1943), p. 72Google Scholar. Professor Rosenberg has newly devoted a more extensive study to this period in his Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit: Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa (Berlin, 1967)Google Scholar. I have not been able to obtain a copy of this work from Europe in time for me to use it for this study.

page 42 note 3 Waltershausen, , p. 619Google Scholar; Gerschenkron, , Bread and Democracy, p. 49Google Scholar; Tirrell, , German Agrarian Politics, pp. 69ff.Google Scholar; Lotz, Walther, Die Handelspolitik Caprivis und Hohenlohes, 1890–1900, Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik (Leipzig, 1901), XCII, pp. 47ff.Google Scholar

page 42 note 4 Caprivi's pro-industry bias was evidenced in the tariff agreements he concluded between 1891–1894 with Austria-Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Serbia, Rumania, Spain, and Russia in which Germany agreed to reduce duties on agricultural imports in exchange for reductions on the part of these trading partners of their tariffs on German industrial products. This part of the story is told best in Tirrell, chs. IV-V, VIII-IX and Gerschenkron, loc. cit.

page 43 note 1 On the organization of the Bund der Landwirte see Tirrell, , ch. VI, esp. pp. 158ffGoogle Scholar. and Croner, , Geschichte der agrarischen Bewegung, pp. 135–37Google Scholar. Before the year was out the German Peasants' League, comprising 40,000 members, dissolved itself and most of its members (as well as its treasury) joined the Bund. The Poles and the peasant organizations of Catholic South Germany refused official membership, but expressed support of the organization's major goals. By 1895 the Bund had 188,620 members, most of whom were cultivators of small and medium holdings. Nevertheless, as Miss Tirrell has shown, “of the 43 chairmen and vice-chairmen at the head of the provincial and state divisions, 19 were Rittergut owners. There were in addition 7 Gut owners, 2 counts, 3 barons, a general, and 5 government officials. At least 28 of the board belonged to the aristocracy.” Tirrell, , pp. 170–71, 177–79, 182Google Scholar. See also Haushofer, , Die deutsche Landwirtschaft im technischen Zeitalter, p. 213.Google Scholar

page 43 note 2 Gerschenkron, , Bread and Democracy, p. 57Google Scholar. The program adopted at the constituent meeting of the Bund at the Tivoli brewery hall in Berlin on 18 February 1893 was framed to encompass the demands of both peasants and large farmers to further the creation of a united agrarian front. It contained demands for tariff protection, no negotiated tariff reductions by means of commercial treaties, tariffs and tax concessions for agriculture-related peasant industries (brewing, spirits, sugar), no importation of cattle from countries suspected of having cattle diseases, bimetallism, agricultural chambers, further regulation of labor in the countryside and removal of border controls, closer regulation of commodity exchanges, revision of legislation governing rural indebtedness according to the German concept of justice, and relief for rural self-governing bodies. Tirell, , pp. 166–67Google Scholar. The actual process of the co-optation of the peasantry, if that it was, has yet to be studied.

page 43 note 3 Tirrell, ch. X; Nichols, J. Alden, Germany After Bismarck: The Caprivi Era, 1890–1894 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), esp. ch. IX.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 44 note 1 Quoted from Sheehan, James J., The Career of Lujo Brentano: A Study in Liberalism and Social Reform in Imperial Germany (Chicago and London, 1966), p. 131.Google Scholar

page 44 note 2 Naumann, Friedrich, Was heisst Christlich-Sozial? Gesammelte Aufsätze (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1896), pp. 35, 61–63Google Scholar. Italics in original. See also his Wirtschaftspolitik, Neudeutsche (3rd ed., Berlin-Schöneberg, 1911), esp. pp. 361–66.Google Scholar

page 45 note 1 Die Verhandlungen des 8. Evangelisch-sozialen Kongresses, abgehalten zu Leipzig am 10. und 11. Juni 1897. Nach den stenographischen Protokollen (Göttingen, 1897), pp. 6468, 70, 74, 76.Google Scholar

page 45 note 2 Ibid., pp. 96–104.

page 46 note 1 Ibid., pp. 105–11, 113, 122–23. Weber's concern for this problem was great and longterm; see his judgment of the danger of Germany being ruled by agrarians and “agrarians” in Sheehan, , p. 133.Google Scholar

page 46 note 2 Verhandlungen des 8. Evangelisch-sozialen Kongresses, pp. 113–16.Google Scholar

page 46 note 3 And this in a few remarks only. Ibid., pp. 116–22. His book dedicated to the support of the “agrarian” position would soon appear: Agrar- und Industriestaat: Die Kehrseite des Industriestaates und die Rechtfertigung agrarischen Zollschutzes mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Bevölkerungsfrage (Jena, 1902).

page 47 note 1 Verhandlungen des 8. Evangelisch-sozialen Kongresses, pp. 159–60.Google Scholar

page 48 note 1 Ibid., pp. 161–62.

page 48 note 2 See, e.g., the discussion of such attitudes in developing nations in Matossian, Mary, “Ideologies of Delayed Industrialization: Some Tensions and Ambiguities”, in: Kautsky, John H., ed., Political Change in Underdeveloped Countries: Nationalism and Communism (New York and London, 1962), pp. 252–64Google Scholar. But the phenomenon is by no means rare in more advanced lands. Hofstadter, Richard in his Age of Reform (New York, 1955)Google Scholar offers essentially this type of interpretation to explain many of the attitudes of American Progressives. On France see the two books by Weber, Eugen, The Nationalist Revival in France, 1905–1914 (Berkeley, 1959)Google Scholar, and Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth Century France (Stanford, 1962)Google Scholar, esp. chs. I–II. For Germany there are excellent insights in Massing, Paul, Rehearsal for Destruction (New York, 1949)Google Scholar and Stern, Fritz, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961)Google Scholar, esp. the Introduction. In his The Crisis of German Ideology (New York: Universal Library, 1964)Google Scholar George Mosse has studied the second and third rate literary expression of these nostalgic currents. Looking back to the 1890's Friedrich Meinecke recalled a “profound change” in Germany. In poetry, the fine arts, and the humanities “there stirred a new and deeper longing for what was genuine and true, but also a new sense for the fragmentary and problematic in modern life…” Erlebtes, 1862–1901 (Leipzig, 1941), pp. 167–68Google Scholar, quoted from Stern, , p. 165.Google Scholar

page 48 note 3 It is therefore significant that the Youth Movement started among Gymnasium students in the middle class Berlin suburb of Steglitz in 1901 and spread quickly among middle class young men living in suburbs and small towns. That the movement experienced internal crises over the membership of Jews (“uprooted”, “urban”, “modernists”) and women (“weak”, “disruptive”, “belonging at home”) is also appropriate. See Laqueur, Walter Z., Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New York, 1962), esp. chs. VII and IXGoogle Scholar. See further Becker, Howard, German Youth: Bond or Free? (London, 1946)Google Scholar and Mau, Hermann, “Die deutsche Jugendbewegung. Rückblick und Ausblick”, in: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, I (1948), pp. 135–w49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 49 note 1 As was the case with Ferdinand Tönnies whose famous Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft had first appeared in 1887. In it he had drawn a typological distinction between the organization, values, and modes of thought of pre-industrial communities and those of industrial societies. Although the first edition went almost unnoticed for many years, the second edition in 1902 aroused great interest in academic circles. Born on a farm in Schleswig-Holstein, Tönnies himself felt the loss of the passing communitarian mode of life; but unlike the socially conservative “agrarians”, he attempted to balance this emotion with empirical investigations of labor conditions among Hamburg dockworkers and with a realistic appraisal of the possibilities of making the lot of the working man in industrial society bearable by means of co-operatives and trade unions. The 8th edition of his book (Leipzig, 1935) is the most readily available. See also the abridged, but useful translation of Charles P. Loomis, containing introductions by the translator, Pitirim Sorokin, and Rudolf Heberle, together with a “Summing Up” by Tönnies written by Tönnies nearly fifty years after his first formulations. This edition is available under the title Community and Society (New York, Evanston, London: Harper Torchbooks, 1963)Google Scholar. For an attempt to appropriate Tönnies for the cause of social conservatism see Freyer, Hans, “Ferdinand Tönnies und seine Bedeutung in der deutschen Soziologie”, in: Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, XLIV (1936), pp. 19Google Scholar and by the same author Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft (Leipzig and Berlin, 1930), pp. 185ff., 233ff.Google Scholar

page 50 note 1 In the Schriften of the Verein für Sozialpolitik the minutes of these meetings were published in the following volumes: 1893: 58; 1894: 61; 1897: 76; 1899: 88; and 1901: 98. The proceedings are briefly summarized in Boese, Franz, Geschichte des Vereins für Sozialpolitik, Schriften, vol. 188 (Berlin, 1937), pp. 6598Google Scholar. The almost single-minded attention devoted by the members of this most outstanding organization of professional social scientists and social reformers to the problems of artisans and peasants is evidenced by the topics of the studies the Verein sponsored in the 1890's: Cottage industries (volS. 39–42, 48: 1889–91); government and administration of rural communities in Prussia (volS. 43–44: 1890)Google Scholar; international trade policies of Germany and her agricultural competitors (volS. 49–51: 1892)Google Scholar; emigration (vol. 52: 1892)Google Scholar; rural labor (volS. 53–55: 1892)Google Scholar; inner colonization of the depopulated eastern provinces (vol. 56: 1893)Google Scholar; the condition of artisan industry and commerce (volS. 62–70: 18951897)Google Scholar; peasant credit problems (volS. 73–74: 1896)Google Scholar; travelling sales activity in Germany and other lands (volS. 77–83: 18981899)Google Scholar; Cottage industries, again (volS. 84–87: 1899)Google Scholar; German trade policy, again (volS. 90–92: 19001901)Google Scholar. In that decade, then, the Verein Schriftenreihe contained thirty-nine volumes (omitting the Proceedings of the usually biennial meetings) on Germany's pre-industrial classes and their problems. There were several volumes on other lands (vols. 57, 59, 71–72). There were only four studies appropriate to An industrial age: labor contracts and workers' committees in German industry (volS. 45–46: 1890)Google Scholar; cartels (vol. 60: 1894)Google Scholar; transport costs on waterways and railroads (vol. 89: 1900)Google Scholar.

page 51 note 1 Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik (Leipzig, 1902), XCVIII, pp. 122–46Google Scholar. Lotz' address largely summarized the attack against the “agrarians” he had published the year before, Schutz der deutschen Landwirtschaft und die Aufgaben der künftigen deutschen Handelspolitik, in the series Volkswirtschaftliche Zeitfragen, LXX (1900), pp. 71133.Google Scholar

page 51 note 2 Schriften, Verein, XCVIII, pp. 200–22Google Scholar. An analysis of Schumacher's contribution would add little to the discussion. The next year Pohle elaborated his arguments in his Deutschland am Scheideweg (Leipzig, 1902)Google Scholar.

page 51 note 3 Schriften, , XCVIII, pp. 231–36.Google Scholar

page 52 note 1 Ibid., pp. 238–45. See also his article “Die deutsche Bauernschaft und die Handelspolitik”, in: Deutsche Monatsschrift, I (1901), pp. 228–41Google Scholar. Although an “agrarian” Sering had little use for the Junker landowners; to him the agrarian question was always identical with the problems of the peasantry. Some years later, reviewing the controversy, he gave the laurels to the “agrarians”, in “Agrar- und Industriestaat”, in: Wörterbuch der Volkswirtschaft (2nd ed., Jena, 19061907), vol. IGoogle Scholar.

page 52 note 2 See his subsequent Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre (2 vols.; Leipzig, 19001904), II, pp. 641–47Google Scholar.

page 52 note 3 Agrar- und Industriestaat, pp. 2, 221Google Scholar.

page 52 note 4 Schriften, , XCVIII, pp. 247, 250ffGoogle Scholar. Dietzel, had already presented his case in his Weltwirtschaft und Volkswirtschaft (Dresden, 1900)Google Scholar and Kornzoll und Socialpolitik (Berlin, 1901)Google Scholar.

page 52 note 5 Schriften, , XCVIII, pp. 279–83.Google Scholar

page 53 note 1 Die Schrecken des überwiegenden Industriestaats (Berlin, 1901), p. 29Google Scholar. See further his Das Freihandelsargument (Berlin-Schöneberg, 1900)Google Scholar, “Cobdens Argument gegen Flottenvermehrungen”, in: Die Nation, 13 Jan. 1900Google Scholar; “Die Schwierigkeiten der Freihandelsbewegung in Deutschland”, in: Die Hilfe, 6 Jan. 1901Google Scholar; and his direct attacks on Wagner's position, “Adolf Wagner und die Getreidezölle”, in: Die Hilfe, 13 Jan. 1901Google Scholar, and “Adolf Wagner über Agrarstaat und Industriestaat”, in: Die Zeit, 9, 16, 23, 30 June, 7, 14 July 1901Google Scholar.

page 53 note 2 For a reconsideration of debate, narrowly conceived as one of commercial policy, see the treatment by a proponent of industrial society during the Weimar Republic, Eulenburg, Franz, “Aussenhandel und Aussenhandelspolitik”, in: Grundriss der Sozialökonomik (Tübingen, 1929), vol. VIIIGoogle Scholar; von Dietze, C. in the article “Agrar- und Industriestaat”, in: Wörterbuch der Volkswirtschaft (4th ed., 19311933), I, pp. 2631Google Scholar, offers a brief survey of the most important literature.

page 53 note 3 Marx, Karl [and Friedrich Engels], Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Gateway Ed., 1954), p. 19Google Scholar. That this was not yet the case in 1848 is ably shown in Hamerow, Theodore S., Restoration, Revolution, and Reaction: Economics and Politics in Germany, 1815–1871 (Princeton, 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and more recently in Noyes, Paul, Organization and Revolution: Working Class Associations in the German Revolutions of 1848–49 (Princeton, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Mitrany, David, Marx Against the Peasant: A Study in Social Dogmatism (Chapel Hill, 1951), ch. II.Google Scholar

page 54 note 1 Mehring, Franz, Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie (2 vols.; Berlin, 1960), II, p. 337Google Scholar. Bebel was aware of the injury being done to the artisan interests. See his Aus meinem Leben (3 vols.; Stuttgart, 19111914), II, pp. 159–61.Google Scholar

page 54 note 2 Kautsky, Karl, Das Erfuhrter Programm, in seinem grundsätzlichen theil (Stuttgart, 1892), pp. 16, 16–30.Google Scholar

page 54 note 3 Cited from Schorske, Carl, German Social Democracy, 1905–1917: The Development of the Great Schism (New York: Science Eds., 1965), p. 8.Google Scholar

page 54 note 4 There is a useful analysis of this resolution in Socialismus und Landwirtschaft (Berlin, 1903), pp. 39ff.Google Scholar, by Eduard David, himself a proponent of a pro-peasant line in the SPD. The text may be found in the Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands. Abgehalten zu Frankfurt a.M. vom 21. bis 27. Oktober 1894 (Berlin, 1894), pp. 134ff.Google Scholar

page 55 note 1 This is the essence of Engels's criticism of the Frankfurt resolution and similar ones passed at French Socialist congresses in 1892 and 1894 in his article “Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschland”, in: Neue Zeit, XIII (1895), pp. 292ff.Google Scholar

page 55 note 2 David, , p. 46.Google Scholar

page 55 note 3 Die Agrarfrage: Eine Übersicht über die Tendenzen der modernen Landwirtschaft und die Agrarpolitik der Socialdemokratie (Stuttgart, 1899), esp. chs. VIII–XIGoogle Scholar.

page 55 note 4 [The Presuppositions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy] (Stuttgart, 1899)Google Scholar. The English translation is called Evolutionary Socialism in the translation by Harvey, Edith C. (New York: Schocken Books, 1961).Google Scholar

page 55 note 5 Ibid., ch. II, sec. (c), esp. p. 65; trans., p. 72. Bernstein could sound almost like one of the “agrarians” of the Verein für Sozialpolitik. In arguing for Socialist promotion of agricultural co-operatives lie wrote “the advantage of the existence of models of such associations would not be bought so very dearly at the price of a somewhat slower growth of the monstrous towns.” Ibid., p. 116; trans., p. 154.

page 56 note 1 David, , Socialismus und Landwirtschaft, pp. 687, 693, 703Google Scholar, and “Schlusswort”. To be sure, David wished to have special legislation favoring the great cultivators – administrative power, grain tariffs, etc. – removed in the interest of society and of the peasantry (pp. 699–700). Lenin thought David's book pernicious enough to prepare a statistical syllabus of errors of it, “The ‘Work’ of the German Bulgakov, E. David”, in: Collected Works (Moscow, 1962), XIII, pp. 171216.Google Scholar

page 56 note 2 David, , pp. 2160Google Scholar; Gerschenkron, , Bread and Democracy, pp. 2832Google Scholar. See further the rather tendentious discussion by Mitrany, Marx, Against the Peasant, pp. 723Google Scholar. Only in 1927 did the SPD proclaim a new agrarian program which now accepted David's contention that the doctrine of concentration did not apply to agriculture, called for the distribution of Junker land to peasant proprietors, and, although still opposed to tariffs, decried free trade as economically wasteful. See Gerschenkron, , pp. 126–32Google Scholar; Baade, Fritz, “Stabilizierung der Getreidepreise”, in: Die Gesellschaft, IV (1927), pp. 250–80.Google Scholar

page 57 note 1 Schriften, Verein, XCVIII, p. 259Google Scholar. Italics in original. As James J. Sheehan put it, “much of the strength of the agrarian movement was drawn from a will ingness to compromise with modern life, on the one hand, and a rigid reactionary outlook, on the other.” The Career of Lujo Brentano, p. 128.Google Scholar

page 57 note 2 Rostow, , The Stages of Economic Growth, pp. 59ff.Google Scholar

page 57 note 3 Gerschenkron, , Bread and Democracy, pp. 101–03Google Scholar; Haushofer, , Die deutsche Landwirtschaft im technischen Zeitalter, p. 218.Google Scholar

page 57 note 4 By means of “grain import certificates”; ibid., p. 216.

page 57 note 5 Tirrell, , German Agrarian Politics after Bismarck's Fall, pp. 303–04.Google Scholar

page 57 note 6 The Preussische Centralgenossenschaftskasse was intended as a kind of Reichs-bank for the Mittelstand. It supplemented the activities of the Raiffeisen and Schultze-Delitzsch co-operative loan banks in small towns and in the countryside. “Der ländliche Personalkredit”, in: Verhandlungen des Vereins für Sozial-politik, 1897, Schriften, LXXVI, pp. 172–74, 179–95, 229–36Google Scholar; Haushofer, , p. 188.Google Scholar

page 58 note 1 Biermer, M., article “Mittelstandsbewegung”, in: Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (3rd ed., Jena, 1910), VI, pp. 746–56Google Scholar; Tirrell, , pp. 305–06Google Scholar; Haushofer, , p. 216Google Scholar; Croner, , Geschichte der agrarischen Bewegung, p. 190.Google Scholar

page 58 note 2 Cf. the initial drafts in the Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstages, 1897, vol. VII of Anlage, nos. 713, 819 and a favorable analysis of it by Professor Hitze, artisan sympathizer, theologian, and a Centrist member of the Reichstag in “Handwerkerfrage”, in: Verhandlungen des Vereins für Sozialpolitik, 1897, Schriften, LXXVI, pp. 3568.Google Scholar

page 58 note 3 Cf., e.g., the debates on the first reading in Stenographische Berichte, 4. Leg. 9. Sess., VII–VIII, pp. 5385ff., 5394ff., 5421ff. See also the speech by Minister of Trade and Commerce Brefeld in behalf of the artisan bill in which he described German artisans as the bulwark of discipline and order and the pillar of throne and altar, expressed sanguine expectations for the survival of artisan industry, and was roundly cheered from the right of the chamber. Ibid., p. 5429.

page 59 note 1 As Chancellor Hohenlohe wrote in his journal when the new bill was first mooted in the summer of 1896, “The Bill is foolish enough. But if the artisans want to have compulsion [i.e., compulsory gilds], then we must give it them, with the proviso, as I expressly insisted, that those districts, provinces, or States which do not want compulsion shall be free from it.” Fürst Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Denkwürdigkeiten, Friedrich Curtius, ed., (2 vols.; Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1907), II, p. 525.Google Scholar

page 59 note 2 Hohenlohe considered the demands of the agrarians excessive, although he deprecated the imposition of industrial tariffs from 1879 on which had so encouraged industrial development. Ibid., pp. 523–24.

page 60 note 1 Prince Bernhard von Bülow, Imperial Germany, trans. Lewenz, Marie A. (new revised ed., New York, 1917), p. 275Google Scholar; Gerschenkron, , Bread and Democracy, p. 60.Google Scholar

page 60 note 2 Bülow, , pp. 269–84.Google Scholar

page 60 note 3 As clearly demonstrated by the able statistician Rudolf Kuczynski in his 1st die Landwirtschaft die wichtigste Grundlage der deutschen Wehrkraft? (Berlin, 1905), esp. pp. 2125Google Scholar. This essay had apparently appeared in an earlier form in 1900 with Brentano as co-author, according to Sheehan, , Brentano, , p. 207Google Scholar. Kuczynski felt unable to pass on the alledgedly superior moral qualifications of peasant recruits.

page 60 note 4 Robbins, Lionel, The Economic Basis of Class Conflict (London, 1939), pp. 129–30Google Scholar; Gerschenkron, , Bread and Democracy, p. 60.Google Scholar

page 60 note 5 Even after Bülow had raised most rates to make them conform to the maximum demands of the representatives of agriculture, 16 of the 52 members of the German Conservative party later boycotted the vote on trade treaties negotiated on the basis of the higher rates. Croner, , Geschichte der agrarischen Bewegung, table on p. 243, 261Google Scholar; Gerschenkron, ibid., p. 61.

page 61 note 1 Kehr, Eckart, “Englandhass und Weltpolitik”, in: Der Primat der Innenpolitik: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur preussisch-deutschen Sozialgeschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, ed., (Berlin, 1965), pp. 149–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 61 note 2 Gerschenkron, ibid., pp. 62–64.

page 61 note 3 Ibid., Croner, p. 243.

page 61 note 4 Wirtschaftskunde, Deutsche, pp. 1, 8–9Google Scholar; Waltershausen, , Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte, pp. 449–86Google Scholar; Skalweit, August, Agrarpolitik (Berlin, 1924), p. 203Google Scholar; Max, Sering, Agrarpolitik auf geschichtlicher und landeskundlicher Grundlage (Leipzig, 1934), p. 27Google Scholar. Lenin read the 1907 census as confirming the predictions about agriculture of Marxian orthodoxy. See his analysis (published only after his death), “The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture”, in: Collected Works (Moscow, 1963), XVI, pp. 427–46.Google Scholar

page 62 note 1 Waltershausen, , pp. 486503Google Scholar; Schumpeter, , Business Cycles, I, pp. 439–44.Google Scholar

page 62 note 2 Spitz, Heinz, “Das Organisationswesen im Handwerk”, in Bernhard Harms, ed., Strukturwandlungen der deutschen Volkswirtschaft (2 vols.; 2nd ed., Berlin, 1929), II, pp. 42ff.Google Scholar; Biermer, , “Mittelstandsbewegung”, in: Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (3rd ed.), VI, pp. 4041Google Scholar. Cf. the data on the decline of artisan labor in such industries as beer brewing, tanning, textiles, and nail and chain making before World War I in the Deutsche Wirtschaftskunde, p. 181.Google Scholar

page 62 note 3 Waltershausen, , p. 384Google Scholar; see also Fritz Croner's tabulations of the relative size of this white collar labor force in various periods in König, René, “Zur Soziologie der Zwanziger Jahre”, in: Leonard Reinisch, ed., Die Zeit ohne Eigenschaften: Eine Bilanz der zwanziger Jahre (Stuttgart, 1961), p. 85Google Scholar; Lederer, Emil, Die Privatangestellten in der modernen Wirtschaftsordnung (Tubingen, 1912).Google Scholar

page 63 note 1 Struve, Walter, “Hans Zehrer as a Neoconservative Elite Theorist”, in: American Historical Review, LXX (1965), pp. 10351057CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The notes to this article contain references to the major works on the “new middle class”.

page 63 note 2 According to Rostow Britain achieved economic maturity in the mid-1840's; his date for Germany is around 1910. Stages of Economic Growth, pp. 59ffGoogle Scholar. Gerschenkron's critique of the Rostow stage theory (Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, ch. XIV: “The Approach to European Industrialization: A Postscript”) is quite well-taken. My use of Rostow's language and my assumption that we can draw analogies between the social and economic development of Germany at the turn of the century and England at mid-century should not be construed as an acceptance of the Rostow model.

page 63 note 3 Read, Donald, The English Provinces: c. 1760–1960, A Study in Influence (New York, 1964), pp. 137, 139–50Google Scholar. The analogy is fürther strengthened by the existence at the turn of the century of a German Anti-Corn Law League, The Commercial Treaties Association [Handelsvertragsverein], which proved much weaker, poorer, and more inept than its English predecessor. Gustav Ruhland, whom Pauline Anderson describes as the leading theoretician of the Bund der Landwirte, expressly denied that any comparison with English economic and social development was possible. For England the social question was one of wage earners; for Germany it was the problem of the maintenance of the independent Mittelstand – which in turn would aid the German worker. Anderson, Pauline, The Background of Anti-English Feeling in Germany, 1890–1902 (Washington, D.C., 1939), pp. 155–65, 143.Google Scholar

page 64 note 1 See his Business Cycles, I, pp. 397ff., 170ffGoogle Scholar. The turn of the century marked for Professor Schumpeter the beginnings of the third great business cycle in western industrial history. The first had begun in the era of the industrial revolution. The second, beginning in the 1840's, was associated with the innovations resulting from the application of steam power and steel in industry. He traced the third cycle into the years of the Weimar Republic and beyond, thus treating the period 1900–1932 as an economic whole. We do not have to accept the projection of half-century long business cycles to accept Professor Schumpeter's judgment that at the turn of the century “a significant ‘break in trends’ occurred”.

page 64 note 2 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Albrecht, The War and German Society: The Testament of a Liberal, in: Shotwell, James T., general ed., Economic and Social History of the War (New Haven and London, 1937), pp. 195, 232Google Scholar; Bonn, M. J., Das Schicksal des deutschen Kapitalismus (Berlin, 1931), p. 7Google Scholar; Stolper, Gustav, German Economy, 1870–1940, pp. 108–20Google Scholar; Bechtel, Heinrich, Wirtschaftsgeschichte Deutschlands, III, pp. 363–79Google Scholar; Bruck, W. F., Social and Economic History of Germany from William II to Hitler (New York, 1962), pp. 134–43Google Scholar; and most recently, Feldman, Gerald D., Army, Industry, and Labor in Germany, 1914–1918 (Princeton, 1966).Google Scholar

page 65 note 1 I have dealt with the emergence of the ideology and movements of social conservatism and their political capture by the National Socialists during the Weimar Republic in my A Socialism for the German Middle Classes: The Social Conservative Response to Industrialism, 1900–1933 (Yale University doctoral diss., 1965)Google Scholar on microfilm from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich.

page 65 note 2 Cross, Collin, The Fascists in Britain (New York, 1963), pp. 166–68, 180–82.Google Scholar

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