Part 20 (1/2)
She even sees herself a little out of focus, and though I admit her precarious position in the heart of Europe, she exaggerates the necessity for her autocratic military government to meet the situation. That philosophical and literary radical Lord Morley, now wearing a coronet, in the land where logic is a foundling and compromise a darling, writes: ”A weak government throws power to something which usurps the name of public opinion, and public opinion as expressed by the ventriloquists of the newspapers is at once more capricious and more vociferous than it ever was.” This, strange to say, is exactly the opinion of the German autocrats, who maintain that no democracy can be a strong military power. It remains for England, and perhaps later America, to prove her wrong.
The sovereign lady Germania, being of this temper and disposition, of this psychological make-up, let us look at her dealings with certain embarra.s.sing problems in her own household. The over-stimulation of ill-regulated mental activity as the result of regimental education is one of the minor problems. Some fourteen million dollars worth of cheap and nasty literature is peddled by the agents of certain publis.h.i.+ng houses, and sold all over Germany to those recently taught to read but not trained to think; and this, it is to be remembered, is still a land of low wages, of strict economies, and of small expenditures on books. For Germany that is an enormous sum and represents a very wide-spread evil. I recognize that it is not only in Germany, but in France, England, and America, that the ethically hysterical have a.s.sumed that modesty and health and common-sense are characteristics of the intellectually mediocre. That the neglect of all, and the breaking of some, of the Ten Commandments is essential to the creation of art or literature, or necessary to a courageous freedom of living, is a contention with which I agree less and less the more I know of art, literature, and life. But, as I have remarked elsewhere in this volume, the Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their day in Germany just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coa.r.s.e, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, ”Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'ame.”
There is but a puny barrier against this, for the statistical year-book of German cities gives the number of public libraries in forty-two cities as 179. Twenty-seven of these cities gave an annual support to 114 of these libraries of only $64,847! According to the figures of Herr Ernest Schultze, in 1907 the forty largest German cities, with a population of 11,380,000, had public libraries containing a sum total of 807,000 volumes. In the year 1906-1907, 5,437,000 volumes were taken out and 1,607,476 persons frequented the public reading-rooms, and in these forty-two cities $280,095 were contributed from private sources for such library purposes. In 1910 Germany had in some 400 cities, each of more than 10,000 inhabitants, about 650 public libraries and reading-rooms, with together about 3,250,000 volumes.
Berlin has thirty public libraries with 231,300 volumes; the number of books taken out in 1910 was 1,655,000. Hamburg has one public library with 100,000 volumes, of which 1,364,000 were taken out. Breslau has 7 libraries and 4 reading-rooms, with 75,578 volumes. Leipzig has 7 libraries and 3 reading-rooms, with 42,100 volumes. Munich has 6 libraries and 26,671 volumes. Cologne has 7 libraries and 6 reading- rooms, with 24,898 volumes.
The smallest library is in the village community of Dudweiler, in the Rhine province, which contains 132 volumes for the 22,000 inhabitants.
There were 14,941 books published in Germany in 1880, 18,875 in 1890, 24,792 in 1900, and 31,281 in 1910.
There were 13,470 books published in America in 1910, 9,209 of them by American authors.
There were 10,914 books published in England in 1911, of which 2,384 were new editions. Of this number 2,215, which includes 933 new editions and 40 translations, were fiction; religion, 930; sociology, 725; science, 650; geography, 601; biography, 476; history, 429; technology, 525. In 1820, there were only 26 novels published in England.
Of the 31,281 books published in Germany in 1910, 4,852 dealt with education and juvenile literature; 4,134, belles-lettres; 3,215, law and political economy; 2,510, theology; 2,082, commerce and industry; 1,981, medicine; 1,884, philology and literary history; 1,480, geography, including maps; 667, military science and equestry; 1,030, agriculture and forestry; 1,750, natural science and mathematics; 1,108, engineering and construction; 1,254, history and biography; 981, art; and 668 on philosophy and theosophy.
There were some 9,000 writers of books in America in 1910, or one author in 10,000 of the population, already more than enough; there were some 8,000 in Great Britain, or one author in about 5,500 of the population; while in Germany there are over 31,000 writers, or one author in every 2,097 of the population, including men, women, and children of all ages, an unreasonable and disastrous proportion. If we estimate the number of adult males of Germany at 14,000,000, the number who voted at the last election, then there was one author to every 450, a most unhealthy proportion, and bearing out exactly what has been said of the German temperament and const.i.tutional bias.
Furthermore, this accounts for the fact that Germany imports some 700,000 agricultural laborers each year to garner the food harvests, for which she has not sufficient recruits, and who, by the way, take out of the country each year some $35,000,000 in wages. Twenty per cent. of the miners in Westphalia are foreigners, eight per cent. of them Italians, and there are nearly half a million foreigners employed as common laborers in the various industries of Germany.
Wherever one travels now in the world, he finds that most courageous and self-sacrificing of all the pioneers, the missionary: American, British, French, Italian. The best of them, on the plains of North America, in the destructive climate of India, in China, in all the islands of all the seas, are, whatever their creed, soldiers of whom we are all proud; for they fight not only against the overwhelming prejudice of those whom they seek to save, but against the widespread prejudice of their own people, and against the well-founded suspicion and contempt aroused by their own black sheep. I have found them, here a Jesuit, there a Presbyterian, winning my friends.h.i.+p and my admiration, despite fundamental differences of belief about many things. There are few Germans among them! Even in this field Germany produces theological controversialists whom we have all studied, orthodox and destructive, but few pioneers, and practically no Augustines or Loyolas, Wesleys or Booths, Livingstones or Stanleys.
Columba, an Irish refugee, founded on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, a mission station, whence went missionaries and preachers to the conversion not only of England, but of the tribes of Germany. It was only in the sixth century that the Franks, only in the ninth century that the Saxons, and only in the tenth century that the Danes became Christians.
Neither at home nor abroad are her successes those which deal with men by winning their allegiance, their submission, their loyalty, or their respectful regard. She is pre-eminent in the things of the mind, in subjective matters, and in her regimental dealings with, and arrangements for, the inanimate side of life.
As an example on the credit side of her governing is the very complete and successful system of land-banks, introduced by Frederick the Great and since modelled somewhat upon the French methods, which have protected the farmer from usury, insured him money at low rates for improvements, for the purchase of tools, cattle, and fertilizers, and enabled him to do, by sensible co-operation, what would have been impossible for him as an individual. So successful has been this co-operation between the banks and the united farming communities that it were well worth a chapter of description were it not that, through the initiative of President Taft and the able and industrious a.s.sistance of our officials in Europe, among whom our amba.s.sador in Paris, Mr.
Herrick, may be mentioned as untiring, there will shortly appear a complete exposition and explanation of the scheme, available for those of my countrymen interested in the matter. Or if they will journey to Ireland they may see there what Sir Horace Plunkett has done to revolutionize, and against tremendous odds, agriculture. And, be it noted, it has been done, with emphatic warnings against the modern fallacy of leaning upon state aid. It is estimated that our farmers would be saved between $20,000,000 and $40,000,000 a year in interest alone were we to adopt similar methods of loaning to the land-owners.
The Preussische Centralgenossenschaftska.s.se, or Central Bank of Co-operative a.s.sociations, has revolutionized, one may here use the word without exaggeration, agricultural methods, throughout Prussia and Germany.
In Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa there are 5,000,000 acres of land in wheat, which is practically the size of Germany's wheat acreage, but Germany produces 140,000,000 bushels of wheat off her parcel of land; while the wheat raised on the same area in these three States is only 55,000,000 bushels.
France and Minnesota each plant 16,000,000 acres in wheat, but France produces 324,000,000 bushels and Minnesota 188,000,000 bushels. In round numbers we support 90,000,000 people on 3,000,000 square miles of land, and we could support 150 per square mile just as easily as 30, and even then there would be not even a fraction of the density of population of Denmark, 178; the Netherlands, 470; France, 189; Saxony, 830; England and Wales, 405.6. The average wheat yield of our country is about 14 bushels per acre in good years, it might just as well be 25; the average cotton yield is about four-tenths of a bale per acre, and four times that amount could be raised as easily.
In 1900, 10,500,000 people were engaged in agriculture in America, or 35.7 per cent. of the population; as over against 37.7 in 1890 and 44.3 in 1880. Of these 10,500,000, 5,700,000 were owners, renters, or overseers, or 56 per cent., and only 4,500,000 were actual farm laborers; and more than half of these, or 2,350,000, were members of the family, leaving only some 2,000,000 actual agricultural wage-earners, or employable agricultural laborers. Five-eighths of these were under twenty-five years of age, and of the white regular workers only one-tenth were over thirty-five years of age. This shows how unstable is the foundation of our agricultural prosperity, the chief a.s.set of plenty and contentment of our country. Mr. Get-Rich-Quick has moved on to the s.h.i.+fting and more exciting opportunities of the cities, where poor human nature, aided and abetted by weak philanthropy, and demagogic fis.h.i.+ng for votes by eleemosynary legislation, provides him with a mild form of riotous living, and a fatted calf of doles in case of accident, sickness, penury, or old age.
In our American cities of over 8,000 inhabitants the increase in population from 1790 to 1900 has been from 3.4 per cent. to 33 per cent. In cities of 2,500 and over the increase from 1880 to 1900 has been from 29.3 per cent. to 40.2 per cent. In the State of New York the farming population is smaller than ever before, and in parts of New England it is smaller than one hundred years ago. In 1909 there were 15,000 deserted farms with a total of 1,130,000 acres. The average size of farms in the United States in 1850 was 212 acres; in 1890, 121 acres. Wages in the reaping season on fruit, grain, and cotton farms are enormous, running to four and five dollars a day. We are behind every country in Europe except Russia, in our agricultural methods. Some day the American people will discover, may it not be too late, that the tall talk and highfalutin boastings of the politicians and alien journalists in their midst do nothing to make two blades of gra.s.s grow where one grew before.
Germany may not have solved this problem, indeed no nation which offers undue legislative alleviation for human frailty will ever solve it, but at least she has not s.h.i.+rked the problem, and presents for our enlightenment a scheme in full and smooth working order.
In dealing with German problems it is fair to give examples where her methods have been wholly and entirely successful. The man who does not know one tree or shrub from another cannot travel in trains, motor-cars, or afoot without remarking the neatness, symmetry, and the flouris.h.i.+ng condition of the forests. In these matters Germany so far surpa.s.ses us that we may be said to be merely in a kindergarten stage of development. As early as 1783 a German traveller, Johann David Schoepf, was distressed to see the waste of valuable wood in America.
He tells of a furnace in New Jersey which exhausted a forest of nearly 20,000 acres in twelve to fifteen years, and goes on to prophesy the grave danger to America unless coal is discovered and used instead of wood.
The public forests in America contain about nine per cent. of the total land area and about twenty-five per cent. of the forest area of the country. In Germany the state owns about 40 per cent. of the forests, and nearly 70 per cent. of the forest area is under state control. The total forest area of the empire is 34,569,800 acres, and two-thirds bear pine, larch, and red and white fir. In a recent year the Federal States made a net profit of $38,250,000 from public lands and forests, and the entire profit from the German forests was estimated at $110,000,000. When one remembers that Germany is less than the size of Texas, and that from her forests alone, in one year, she received an income equal to more than one-tenth of our total national expenditure for that same year, the fact of our childish wastefulness is brought home to us, and makes a patriot feel that a Gifford Pinchot should be given a free hand. I can only write of the subject as one technically entirely ignorant, but that Germany is a university of forestry is not only attested by the demand for her teachers in India, and in America, and elsewhere in the world, but by the condition of the forests themselves all over Germany, which no traveller, from America at any rate, can fail to notice without surprise and delight.
Germany, like the rest of us, has been obliged to face the various social problems that arise from original sin, but which vote-getters are pleased to ascribe to industrial progress. In our country, with a population of some thirty to the square mile, while in the kingdom of Saxony the density of the population is 830.6 to the square mile, it is hard to believe that we suffer from overcrowding so much as from overindulgence, wastefulness, and fussy legislation. None the less, we have 42 inst.i.tutions for the feeble-minded, 115 schools and homes for the deaf and blind, 350 hospitals for the insane, 1,200 refuge houses, 1,300 prisons, 1,500 hospitals, and 2,500 almshouses. We have 2,000,000 annually who are cared for in homes and hospitals, 300,000 insane and feeble-minded, 160,000 blind or deaf, 80,000 prisoners, and 100,000 paupers in almshouses and out, and we spend each year about $100,000,000 in taking care of them. We are as wasteful and careless in these matters as we have been until very lately in our forestry methods.
In the early days of the empire Germany undertook to deal with these social problems. The German Empire took over some of the principles of socialism, but retained, and retains absolutely, the power of applying those principles. Bismarck himself admitted that his advocacy of the industrial insurance laws was selfish. ”My idea was to bribe the working cla.s.ses, or shall I say to win them over, to regard the state as a social inst.i.tution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare.” Whatever else may have resulted, discontent, whether well-founded or not, is not now under discussion, has not been lessened. In 1912 more than one-half of the electors voted ”discontented” as over against the less than one-half who voted ”contented.” The ma.s.s of the people may be better clothed, better fed, better housed, better cared for in sickness and in old age, than formerly, but they are not satisfied. No state can go much further than Germany has gone along the lines of state interference, guidance, and control of the personal affairs of its people, and nothing is more surprising about the whole matter than the general acceptance in America and in England of such legislation as having proved altogether successful. I doubt if any intelligent German considers these various pension schemes as altogether successful. I can vouch for it that many German statesmen make no such claims in private, whatever they may say in public.
Some of the barren figures, needing no comment, are of interest in this connection. The cost of insurance in Germany has risen to over $500,000 a day, the total cost of state insurance exceeding $250,000,000 a year at the present time, a fairly heavy tax upon small employers. In 1909, of 422,076 decisions by the industrial unions, 76,352 were appealed against, and of the 100,000 arbitration judgments, 22,794 were appealed against. So difficult is it to settle to the claimant's satisfaction the amount of salve necessary for his particular wound when, as is true in these cases, the salve is a grant of money for a longer or shorter period!