It was not a question of classes, but one of having within the same
borders two worlds. One of them reminded me of Goethe and Schiller, of
Kant and Hegel, and the other of all that is ultra-modern, and cynical.
The older of these worlds was still tilling the fields on the principle
that where one takes one must give. It was still manufacturing with that
honesty that is better than advertising, and selling for cost of raw
material and labor, plus a reasonable profit.
In the new world it was different. Greed was the key-note of all and
everything. The kings of industry and commerce had forgotten that in
order to live ourselves we must let others live. These men had been wise
enough to compete as little as possible with one another. Every
manufacturer belonged to some _Syndikat_--trust--whose craze was to
capture by means fair or foul every foreign field that could be
saturated.
I have used the word "saturated" on purpose. Germany's industrials do
not seem to have been content with merely entering a foreign market and
then supplying it with that good tact which makes the article and its
manufacturer respected. Instead of that they began to dump their wares
into the new field in such masses that soon there was attached to really
good merchandise the stigma of cheapness in price and quality. A proper
sense of proportions would have prevented this. There is no doubt that
German manufacturers and exporters had to undersell foreign competitors,
nor can any reasonable human being find fault with this, but that, for
the sake of "hogging" markets, they should turn to cheap peddling was
nothing short of being criminally stupid--a national calamity.
I have yet to be convinced that Germany would not have been equally
prosperous--and that in a better sense--had its industry been less
subservient to the desire to capture as many of the world's markets as
possible. That policy would have led to getting better prices, so that
the national income from this source would have been just as great, if
not greater, when raw material and labor are given their proper
socio-economic value.
Some manufacturers had indeed clung to that policy--of which the old
warehouses and their counting-rooms along the Weser in Bremen are truly
and beautifully emblematic. But most of them were seized with a mania
for volume in export and ever-growing personal wealth.
Germany's population had failed to get its share of this wealth. Though
the _Arbeiter-Verbände_--unions--had seen to it that the workers were
not entirely ignored, it was a fact that a large class was living in
that peculiar sort of misery which comes from being the chattel of the
state, on the one hand, and the beast of burden of the captains of
industry, on the other. The government has indeed provided sick benefits
and old-age pensions, but these, in effect, were little more than a
promise that when the man was worked to the bone he would still be able
to drag on existence. The several institutions of governmental
paternalism in Germany are what heaven is to the livelong invalid. And
to me it seems that there is no necessity for being bedridden through
life when the physician is able to cure. In this instance, we must doubt
that the physician was willing to cure.
The good idealists who may differ with me on that point have probably
never had the chance to study at the closest range the sinister purpose
that lies behind all governmental effort that occupies itself with the
welfare of the individual. The sphere of a government should begin and
end with the care for the aggregate. The government that must care for
the individual has no _raison d'être_, and the same must be said of the
individual who needs such care. One should be permitted to perish with
the other.
The deeper I got into this New Germany, the less I was favorably
impressed by it. I soon found that the greed manifested had led to
results highly detrimental to the race. The working classes of the large
industrial centers were well housed and well fed, indeed. But it was a
barrack life they led. At best the income was small, and usually it was
all spent, especially if a man wanted to do his best by his children. It
was indeed true that the deposits in the German savings-banks were
unusually high, but investigation showed that the depositors were mostly
small business people and farmers. These alone had both the incentive
and the chance to save. For all others, be they the employees of the
government or the workers of industry, the sick benefit and old-age
pension had to provide if they were not to become public charges when
usefulness should have come to an end.
I found that Germany's magnificent socio-economic edifice was inhabited
mostly by members of the _parvenu_ class, by men and women who dressed
in bad taste, talked too much and too loud, and were forever painfully
in evidence.
For the purpose of illustrating the relative position of the two worlds
I found in Germany, I may use the simile that the new world inhabited
all the better floors, while the old was content with the cellar and the
attic. In the cellar lived the actual producers, and in the garret the
intellectuals, poor aristocracy, government officials, professional men,
and army officers.
Food being the thing everybody needs, and, which needing, he or she must
have at any price, the men who in the past had "saturated" foreign
markets turned of a sudden their attention to matters at home. The
British blockade had made exports impossible. The overseas channel of
income was closed. Exploitation had to be directed into other fields.
The German government saw this coming, and, under the plea of military
necessity, which really existed, of course, began to apply a policy of
restriction in railroad traffic. More will be said of this elsewhere.
Here I will state that from the very first military emergency was well
merged with socio-economic exigency.
The high priest of greed found that the government, by virtue of being
the owner of the railroads, was putting a damper on the concentration of
life's necessities and commodities. But that, after all, was not a
serious matter. So long as the food shark and commodity-grabber owned an
article he would always find the means to make the public pay for it.
Whether he sold a thing in Cologne, Hanover, Berlin, or Stettin made
little difference in the end, so long as prices were good. All that was
necessary was to establish a _Filiale_--a branch house--at the point and
all was well.
But as yet there was no actual shortage. Things were only beginning to
be scarce at times and intervals.
The population had begun to save food. The counters and shelves of the
retailers were still full, and the warehouses of the wholesalers had
just received the harvest of the year.
Hoarding had as yet not been thought of to any extent. Germany had not
been at war for forty-three years, and normally the food-supply had been
so generous that only a few pessimists, who saw a long war ahead,
thought it necessary to store up food for the future.
It was not until the fourth month of the war that prices of food showed
a steady upward tendency. That this should be so was not difficult to
understand, and the explanation of the authorities appeared very
plausible indeed. Whenever the possibility of a shortage had at all to
be intimated, the government took good care to balance its statement
with the assertion that if everybody did what was fit and proper under
the circumstances there would never be a shortage. If people ate
war-bread, a lack of breadstuffs was said to be out of the question.
That was very reassuring, of course. Not a little camouflage was used by
the merchants. I never saw so much food heaped into store windows as in
those days. On my way back and forth from my hotel to the office of the
service, I had to pass through the Mauerstrasse. In that street four
food-venders outdid one another in heaping their merchandise before the
public gaze. One of them was a butcher. His window was large and
afforded room for almost a ton of meat products.
I do not wonder that those who passed the window--and they had to be
counted in thousands--gained from it the impression that food would
never be scarce in Germany. Farther on there was another meat-shop. Its
owner did the same. Next door to him was a bakery. War-bread and rolls,
cakes and pastry enough to feed a brigade, were constantly on
exhibition. The fourth store sold groceries and what is known in Germany
as _Dauerware_--food that has been preserved, such as smoked meat,
sausages, and canned foods. The man was really doing his best. For a
while he had as his "set piece" a huge German eagle formed of cervelat
sausages each four feet long and as thick as the club of Hercules. I
thought the things had been made of papier-mâché, but found that they
were real enough.
But camouflage of that sort has its good purposes. Men are never so
hungry as when they know that food is scarce.
The several state governments of Germany employ the ablest economic
experts in the world. These men knew that in the end show would not do.
The substance would then be demanded and would have to be produced if
trouble was to be avoided. How to proceed was not a simple matter,
however. From the food of the nation had to come the revenue of the
government and the cost of the war. This had to be kept in mind.
The assertions of the Entente press that Germany would be starved into
submission within six months had been amply ridiculed in the German
newspapers. That was all very well. Everybody knew that it could not be
done in six months, and my first survey of the food situation proved
that it could not be done in a year. But what if the war lasted longer?
Nothing had come of the rush on Paris. Hindenburg had indeed given the
Russians a thorough military lesson at Tannenberg. But this and certain
successes on the West Front were not decisive, as everybody began to
understand. The Russians, moreover, were making much headway in Galicia,
and so far the Austro-Hungarian army had made but the poorest of
showings--even against the Serbs.
Thus it came that the replies in the German press to the Entente famine
program caused the German public to take a greater interest in the food
question. Propaganda and the application of ridicule have their value,
but also their drawbacks. They are never shell-proof so far as the
thinker is concerned, and ultimately will weaken rather than strengthen
the very thing they are intended to defend.
"_Qui s'excuse s'accuse_," say the French.
The Prussian government inaugurated a campaign against the waste of food
as associated with the garbage-pail. Hereafter all household offal had
to be separated into food-remains and rubbish. Food-leavings, potato
peels, fruit skins, the unused parts of vegetables, and the like, were
to be used as animal feed.
A week after the regulations had been promulgated and enforced, I took a
census of the results obtained. These were generous enough and showed
that as yet the Berliners at least were not stinting very much, despite
the war-bread.
[Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.