The economic revolution in industry and trade has also largely affected agricultural conditions. The commercial and industrial crises affect the rural population likewise. Hundreds of thousands of members of the families of farmers are temporarily or permanently employed in industrial establishments of various kinds. This manner of employment constantly expands, firstly, because the great number of small farmers do not have enough work on their own farms to keep themselves and the members of their families usefully employed, and, secondly, because the large farmers find it profitable to have an important portion of the products of their soil transformed into industrial commodities right on their own farms. In this manner they save the heavy expense of shipping the raw material, for instance, potatoes and grain for the manufacture of alcohol, beets for sugar, cereals for flour or for brewing beer, etc. They, furthermore, are enabled to establish a mutual relation between agricultural and industrial production and can employ the labor power on hand to better advantage. The wages are lower and the workers are more willing too than those in cities and industrial centers. Expenses of buildings and rents as well as taxes are considerably lower too, for the large land owners in the rural districts are both the makers and executors of the law; they furnish many representatives from their midst and control the administration and police force. That is why the number of factories in the country increases each year. Agriculture and industry are becoming more and more closely linked, and the large agricultural establishments mainly profit from this fact.
The capitalistic development that the large estates have undergone, in Germany as elsewhere, has created conditions similar to those in England and the United States. We no longer meet with those ideal conditions in the country that still existed a few decades ago. Modern civilization has gradually taken possession of the country, too, in the remotest places even. Militarism especially has unintentionally exercised a revolutionary influence. The great increase in the standing army has made itself especially severely felt in the open country. A great portion of the troops for the standing army is drawn from the rural population. But when the peasant’s son, or day laborer or farm-hand, returns to the country, after an absence of two or three years, from the city and the barracks, where the atmosphere has not been an exactly moral one, he has become acquainted with many new ideas and requirements of civilization that he seeks to satisfy at home as he did away from home. To make this possible his first demand is for higher wages. The old modesty and contentedness have been shattered in the city. In many cases he prefers to stay away from the country altogether, and all endeavours, supported by the military authorities, to lead him back, remain unsuccessful. Improved means of traffic and communication also tend to raise the standard of requirements in the country. By his associations with the city the farmer becomes acquainted with the world in an entirely new and tempting way; he is influenced by ideas and learns of requirements of civilization that have been entirely foreign to him until then. That causes him to become dissatisfied with his position. The increased demands made upon the population by state, county, community, etc., affect the peasant as well as the rural worker and make them more rebellious still. To this other most important factors must be added.
European agriculture, and especially German agriculture, has entered upon a new phase of its development since the close of the seventies of the last century. While, until then, the nations depended upon the farm products of their own agriculture, or, as England, upon that of the neighboring countries—France and Germany—the situation now began to change. As a result of the tremendously improved means of transportation—navigation and the construction of railways in North America—provisions began to be shipped from there to Europe and lowered the prices of grain, so that cultivation of the chief kinds of grain in Middle and Western Europe became far less profitable, unless the entire conditions of production could be changed. Moreover, the realm of international grain production greatly expanded. Besides Russia and Roumania, who made every endeavour to increase their export of grain, products from Argentine Republic, Australia, India and Canada appeared upon the market. In the course of development another unfavorable factor was added. Influenced by the causes above enumerated, the small farmers and rural workers began to desert the country. They either emigrated beyond the seas or scores of them moved from the country to the cities and industrial centers, so that labor power in the country became scarce. The antiquated, patriarchal conditions, especially in Eastern Europe, the ill-treatment and almost servile status of the farm-hands and servants still heightened this desertion of the country. To what extent this shifting of the population has affected the rural districts from 1840 until the census of 1905, may be seen from the fact that during this period the Prussian provinces—East-Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, Posen, Silesia, Saxony and Hannover—lost 4,049,200 persons, and Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden and Alsace-Lorraine had a loss of 2,026,500, while Berlin increased by migration by about 1,000,000 persons, Hamburg by 402,000, the Kingdom of Saxony by 326,200, the Rhine provinces by 343,000, and Westphalia by 246,100.[208]
[208] Quarterly Gazette for Statistics of the German Empire.
[2.—Peasants and Great Landowners.]
As a result of all these changes, agriculture began to suffer from a want of capital. Accordingly the former line of development, whereby the great landowner bought up the small and medium-sized farmers and made them part of his property, gave way to the opposite tendency. But this pressure also brought about, that the clumsy character of agricultural enterprises was gradually modified, because people recognized that it would no longer do to follow the beaten path, but that it had become necessary to adopt new methods. The national government, as well as the state governments, endeavored to relieve agriculture from its exigency by appropriate trade and tariff policies and by direct expenditures for various improvements. Recently the medium and great landowners are quite successful again wherever the farms are conducted in keeping with modern technical development, as may be gathered from the fact that the prices of farms have greatly increased.
If agriculture is to prosper in capitalistic society, it is necessary that it should be conducted by capitalistic methods. Here, as in industry, it is important that human labor should be replaced or aided by machinery and technical improvements. That this is being done may be seen from the following: During the period from 1882 to 1895 the number of steam-ploughs employed in agriculture in Germany has increased from 836 to 1696, and the number of steam-threshing machines has increased from 75,690 to 259,364. Compared to what might be done in the way of agricultural machinery, these figures are still exceedingly low and prove the undeveloped state of agriculture; they also prove that lack of means and the small size of the individual farms have so far made the application of machinery impossible. The machine, in order to be truly advantageous, requires application on a large area of land devoted to cultivation of the same kind of crop. The great number of small and medium-sized farms, the scattered fields and the great variety of crops have prevented a successful application of machinery. The [tables on page 351] show how the farming area is distributed in the German Empire.[209]
Among the 5,736,082 farms counted in 1907 there were no less than 4,384,786 of less than 5 hectares = 76.8 per cent., that can furnish but a poor existence to their owners, unless the soil is particularly good, or unless devoted to horticulture. A great many of them could not even be used in this way, since there are 2,731,055 farms among them of one hectare, and less, in area.