I cannot attempt a survey of the vast literature which has sprung in recent years from the discussion of the proposal to change the commercial policy of England.
A bibliography of 38 pages compiled under the supervision of A. P. C. Griffin, Select list of references on the British tariff movement (Chamberlain’s plan), was published at Washington, 1904. For a defense of the protective policy the reader may see Ashley, Tariff problem; for representative statements of the free trade views see William Smart, The return to protection, London, Macmillan, 1904; and L. G. C. Money, Elements of the fiscal problem, London, King, 1903. Considerable historical importance attaches to the books by Gastrell and Williams, which did much to arouse interest in the great commercial question of the day. Useful surveys are provided in translations of two foreign works, Carl J. Fuchs, The trade policy of Great Britain, London, 1905, and Victor Berard, British imperialism and commercial supremacy, London, 1906.
Reading of a more substantial character is offered in books which analyze the organization of industry and discuss the merits and defects of the English. For a survey from the standpoint of theory see Alfred Marshall, Industry and Trade, London, 1919, which is adapted only to advanced students, and for more concrete discussions, suited to topical reading, Arthur Shadwell, **Industrial efficiency, London, 1906, two volumes, reprinted later in one; Sydney J. Chapman, **Work and wages, 3 vol., 1904-14. Interesting comparisons of methods and results in England and in the U. S. will be found in Report of the Moseley Industrial Commission, London, 1903, American engineering competition, N. Y., 1901, and Causes of decay of a British industry, (gun-making), by “Artifex” and “Opifex,” London, 1907.
The analysis of commercial statistics in Schooling and Fuchs is supplemented by later studies to be found in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE GERMAN STATES
468. Connection of the commercial and the political development of Germany.—Standing next to England in the extent of its commerce about 1900 is a country which at the beginning of the century, if not among the last, was certainly far below the leaders. This country is Germany. We shall have to note, in this sketch of commercial development in the nineteenth century, two remarkable examples of commercial expansion. One of them, furnished by the United States, was due to the spread of a people, originally small, over a great area rich in resources. The other, furnished by Germany, was due to different causes. The Germans of 1800 occupied a territory not greatly different from that which composed the Germany of 1900, and to which nature has given but a moderate endowment of resources. There was no Germany at the earlier date, however; the people were divided up among a great number of petty states, and their economic forces were cramped thereby so as to hinder their development. The commercial progress of the century has depended largely on the reform of these political conditions.
469. Summary of the political development.—It will be necessary, therefore, in the following pages, to refer frequently to the events of political history, and for the convenience of the reader a brief summary is here given of the course of that history. The Napoleonic wars wiped out the smallest and most backward of the German states, reducing the number from over three hundred to about forty. Then, until near the middle of the century, progress depended on negotiations between these states by which the worst effects of their separation were removed. In 1848 a liberal movement reformed the government of some of the important states on modern lines, and strengthened the demand for a unified Germany, leaving still undecided, however, the question whether Prussia or Austria was to be the leading state. The war of 1866 between the two states gave the leadership to Prussia; and the war of 1870 with France led finally to the foundation of the modern German Empire, under which at last the people found room for commercial expansion and advanced with astonishing rapidity.
470. Conditions of Germany about 1815.—In spite of the service which Napoleon did Germany by abolishing the smallest states, the country was still splintered into pieces in 1815. A network of tariff frontiers covered the land, cutting the great rivers and the natural high-roads of commerce, and preventing the movement of wares. Not only did each state have its own tariff; some had internal tariffs in addition. The single state of Prussia had altogether some sixty tariffs. Some of the states were made of scattered pieces, interspersed among the territories of their neighbors; even a small state might consist of eight or ten fragments. A merchant, to reach the center of the country from the national frontier, crossed about sixteen tariff boundaries.
Not only the customs tariffs consumed time and money. The separatism which they represented spread into all parts of the organization; there were seventeen different postal systems in the country; nearly threescore different laws on bills of exchange; hundreds of different coins.
471. Backwardness of commerce and manufactures.—The difficulties of internal commerce were so great that the life of the people was arranged in large part to enable them to exist without trade. Most of the people were engaged in agriculture and supplied themselves with nearly all the necessaries of life. Manufactures were still carried on almost exclusively by scattered artisans. The German governments still clung to the old ideas of the gild system and public regulation. Little by little these ideas fell into the background in the first half of the nineteenth century, but it is important to note that they were still a living force in Germany when England had discarded them and was in the full rush of the developing factory system.