Of much more permanent importance in the history of William and of his Empire was the great miners’ strike in Westphalia, which may be said to have begun on the 1st of May. This tremendous upheaval of labour at one time involved the idleness of over 100,000 men—by no means all miners or all Westphalians. The shortened coal supply affected industries everywhere, and other trades struck because the spirit of mutiny was in the air. In many districts the military were called out to guard the pits’ mouths, and sanguinary conflicts with the strikers ensued.
Evidently this big convulsion took William completely by surprise. Up to this time he had been deeply engrossed in the spectacular side of his position—the showy and laborious routine of an Emperor who is also a practical working soldier. Such thought as he had given to the great economic problems pressing for solution all about him, seems to have been of the most casual sort and cast wholly in the Bismarckian mould. What Bismarck’s views on this subject were and are, is well known. He believes that over-education has filled the labouring classes of Germany with unnatural and unreasonable discontent, which is sedulously played upon by depraved Socialist agitators, and that the only way to deal with the trouble is to imprison or banish as many of these latter as possible, and crush out the disaffection by physical force wherever it manifests itself. He decorates this position with varying sophistical frills and furbelows from time to time, but in its essence that is what he thinks. And up to May of 1889 that is apparently what William thought, too.
The huge proportions of this sudden revolt of labour made William nervous, however, and in this excited state he was open to new impressions. The anti-Bismarck coalition saw their chance and swiftly utilized it. With all haste they summoned Dr. Hinzpeter from his home at Bielefeld, and persuaded William to confer with his old tutor upon this alarming industrial complication, with which it was clearly enough to be seen his other advisers did not know how to deal. No exact date is given for the interview which William had with Dr. Hinzpeter, but the day upon which it was held should be a memorable one in German history. For then dawned upon the mind of the young Kaiser that dream of Christian Socialism with the influence of which we must always thereafter count.
It is true that the angered and dispossessed ex-Chancellor declares now that William never was morally affected by the painful aspects of the labour question, and that he took the side of the workmen solely because he thought it would pay politically. But men who know the Kaiser equally well, and who have the added advantage of speaking dispassionately, say that the new humanitarian views which Dr. Hinzpeter now unfolded to him took deep hold upon his imagination, and made a lasting mark upon his character. Even if the weight of evidence were not on its side, one would like to believe this rather than the cynical theory propounded from Friedrichsruh.
William did not become a full-fledged economic philosopher all at once under this new influence.
There was a great deal of the rough absolutist in the little harangue he delivered to the three working-men delegates who, on May 14th, were admitted to his presence to lay the case of the strikers before him. He listened gravely to their recital of grievances, asked numerous questions, and seemed considerably impressed. When their spokesman had finished he said that he was anxiously watching the situation, had ordered a careful inquiry into all the facts, and would see that evenhanded justice was done. Then, in a sharper voice, he warned them to avoid like poison all Socialist agitators, and specially to see to it that there were no riots or attempts to prevent the non-strikers from working. If this warning was not heeded, he concluded, in high peremptory tones, he would send his troops “to batter and shoot them down in heaps.”
It must be admitted that this sentiment does not touch the high-water mark of Christian Socialism, but the drift of the Kaiser’s mind was obviously forward. Two days later he received a delegation of mine masters, and to them spoke rather bitterly of the perversity and greed of capitalists, and their selfish unwillingness to “make certain sacrifices in order to terminate this perilous and troublous state of things.” On May 17th it was announced that Dr. Hinzpeter had been commissioned to travel through the disturbed districts and report to the Kaiser upon the origin and merits of the strike. This practically settled the matter. The masters as a whole made concessions, under which work was resumed. Those owners who displayed stubbornness were in one way or another made to feel the imperial displeasure, and soon the trouble was at an end. It is worthy of note that Germany has since that time been far less agitated by labour troubles than any of the states by which she is surrounded, and that upon the occasion of the recent May-day demonstrations German workmen were practically the only ones on the Continent who did not come into collision with the police.
But, after all, the vitally important thing was the reappearance of Dr. Hinzpeter, involving, as it did, the revival in the young Kaiser’s daily thoughts and moods of the gentle and softening influences of those old school days at Cassel, before Bonn and the Bismarcks came to harden and pervert.
Upon the heels of the Strasburg incident followed another flurry in international politics, which for the moment seemed almost as menacing, and which hurried forward a highly significant step on the part of William.