The chief reason for the successes of Germany in the industrial field is the same as it is for the United States. Both countries have only lately entered the industrial phase of their development, and they have entered it with all the energy of youth. Both countries enjoy a widely-spread scientifically-technical—or, at least, concrete scientific—education. In both countries manufactories are built according to the newest and best models which have been worked out elsewhere; and both countries are in a period of awakening in all branches of activity—literature and science, industry and commerce. They enter now on the same phase in which Great Britain was in the first half of the nineteenth century, when British workers took such a large part in the invention of the wonderful modern machinery.
We have simply before us a fact of the consecutive development of nations. And instead of decrying or opposing it, it would be much better to see whether the two pioneers of the great industry—Britain and France—cannot take a new initiative and do something new again; whether an issue for the creative genius of these two nations must not be sought for in a new direction—namely, the utilisation of both the land and the industrial powers of man for securing well-being to the whole nation instead of to the few.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See [Appendix A].
[2] See [Appendix B].
[3] For the last few years, since the Japanese war, the figures were uncertain. It appeared, however, in 1910, that there were in the empire, including the industries paying an excise duty, 19,983 establishments, employing 2,253,790 persons, and showing a yearly production of 4,565,400,000 roubles (£494,600,000). Out of them, the industrial establishments under the factory inspectors in European Russia proper, Poland, and the four northern provinces of Caucasia numbered 15,720, employing 1,951,955 workpeople, out of whom 1,227,360 were men, 521,236 women, and 203,359 children.
[4] The yearly imports of raw cotton from Central Asia and Transcaucasia represent, as a rule, about one-tenth part of the total imports of raw cotton (£1,086,000, as against £11,923,000 in 1910). They are quite a recent growth, the first plantations of the American cotton tree having been introduced in Turkestan by the Russians, as well as the first sorting and pressing establishments. The relative cheapness of the plain cottons in Russia, and the good qualities of the printed cottons, attracted the attention of the British Commissioner at the Nijni Novgorod Exhibition in 1897, and are spoken of at some length in his report.
[5] The yearly production of the 1,037 woollen mills of Russia and Poland (149,850 workpeople) was valued at about £25,000,000 in 1910, as against £12,000,000 in 1894.
[6] Report of Vice-Consul Green, The Economist, 9th June, 1894: “Reapers of a special type, sold at £15 to £17, are durable and go through more work than either the English or the American reapers.” In the year 1893, 20,000 reaping machines, 50,000 ploughs, and so on, were sold in that district only, representing a value of £822,000. Were it not for the simply prohibitive duties imposed upon foreign pig-iron (two and a half times its price in the London market), this industry would have taken a still greater development. But in order to protect the home iron industry—which consequently continued to cling to obsolete forms in the Urals—a duty of 61s. a ton of imported pig-iron was levied. The consequences of this policy for Russian agriculture, railways and State’s budget have been discussed in full in a work by A. A. Radzig, The Iron Industry of the World. St. Petersburg, 1896 (Russian).
[7] Out of the 1,500 steamers which ply on Russian rivers one-quarter are heated with naphtha, and one-half with wood; wood is also the chief fuel of the railways and ironworks in the Urals.