Villa Elsa / A Story of German Family Life

by Stuart Oliver Henry

"Now, by contrast, the future of the poor German child is decided in a fashion at about the age of ten. When a boy is elected to go into industry, for instance, he is apprenticed at about fourteen for, say, four years to be a mechanic. He is given no wages. In fact he has to pay something, very often, for the opportunity to learn. But he must, at the same time, attend what they call here continuing schools. It is these schools, which we do not have in America, that hold him fixed to his line of work—prevent him from jumping from one kind of thing to another. He not only works in the shop but is forced to go to a continuing school.

"Hence at eighteen the German factory and Government are sure to find in him just the kind of instructed worker they need. There has never been any danger of his meanwhile changing to driving a truck. He sticks to his trade through life. He becomes a master mechanic. You can't lure him away into an unskilled channel by more money. It's not the money alone he is thinking of. It is also the pride of having a specific calling that lifts him out of the great commonplace market of untrained labor. So Germany is full of competent mechanical men while we limp along with our huge supply of the partly experienced. Every such German knows how to do at least one thing as well as and usually better than anyone else.

"This is one big reason why Germany is pushing ahead of every nation in the industrial world and one reason why I fear her. No matter what she wants to do, she has an abundance of efficient brain and muscle right at hand with which to do it well and at once. In our great United States the lack of this is the bane of American industry and development, and causes such immense and continual loss in time and money because of our having to deal with such a mass of inexperienced young workmen.

"But more than this. The German who is taught a trade acquires not only the technic of it in a shop or laboratory, but also acquires in his studies something of an enlightening and inspiring knowledge of its history and significance. He is, consequently, much more than a mere drudge. He is made intelligent about his calling. This particular feature, so pregnant and valuable, is not incorporated in the American plan, if we can be said to have a plan in these matters. For the Yankee ambition is to make plenty of money in any quick way, and therefore to rise above a trade which a German is content to remain in. We feel no keen necessity about careful instruction in such vocations. Luck, "pull," "cheek," mere cleverness, are prominently relied on in its stead.

"There is another thing in this trade instruction that we do not have in any noticeable degree. It teaches the German mechanic to become wedded to his Nation and Government. He is made to realize the great benefits and responsibilities he owes to them. He becomes an integral national citizen ready to serve his homeland. He is taught to think of something higher than his pay envelope. Under our system such a mechanic grows up loosely connected in thought and acts with the governing public under which he enjoys all his liberty and opportunity. In so far as national necessities go he is apt to be a weakened unit or pulling the wrong way. Unlike the German, he has been educated to have no self-sacrificing ideal of state or country."

Anderson had, at one time, drawn Gard's attention to the immense advantage Germany uniquely derived by completely organizing and keeping at work that vast majority of incurable mediocrities—mere plodders—who are found in every race and who often weigh down its destiny to the point of sinking hopelessness.

Kirtley had since observed that one conspicuous German method was largely to employ this empty talent in small Government jobs. In general, these tasks seemed to be expressly for the swarming and uninspired nonentities, and meant most trivial duties for trivial pay. But such tasks kept this population occupied, orderly and more than self-respecting. In America incurable mediocrity is left to shift for itself in huge masses.

The natural ambition of a Teuton was to be in the national service. Rare was the German family who had not one member in "Government circles." Or if not, it was building expectations toward such a future. One in every eight wage-earning men a bureaucrat! It was not only a question of the salary, assured if small, but the honor. Any Government clerk or roustabout, not to speak of functionaries in higher duties, was looked up to in a way unfamiliar in America, for under that continuous régime his position remained fixed for life. Government officials and employees in the United States are quite freely thrown out under the frequent election upheavals and may to-morrow be ordinary citizens bereft of any sort of authority over their fellows. So they enjoy only a passing deference.

In Germany, owing to the use of plodders who made up extensively its ubiquitous and commanding official class, this bureaucratic scheme proved useful in more ways than one. It put faith and expectation into these stolid, menial lives and took them out of the ranks of the idle and discontented dullards who, in other countries, are a source of danger or decay. It attached Fritz firmly and loyally to the Nation. It held the links between the ruling caste and the people hard and tight. At the same time it tied his family and friends to the Hohenzollern, uniting them in a bond almost servile. The ever-swelling ranks of bureaucrats, in such a large measure imbecile and applying themselves to imbecile occupations, strengthened the incomparable solidarity of the race. And it was this army of State employees who were actively helping diffuse through Germany in 1913 the frothy ideas of a national triumph that intoxicated the populace.

But Kirtley, admiring this manifestation of practical and administrative wisdom, felt that there must be somewhere a tremendous weak spot. The expense of this plan and its withdrawal of muscle and even poor brain from directly productive channels, were costly. And there was about it a pompous vacancy, an arrogant nonsensicalness, a latent peril resulting from such a large number of automatons in unquestioned positions, that should all logically indicate this: If Germany once broke, it would collapse somewhat like an eggshell. It would be a formidable eggshell but with a content surprisingly void.