THE GERMAN MYTH THE GERMAN MYTH The Falsity of Germany's "Social Progress" Claims BY GUSTAVUS MYERS BONI AND LIVERIGHT NEW YORK 1918 Copyright, 1918, by Boni & Livcright, Inc. GERMANY'S SINISTER PROPAGANDA 13 that the autocracy was hatching schemes that were destined to bring about the slaughter and maiming of millions of the very people for whom the German Government professed such tender concern. Again, this propaganda tended to weaken the respect and loyalty of other peoples for their own countries. By presenting a dazzling pic- ture of Germany, it has been a propaganda the effect of which has been to make it appear that, in sharp contrast with the German Government, other Governments have been neglectful in car- ing for the vital welfare of the people. It served to give a plausible air of democracy to a rigid autocracy where arbitrary rule goes hand in hand with feudal castes and distinctions. It spread the fiction that the interests of the com- mon people were the prime consideration in Germany when, as a matter of fact, the voting power is effectively concentrated in the hands of the rich, who in every important instance sub- ordinate all other interests to their own. Using this power to insure themselves control not only of the German Empire but of the leading States and cities, the feudal rulers and the rich have refused the common people proper representa- tion and have blocked every one of their efforts at fundamental and effective reforms. Tinsel 2033438 14 THE GERMAN MYTH reforms for show purposes they have allowed, but no real reforms.* It is this propaganda that was long respon- sible, and to a certain unfortunate extent is still, in blinding many people to the brutalities and tyranny of the German rulers. Having been thus taught to look up to the German Govern- ment as the grand exponent and executor of social reforms, there are still those who, im- posed upon by years of this seductive propa- ganda, cannot bring themselves to believe in the horrors committed by the German rulers. Or, if they do believe, they consider that those atrocities are more than counterbalanced by the German Government's alleged enlightened and advanced social measures for its people. Some of those who have diffused this propa- ganda in the United States have been mere crea- tures of the German Government, getting their recompense in some way or other. The German professors, all subsidized mouthpieces, have been among the most active. Others have been disciples of political cults trying to introduce the conception of the German State into this * As this goes to press there are reports from Germany that the ruling classes there, under pressure from victorious demo- cratic nations, have finally decided to allow electoral and some other reforms. But until these "contemplated" changes are conclusively established and in actual operation, these reports are hardly worthy of serious consideration. GERMANY'S SINISTER PROPAGANDA 15 country, and seeking to bulwark their cause and to increase their followers and vote by magnifying Germany's accomplishments. Aliens as many of them have been both to the his- tory and spirit of American life and institu- tions, they knew little or nothing of the progress made here and thus were incapable of making comparisons. Still, others of these propagan- dists have been literary, academic, or political professionals who accepted the ready-made material prepared by the Kaiser's publicity staff. It had become the fashion to laud Ger- many, and, of course, they fell in with a fashion which caused them the least mental effort and brought them the most cheaply acquired notice and revenue. These are some of the tools that have reeled out this propaganda for American consumption a long procession of the same mechanical stuff in articles, books, and speeches. Some of these books are of recent date and in active circula- tion ; and if their authors do not get decorations from the Kaiser it will be due to no fault of theirs. But there are others on the list, although un- conscious of the nature of the service they have done to the Kaiser's Government. There are those officeholders who, at various times, made 16 THE GERMAN MYTH their junketing expeditions to Germany ap- parently to study conditions. Assuming the correctness of what they were told by flatter- ing German officialdom, they came back and ground out solemn official reports which are little other than praise-hymns of German do- ings. And (please take notice) these reports have been published and circulated at the ex- pense of the very American people whose achievements Germany has been most keenly interested in slurring. Having this official sanc- tion, these reports were consulted by a succes- sion of superficial writers who in newspaper or magazine articles or editorials passed some of their contents on in appealing doses to the American people at large. A genuine investigation would have exposed the utter falsity of these sweeping claims of the superiority of German living conditions. Such an investigation would have revealed that the conditions under which the farmers and work- ing people in Germany have had to live and work were deplorable in the extreme. It would have shown it to be the normal condition that women have had to work like beasts of burden in the fields and cities. It would have proved the abounding evidences of wretched sweat- shops in city and rural districts. It would have GERMANY'S SINISTER PROPAGANDA 17 brought out that peasant farmers are still op- pressed by feudal servitude dues. It would told of the incredibly scant diet on which they have had to exist. It would have stated the actual facts of how in the industrial centers working men, women, and children have been compelled to toil long hours for starvation wages, and the nauseating housing conditions under which many of them have been herded. Any real investigation would have shown, too, the grinding oppressions relentlessly exer- cised upon the workers of all descriptions and the farcical nature of the much-bepraised so- called social-insurance laws. It would have brought to light the facts as to the govern- mental loan and other institutions which were devised mainly for the enrichment of the land- owning aristocracy. It would have disclosed how unemployment and strikes have been ram- pant and how in many other respects the people have been ruthlessly exploited and subjugated politically and industrially. The League for National Unity has assembled the facts on these and other subjects and will now present them to the American people. They are facts from authoritative German sources, unquestioned facts all of them. They are facts that relate to conditions right up to the begin- 18 THE GERMAN MYTH ning 1 of the war, and now that they are made public in detail the American people will realize that no government has ever so thoroughly suc- ceeded in gulling not only its own people, but the whole world, in its boasted claims of effi- ciency as has the Kaiser's Government. CHAPTER H OPPRESSION OF THE FARMERS "THE German Government, in its social and historical composition, is an instrument for the oppression and exploitation of the working masses ; it serves the interests of Junkertom, of capitalism, and of Imperialism both at home and abroad." The man that wrote this arraignment was one who knew the German Government and Ger- man affairs thoroughly. It was written in 1916 by Dr. Karl Liebknecht, German Socialist leader and Reichstag deputy, and he is now serving a sentence of four years one month in prison for his denunciation of the German Government's pretensions and piratical war objects. The German Socialist Party, which had become imperial property, threw him out of its organization for daring to tell the truth. The German brand of social reform never did originate in any aim to help the common 19 20 THE GERMAN MYTH people. It was a scheme first devised by Fred- erick the Great. He started his wars "so that he might be talked about;" and after he had stolen Silesia from Austria, and one-tenth of Prussia's population had been killed off in his war butcheries, he began his pose as a "social reformer. ' ' His calculation was to make it ap- pear that the Hohenzollerns had "the welfare of their people at heart." The people that Frederick the Great, as well as his successors, however, had in mind were not the common people. These were haughtily looked down upon as clods, as feudal serfs. It was the landed aristocracy for whose benefit the so-called social reform measures were drawn. As Germany was originally an agri- cultural country, becoming in only compara- tively recent times prominent in industry, the first "social reform" mandates dealt with land questions. In fact, Germany is still largely agricultural; its occupational census of 1907 showed that of 26,827,000 persons occupied, 9,883,000 were in agriculture and 11,256,000 in manufactures. The motive back of this alleged social legis- lation and how the laws have operated down to these present times may be instanced in the case of the Prussian Landschaften (Mutual Farm OPPRESSION OF THE FARMERS 21 Loan Associations). American writers inter- ested in promoting here the German compulsion plan have fervently pointed out the example of these institutions as a model of what a re- sponsive government can do for its small farm- ers. American farmers have been regaled with impressive stories about how progressive the German Government long ago was, and how backward ours is. Our farmers have been told of the German Government's generous provi- sions for helping the small farmer to get credit. But what are the facts? Dr. Kapp-Konigs- berg, general director of the Prussian Land- schaften, testifying before a visiting commis- sion in 1912, admitted that this system of credit, based upon landed property, had been estab- lished in 1767 for the benefit of the landowning aristocracy. He further admitted that it had chiefly benefited them, and that the system was now substantially the same as when it was founded. He did not deny that the millions of peasant farmers had received very little benefit from it. ' ' Of the estates, ' ' he testified, ' ' which exceed 100 hectares (a hectare is not quite 2y 2 acres) 66.3 per cent have availed themselves of landschaft loans ; the corresponding proportion in the case of peasant holdings is only 13.5 per cent." 22 THE GERMAN MYTH The meaning of this is clear when it is ex- plained that in Germany 2,084,060 farm hold- ings are under 1*4 acres ; 1,294,449 farm hold- ings are from 1^4 to 5 acres; 1,006,277 farm holdings from 5 to 12^ acres; and 1,065,539 farm holdings from I2y 2 to 50 acres. The Land- wirtschaftliche Betriebsstatistik, part 2 B, pub- lished by the Imperial Statistical Office, Berlin, 1912, further shows that while the millions of peasant farmers have only tiny farms, 23,566 Junkers feudal barons or magnate farmers own nearly 25,000,000 acres embraced in estates of 250 to 500 acres and more. Of the farms in Germany 36.3 per cent are under 1*4 acres. 22.6 per cent H/4 to 5 acres. 17.5 per cent 5 to 12 acres. 18.6 per cent 12i to 50 acres. 4.6 per cent 50 to 250 acres. 0.2 per cent 250 to 500 acres. 0.2 per cent 500 acres and over. It can therefore be seen what an insignificant proportion of the small farmers have received the aid of loans from these Mutual Farm Loan Associations. In their inception they were meant for the landed aristocrats and have re- mained so. Compare this condition with that in the OPPRESSION OF THE FARMERS 23 United States where the Federal farm loan act is administered exclusively for the benefit of small farmers. Under this act no loan is al- lowed to anyone who does not actually culti- vate the soil. This shuts out absentee landlords. To help the small farmer, loans from $100 to $10,000 are made. These loans are long-time loans on land security and on improvements for from 5 to 40 years, repayable on easy terms and low rate of interest on the installment plan. Although the Federal farm loan act had been in operation less than six months, $30,000,000 was loaned to actual farmers by December 1, 1917, and by the same date there were applica- tions from small farmers for a total of $200,- 000,000 in loans. The loans to farmers at the present date reach a large aggregate which is continuously increasing. Another edifying example of the Prussian Government's solicitude for the feudal barons is seen in the law of 1850 establishing annuity banks. Later legislation enlarged their func- tions. These banks are governmental credit institutions, and many a eulogy on them has been spun here by those who professed to see in them the paternal care of the Prussian rulers for the small farmers. For what purpose were they actually estab- 24 THE GEEMAN MYTH lished? For the benefit of the feudal barons "in faciliating the redemption of the old servitudes incumbering the lands of peasants, so as to enable the peasant farmer to buy off the feudal dues incumbering his lands." These are the exact words of Dr. Augsbin, of Berlin, in his testimony, in 1912, on mortgage and other co- operative banks. Feudalism was swept away here by the Revo- lution, and in France by the French Eevolution. In Canada it was practically driven out in 1837. But the peasant farmers of Germany are still compelled to pay off feudal dues to get a clear title to their diminutive bit of land. The scheme has been nicely arranged for the protection and profit of the feudal barons. Controlling the Government, they order legislation modernizing feudal tribute and making the Government re- sponsible for it. The annuity banks issue an- nuity bonds, and the Prussian Government guarantees them. The loans run from 50 to 60 years, and the German peasant farmer, in addi- tion to the crushing load of taxes, has to pay for the feudal impositions of five centuries ago. By the year 1909 the amount of these annuity bonds was more than 500,000,000 marks. Bismarck is credited with having in 1879 been the promoter of modern "social reform legis- OPPRESSION OF THE FARMERS 25 lation. ' ' He made no secret of the fact, in his speech in the Reichstag on February 24, 1881, that one of his strongest motives in pressing it was to serve and aggrandize the Hohenzollern dynasty. He sought to gild over Hohenzollern militarism by giving the Hohenzollerns the reputation of "conserving the people's wel- fare." But one real ulterior aim was to take steps to conserve human flesh so that it could be fitter for the military machine 's needs. An- other ulterior aim was to combat and under- mine the rising democratic movement of that time. Frederick the Great saw in the woman only a soldier breeder, and in the male baby only a future Prussian grenadier. Similarly, to this very day, German official reports on labor, health, housing, insurance, and related subjects consider the man not as a man but chiefly from the standpoint of his capacity as a recruit. The procession of writers worshipping Ger- man "social reforms" paint Germany as the great originator. In point of fact Germany grabbed many of its ideas from other countries and in the cribbing robbed them of their hu- manitarianism. Testifying in 1912, Dr. Land- ers, of the Chamber of Agriculture at Halle, Germany, admitted that the idea of farm ex- 26 THE GERMAN MYTH periment institutes came from the United States, as likewise the idea of stations for the preservation of farms. As long ago as 1858 a farmers ' convention at Centralia, 111., advocated wholesale buying and selling agencies for farm- ers. Ideas in other fields were appropriated by Germany and were then claimed as distinctly German. But other ideas established in other coun- tries giving the farmer and the agricultural laborer full freedom of action and movement were let severely alone by the German Govern- ment. It was willing enough to adopt any idea increasing production, but determined not to import anything that would interfere with the caste yoke or give the farmer initiative and in- dependence. The German criminal code still prohibits agricultural workers the right to or- ganize and strike. The German laws enforce the fullest espionage on all laborers, agricul- tural and others. Every person coming in and out of a rural community must register with the local representative of the Government, giving the most minute particulars about his or her life history. Failure to do so is promptly re- ported to the police. The peasant farmer is sharply defined in a class by himself. In the United States every OPPRESSION OF THE FARMERS 27 agriculturist, whether proprietary farmer, tenant farmer or farm laborer, has the equal right to vote. But in Germany only farmers (and many farmers are renters) who pay taxes are allowed to vote for the Reichstag, which is merely a debating society. Women have no vote. A peasant the little farmer is and he stays a peasant. The educational system is so devised that, generation after generation, the child is educated so that he will remain in the station of life in which he is born. The Kaiser's Govern- ment sees well to it that the child's mind and movements are molded for uses the autocracy wants to make of it in its militaristic and in- trenched caste system. The Junkers believe in the divine rights of kings, and lording it as they do over the peasants, use the so-called edu- cational system to fill the peasants ' minds with that doctrine. A peasant farmer must call himself peasant and take his lowly rank as such. The landed and industrial barons who, by reason of the voting system, control the elections and political power, use that power against the small farmer. "There has arisen in Germany what is called the Peasants' League," reported in 1912, William C. Teichmann, United States consul at Mannheim. "This Peasants' League represents 28 THE GERMAN MYTH the small farmers almost entirely, because the peasants and small farmers of Germany are under the impression that the Agricultural League represents predominantly the large estates in contradistinction to those of the small farmer. The Agricultural League, being a for- midable organization, is able to wield a power- ful influence over the political policies of the country." The actual conditions of the millions of small farming people of Germany are very different from the glowing accounts that have been dis- tributed by the propagandists. The vast proportions of farms are so small that machinery cannot be used. To compete with American and South American agriculture, the labor of women and children is used. Their wages are so paltry that they reduce costs of production. Then, of course, it has always been the fixed policy of the German autocracy to en- courage woman and child labor; the men are needed for the barracks. It is a rare sight in the United States to see native women doing the heavy work in the fields, and in stables and barns. But in Germany it is usual and they do it with perfect submission. Reporting on * ' The German Farmer and Co-op- eration," F. J. H. von Engelken, a member of a OPPRESSION OF THE FARMERS 29 visiting American commission (he is now presi- dent of the Federal Farm Loan Bank at Colum- bia, S. C.), had this to report in 1913: 1 'In Germany, it mnst be understood, the greater proportion of the farm work is done by women. It is a common sight to see women hoeing or pitching hay or spreading manure, and they do it well and cheerfully. The girls of the poorer families go into service as maids, which means that they do not only a share of the housework, but also their full proportion of the work about the stables and in the fields. For this service a girl of say, 16 or 17 years, will receive wages of $3 a month, with board and lodging." The elaborate report issued in 1908 of the British Board of Trade, a document based upon the reports of burgomasters, German municipal statistical boards and German trades unions, says (p. 368) : "In rural Germany everywhere women take their place in the field and farmyard, in the work of forest and garden, and in any German town they may be seen drawing along the streets little carts with wood and other wares. In Bavaria, however, women work alongside of men in call- ings still more onerous. They act as hod-bear- ers; they break huge stones with heavy ham- 30 mers on the site of building operations; they chop faggots in the street for householders, and Carry heavy loads on the wooden racks suspend- ed from their shoulders ; and in Munich a con- siderable part of the work of street cleaning is done by women who are paid 2 shillings six- pence (about 62 cents) for a long day's exer- tion." It may be added that it has been far from uncommon in Germany to see women hitched with cattle and dogs drawing ploughs and carts. In 1912, according to testimony on farm wages, a woman farm laborer got 1.60 to 2 marks a day (38 to 48 cents a day), and chil- dren over 12 years 1 mark a day (24 cents), in both cases without board. Men farm laborers were getting 3 marks (72 cents) a day. Ac- cording to the evidence of Dr. Johannsen, direc- tor of the Hanoverian Chamber of Agriculture, and of Prof. Vieth, director .of the Dairy Insti- tute of Hamelin, Hanover, these wages were considered * * tremendous. ' ' "The common meal of the German farmer," reports von Engelken, "is a large bowl of soup of one kind or another, and dry rye bread. Such meat as is needed, generally in the form of sausage, is put up at home in the fall. " The American farmer knows what his generous diet OPPRESSION OF THE FARMERS 31 is meat, chicken, plenty of vegetables, eggs, milk, wheat bread, fruit, and other edibles. It is in the German rural districts, too, where some of the worst sweatshop conditions exist. Mannheim, for example, is an important center of the tobacco and cigar industry. The British Board of Trade, getting its facts from the local authorities, reported in 1908: "The real work of cigar making, in all of its various processes, is a rural industry. The reason for this is that only in the country is a sufficiency of labor procurable at a low rate of pay. * * * In the country whole families often work together, both in the factory and at home. The father may make the wrapper, his wife and girls do the rolling, and by thus co-operating as much as 30 shillings ($7.50) a week may be earned. As, however, work is in many cases intermittent, and is made to fit in with house- hold and other duties, earnings are very irregular. ' ' The ordinary taxes and exactions put upon the small farmer are grinding enough. But to these are added oppressive taxes for the very objects vaunted as benefiting the farmer and other classes. The fiction is that the farmer and worker are indulgently protected by govern- mental schemes such as sick insurance, old age 32 THE GERMAN MYTH insurance, and insurance against accidents. The fact is that these very measures, which in effect do not even reach the value of poorhouse relief, are helping to drive the farmer into further indigency. Thus, in an address delivered at Dresden five years ago Herr Otto Steiger Lentiwitz, a noted authority on agriculture, complained that "Saxon agriculture is burdened with great charges and expenses. Contributions to sick insurance, old-age insurance and insurance against accidents, have risen enormously, and now amount to approximately 8 to 10 marks per hectare of cultivated land. The taxation of agricultural property is by no means favor- able, and taxes have risen from year to year." The system drives the so-called beneficiaries into pauperism, and then what does it do in return! In exchange for the burden of insur- ance taxes it gives them or their survivors a sum so ridiculously petty that an almshouse in- mate in other countries luxuriates in plenty in comparison. According to the Amtliche Nach- richten des Reichs-Versicherung-Amt, Berlin, the average invalidity pension in 1913 was $46.51 a year less than $1 a week. The aver- age sickness pension was $48.45 a year also less than $1 a week. The average old-age pen- OPPRESSION OF THE FARMERS 33 sion was $39.75 a year about 76 cents a week. The average widow's and widower's pension was $18.49 a year about 35 cents a week. The average widow's sickness pension was $18.59 a year, and the average orphan's pension $19.07 a year. These were the pensions in a country where the poorest paid adult living in the lowest possible scale needed at least $140 to $155 a year for the cost of the barest subsistence. CHAPTER HI THE HABD-DEIVEN, UNDERPAID WORKEBS THE series of eulogies of the German Gov- ernment's "efficiency" have particularly ac- claimed its treatment of its working people. Americans have been repeatedly assured that, as compared with those of other countries, Ger- man workers have been exceptionally well fa- vored. They have been represented as being endowed with superior working conditions. They have been described as well paid, well fed, and wonderfully well housed. Little or no mention was made of child labor, sweatshops, infant mortality, unemployment, and strikes. Pauperism, we were told, was rare. Every de- tail otherwise was so admirably " regulated" by the German Government, these rhapsodists have insisted, that the German workers were a grateful, comfortably satisfied class. This, it has been explained, is the reason why they were so willing to fight and die for their autocracy. But the facts show a very different state of 34 THE HARD-DRIVEN WORKERS 35 affairs from the accounts in these imaginative stories. Long after workers in other countries had been put on a short workday, the German work- ers have been forced to work on an arduous schedule that was discarded in more progressive countries. The 10-hour workday was estab- lished in United States public establishments by President Van Buren, in 1840. It became gen- eral in this country at a time when the German worker was toiling 11 to 14 hours a day. The 8-hour day received congressional sanction in 1869, and in the following decades became gen- eral in many of the trades in the United States. But in Germany, up to the very beginning of the war, the general workday for highly skilled trades was from 57 to 60 hours a week, and in other trades 12 to 14 hours a day were common. Much has been extravagantly written of the benevolence of the Krupps as "ideal em- ployers" (the Kaiser is said to be a secret partner). Yet, according to the Berlin Vor- waerts, of August 12, 1917, the workingmen in the Krupp and Howaldt building yards were pleading for a 9-hour workday. German workmen did not get the privilege to organize until long after other countries had 36 THE GERMAN MYTH accorded it as a fundamental right. Even to- day their meetings are still under close bureau- cratic surveillance and threat of dispersion by the police. The fact that the German Social Democrats are at this late day making as one of their immediate demands the right of assem- blage without police interference shows the paltry amount of political freedom that the Ger- man people are allowed to have by intrenched Junkerdom. German workers have been slain by the mil- lions for the aggrandizement of an autocracy run by the military caste, which regards them as mere drudges. How militarism contemptu- ously treats their demands is shown by a recent typical incident in Saxony. The piece-work wages paid in the textile industry there have for years been from less than 1 cent to less than 8 cents an hour, and general weekly wages of from $1.30 to $2.12. Adult males are paid at the rate of 6 to Jess than 8 cents an hour. The Berlin Vorwaerts, of August 21, 1917, told how the textile workers humbly petitioned that they could not live on these starvation wages and how they asked for the granting of minimum- wage scales. "Gen. Groner, however, who is charged with the enforcement of the auxiliary service law, to which all industrial establish- THE HARD-DRIVEN WORKERS 37 ments are subject, has openly declared himself against minimum wages, and the army officers in charge of the local war offices, of course, maintain the same attitude as their supe- rior." When, in Landeshut, Silesia, the textile work- ers appealed to the war arbitration office at Posen, the presiding officer, without making any investigation, gruffly declared that their present wages were sufficiently high, and that if their demands caused the closing of the mills "the male workers would be put into the army or into other establishments working on war material, while the female workers would be sent to west Prussia to work on farms. The commanding general in Breslau intimated, moreover, that he would proceed against those organized workers who had been reported to him to have used intimidation in requesting fellow workers to join their organization. He also issued an order that even negotiations be- tween individual workmen's committees and their employers must be brought to his notice 8 to 10 days in advance, in the same manner as political meetings." This summary attitude toward labor is not exceptional, due to war conditions. It has al- ways been the unvarying attitude of the autoc- 38 racy and its military caste. As long ago as 1890 the Kaiser in a public speech at the Berlin Conference on Secondary Education sneered at "an over production of a highly educated peo- ple," declared that "the gentlemen who write for the press are a danger to us," and concluded with habitual emphasis on the autocratic I: "I will therefore approve the foundation of no more such schools in the future unless their ne- cessity can be proved. "We have enough of them already." The Kaiser wanted no inde- pendent, thinking people; a submissive mass was what the military machine demanded and meant to have; education was to be re- served as much as possible for the privileged castes. During the very years when eulogists idealiz- ing German conditions were propagandizing the United States, the status of German workers was far behind that of American, British, French, and other workers. The German worker never has had any real political power and has none now. Under the old election laws, still in force, the Junkers con- trol the nation and the big-propertied interests the cities. The vote is graded according to the amount of taxes paid. Property qualification for elections was abolished in the United States THE HAKD-DRIVEN WORKERS 39 nearly a century ago. It has up to now been the universal system in Prussia and Saxony and the prevalent system in the cities of South Germany. This system allows in Berlin, for example, one first-class vote the same representation in the city government as 375 third-class or workers' votes. The worker is deprived of political power. When he goes to work in a factory his self- respect is also taken from him. He has, accord- ing to J. W. Sullivan, who investigated indus- trial conditions in Germany for the American Federation of Labor, to produce his police card, giving the most personal and humiliating details of himself. Possibly he may be favored with a job if the police certify that his political opin- ions are "safe" and if there are jobs enough to go round. For notwithstanding the glowing picture of the eulogists of Germany being a land where the Government has seen to it that its workers get work, there always has been a chronic unem- ployed problem there. In the Grand Duchy of Baden (population 2,142,833), for example, there were, in 1913, according to the report of United States Consul Milo A. Jewett, stationed at Kehl, this proportion of male applications for jobs : 40 THE GERMAN MYTH 177 applications for 100 positions in the cloth- ing industry. 229 applications for 100 positions in the metal industry. 206 applications for 100 positions in the leath- er industry. 279 applications for 100 positions in the build- ing industry. 383 applications for 100 positions in the food industries. 231 applications for 100 positions in the join- ing and cabinetmaking industry. 348 applications for 100 positions in the stone and earthwork industry. 215 applications for 100 positions in the do- mestic service. 541 applications for 100 positions as machin- ists and firemen. In brief, including both men and women, the statistics of the official employment bureaus of the Grand Duchy of Baden show that during 1913 there were 278,910 applications for work, against 249,434 in 1912, and that only 163,122 in 1913 succeeded in getting work. The general average was that for every 100 jobs offered in 1913 there were 171 applications. In January, 1914, for every 100 registered jobs for men there were 273 applications, and for every 100 THE HAED-DRIVEN WORKERS 41 registered jobs for women there were 89 appli- cations. (See U. S. Consular and Trade Re- ports, No. 100, Apr. 29, 1914, p. 556.) But, as a matter of fact, the official figures never give the full extent of unemployment in Germany. The Report of the British Labor Party and Trade Union Commission, 1910, on "Life and Labor in Germany" tells (p. 30) that in periods of depression many men in the building and other trades go back into the coun- try districts and work on the land. "They never figure in unemployed lists in Germany, although the same class of men would do so in this country. Then the actual volume of unem- ployment is not revealed in their figures for various reasons. In the first place, the sick in- surance figures are always found to be highest in periods of depression, and the explanation is that the man who would otherwise be em- ployed, very often, if ailing, goes sick. But the explanation, on the other hand, may well be that the workers are living very near the margin of sickness when in receipt of regular wages, and that the hardening conditions of life inci- dental to industrial depression drive many beyond it. " Unemployment among members of trade unions in Germany steadily increased from 1.6 42 THE GERMAN MYTH per cent of total membership in 1907 to 2.9 per cent of total membership in 1913, according to the detailed figures set forth in Statistisches Jarbuch fiir das Deutche Beiche, published in Berlin, 1916 (p. 121). The average total mem- bership of German trade unions unemployed from 1907 to 1913, inclusive, was 2.3 per cent. The replies of German employers and trade union officials to the British Board of Trade Inquiry, in 1908, showed that the average usual hours of labor a week for certain trades speci- fied were : 54 hours for compositors. 59 hours in the building trades. hours in the engineering trades. By comparison with England the hours of work were from 8 to 12 per cent higher in Ger- many. And compared with the work hours of the same trades in the United States at the same time, the work hours were from 10 to 34 per cent higher in Germany. This is shown by reference to Bulletin 131, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1913, giving the union scale of wages and hours of labor in THE HARD-DRIVEN WORKERS 43 the United States, 1907 to 1912. The compari- son of the week labor hours showed : Germany United States Hours Compositors 54 Average 48 hours; less in many places. Building trades 59 Generally 44 hours ; 48 hours for structural iron workers. Engineering trades . . . 59J< Generally 44 to 48 hours ; machinists and black- smiths 54 hours gener- ally. This is a typical comparison between the hours of skilled labor in Germany and the United States, qualified by the fact that in the last 10 years the American worker generally has obtained a shorter and shorter workday, whereas in Germany the 57 to 60 hour a week has generally remained even for many of the most thoroughly organized German labor unions. The wages paid in Germany for excessive toil are so scanty that the pay has in many cases been starvation or semi-starvation wages. So much is it so, that as we shall see, the wives and children of the workingmen are driven to work in mines, factories and shops or worse to help piece together the family's living ex- penses. Some years ago Dr. R. R. Kucznski, director of the municipal statistical office of Schoene- 44 THE GERMAN MYTH berg, was commissioned by the Imperial Treas- ury Department to prepare a memorial on the trend of wages in Germany. The facts in this memorial, published at Berlin, in 1909, showed these wages in 1907 : Miners, hard-coal mines, an average of $334 a year. Miners, soft-coal mines, an average of $297 a year. Workers in salt mines and works, an average of $309 a year. Miners in copper mines, an average of $271 a year. Miners in iron mines, an average of $266 a year. Masons, $1.26 to $1.61 a day. Carpenters, $1.24 to $1.61 a day. Plumbers, gas fitters, and steam fitters, $1.13 to $1.39 a day. Stonecutters, $1.62 to $1.72 a day. Krupp plant, at Essen, average daily earn- ings, $1.27. Journeymen printers, $6.55 to $7.44 a week. Skilled State railway shopworkers, 86 cents to $1.02 a day. Engineers, conductors, etc., State railway, 70 cents a day. Artisans and mechanics, State railway, 98 cents to $1.09 a day. THE HARD-DRIVEN WORKERS 45 Employees, Prussian-Hessian State railway, average 76 cents a day. Able-bodied seamen, Baltic and North Sea, average $15.18 a month. This list includes skilled men only. Other kinds of workers in these different industries received, of course, much less than the skilled. An investigation at the same time made by the Federation of German Woodworkers an indus- try employing nearly 800,000 persons dis- closed that The average weekly labor hours of joiners, turners, brush and basket makers, wheelwrights, wooden-shoe makers, box, and toy makers were 57 hours. The average weekly earnings of adult males were $5.99 a week. In 1908 the German Imperial Statistical Office published a detailed study of the cost of living of 852 families of German wage earners dur- ing 1907 and part of 1908. Most of these fam- ilies lived in large cities. The study revealed that the average annual expenditure per family of the 852 families was $531.70, thus distributed : Food $242.17 Clothing 67.22 Dwelling 95.50 Heating and lighting 21.62 Miscellaneous . 105.19 46 THE GERMAN MYTH The study further showed that the yearly earnings of unskilled workmen were $310 and those of skilled workmen $373. The 1910 report of the British Labor Party and Trade Union Commission on "Life and Labor in Germany" stated (p. 39) that the aver- age man wage earner's annual wages in 320 households investigated in 40 towns were $360.89, and the family's annual expenditure was $443.55. This disparity between income and expenditure continued in following years. According to a summary sent out by the Ger- man Imperial Statistical Office, the average earnings of men per day in certain important groups of industries were, in March, 1914 : Metal industry $1.32 Engineering industry 1.28 Electrical industry 1.07 Paper industry 93 Woodworking industry 1.01 Chemical industry 1.24 Stoneworking and pottery 1.07 Food, drink, and tobacco 1.36 Leather and rubber 1.20 In the textile industry wages were consider- ably lower than the low wages in other indus- THE HARD-DRIVEN WORKERS 47 tries. An article in the Soziale Praxis, of Ber- lin, November 11, 1915, stated that in normal times weekly wages of from 7 to 10 marks ($1.67 to $2.38) for female workers and from 14 to 15 marks ($3.33 to $3.57) for male workers repre- sented the average wages paid in some import- ant textile districts in Germany. These wages in normal times, it was declared, were hardly sufficient for a bare existence at a minimum standard of living, low as that standard was. How, in the face of enormously increasing costs of living, did German workers manage to exist ? How have they been able to make up the deficit between what the husband earned and what, at the very lowest, had to be spent for the family? This apparent mystery is explained in the next chapter. CHAPTER IV INDUSTRIAL ENSLAVEMENT OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN So low and woefully insufficient have been the wages paid to men in Germany that the wife and often the children have been forced to work in mills, mines, and shops to help pay the family's bare living expenses. Even with two or more members of the family working out, the income has still been inadequate to meet the most ordinary wants. Great numbers of work- ingmen's families have had to take in boarders and lodgers in their small, congested quarters. The investigation made of 852 families under the direction of the Imperial Statistical Office of Germany showed that in 278 of these fam- ilies the wife had to work out. In about one- eighth of the families children under 15 years of age worked and contributed their slender earnings. This was a high proportion consider- ing that numerous young married couples and 48 WOMEN AND CHILDREN 49 childless couples were included in the list of families. Moreover, it has been a customary practice on the part of many German working- men to try to conceal as much as possible the fact that their women and children worked as wage earners. It is more than likely, therefore, that the total was not fully reported. In 1913 a report was made to the United States Department of State by Consul General T. St. John Gaffney, at Dresden, on "Women Workers in Germany." This is the same Gaff- ney who, because of his pro-German activities, was removed from his post by our Government during the war. Consul General Gaffney re- ported that : "The number of women wage earners in Ger- many is now larger than in any other European country, and from census reports it appears that it is steadily increasing. "At present a full third of the economic labor of the Empire is being carried on by women. Statistics recently published show that there are 9,500,000 wage-earning women in Germany, which means that nearly every second adult woman is earning her own living. The women who work in the factories are employed chiefly in Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Baden, Wurtem- berg, Hesse, and Alsace-Lorraine, the textile 50 THE GERMAN MYTH factories of Prussia and Saxony alone employ- ing over 400,000 women." Up to 1910, Gaffney reported, women in Ger- many worked 11 hours a day ; in that year Gov- ernment regulations reduced the working day to 10 hours, and 8 hours on Saturdays. (See U. S. Daily Consular Trade Reports, No. 88, pp. 296-297.) What Mr. Gaffney, in his pro-German par- tiality, did not tell was that a great part of the work done for many German industries has been carried on in home sweatshops, under repellant conditions, and at hours of work ranging up to 14 a day. An investigation made by the Berlin Cham- ber of Commerce, in 1905, disclosed that the number of home sweatshop workers of all kinds in Berlin greatly exceeded 100,000. The cloth- ing trade was "overwhelmingly" in the hands of the "sweater" or middlemen contractors. About 80 per cent of the home workers were women. The report, in 1908, of the British Board of Trade, itemizing the results of this in- vestigation, comments: "It must be remembered that a large propor- tion of the home workers are married women, who in this way seek to supplement the earnings of the chief bread-winner, and are only able to WOMEN AND CHILDREN 51 devote odd hours to the work. How largely the custom of home working is a result of poverty may be concluded from a statement made in a memorial lately addressed to the Berlin Tram- way Co. by their employees: "The tramway employee is unfortunately unable to dispense with the earnings of his wife, even in normal domestic relations, if he would maintain his family properly. The wife has really no choice in the matter." Of 2,051 municipal employees interrogated by the Berlin Chamber of Commerce, 416, or 20.2 per cent, replied that their wives worked for money, 170 at choring, 161 as home workers, 17 in factories, and 68 in other ways. And their wages 1 The most of them earned only 75 cents to $1.50 a week. Only 25 of the wives received more than $2.50 a week. At Crefeld, the center of the German silk industry, both husband and wife have fre- quently worked in the factories ; in other cases, while the husband was in the factory, the wife and daughter worked at home at the sewing of neckties. At Nuremberg, where metal and toy indus- tries predominate, the home workers have for many years been chiefly women, working 10 or 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. In January, 52 THE GERMAN MYTH 1914, United States Consul George Nicolas Ifft, at Nuremberg, reported of an inquiry into the wages of unskilled labor : "The investigation recently completed for the city of Nuremberg, one of the most import- ant manufacturing centers of Europe, with a population of 355,000, shows the daily wages paid to male and female laborers, in specified age groups as follows: Over 21 years of age, male 88 cents, female 50 cents ; between 16 and 21 years of age, male Tl^ cents, female 45 cents ; under 16 years of age, male 43 cents, fe- male 31 cents. These rates mark an increase of about 9 per cent over 1910, when the average wage of an adult unskilled laborer in Nurem- berg was 81 cents a day." (See Daily Consular and Trade Reports, No. 10, Jan. 13, 1914, p. 158.) Of Brunswick, the British Board of Trade re- port of 1908, based upon local employers' and trade-union reports, says: "One striking fea- ture of the industrial life of Brunswick is the large amount of female labor which is em- ployed." An investigation made by the Ger- man Factory Workers' Union, in 1905, into the conditions of the canning factories there, brought out the fact that women and girls were frequently compelled to work in evil surround- WOMEN AND CHILDREN 53 ings more than 13 hours a day, and in some cases 18 hours a day. Even on Sundays work was sometimes carried on for 10 or more hours. The wages paid to women ran from 3 to 4^ cents an hour. The earnings of home workers were found to be less than the wages paid in the factories. Consequently, to help out the family's pitifully small income, the children were put at work in the evenings. Home sweatshops have long been a notorious feature of industrial life at Hamburg. Of the variety of industries in that city, clothing es- tablishments predominate. Here, too, the in- famous " sweater " or middleman contractor system has prevailed, and large numbers of workers of both sexes have been crowded into home shops as well as in workshops. The re- port of the British Board of Trade stated that as a result of an investigation made by the Hamburg taxation authorities the conclusion was drawn that the majority of the population depended upon yearly earnings of $247 to $291.60 at the most. Of conditions in the Prussian city of Solingen, the chief center of German cutlery and fine steel goods manufacture, the same report stated (p. 432) : "The evils which seem inseparable from home labor appear in Solingen also the ab- 54 THE GERMAN MYTH sence of adequate inspection, the excessive hours of labor (often a consequence of the low rate of earnings), amounting not infrequently to 13 or 14 hours daily, the unrestricted employ- ment of women and children in subsidiary proc- esses, and the unhealthy conditions where, as often happens, the work is carried on in the dwelling rooms." In January, 1911, the Conference of German Home Workers passed a resolution asking the German Government for legislation fixing min- imum wages for home workers, so that in order to earn a living they would no longer be forced to work excessive overtime. The German Gov- ernment pigeonholed the petition. The wages of women in Germany have been incredibly low. According to a report issued by the German Imperial Statistical Office, their average daily wages in certain industries in March, 1914, were : Cents. Metal industry 49 Engineering industry 55 Electrical industry 65 Paper industry 55 Woodworking industry 47 Chemical industry 57 WOMEN AND CHILDREN 55 Stoneworking and pottery industry 41 Food, drink, and tobacco industry 51 Leather and rubber industry 67 It was largely because of her mass of low- paid woman labor that Germany was able to produce goods at such a paltry cost as to under- sell the rest of the world. Nowhere in the world have textile workers, many of whom are women, been so shamelessly overworked and underpaid as in Germany. Bad enough as this condition was before the war, it is now much worse. The military machine has suppressed every effort of the textile workers to get better wages. "A mill at Farnau, Ba- den," reported the Berlin Vorwaerts, August 21, 1917, "has been paying for years, and con- tinues to pay during the war, hourly wages of 8, 10, 12, 20 and 25 pfennigs (1.9 to 6 cents). Even during the present year this firm declined to grant any wage increase. Another mill which before the war did a world-wide business pays, for the manufacture of bagging, linings, and linen cloth, weekly wages of 5.46, 5.18, 6, and 8.90 marks ($1.30, $1.23, $1.43, and $2.12)." Elsewhere in the same article the Berlin Vor- waerts says: "During the last three years the textile industry has reaped large profits. The 56 THE GEEMAN MYTH loss in production has been more than counter- balanced by the high prices which the military authorities have paid for the diminished out- put. " The article related how the textile work- ers of Germany had for some time made stren- uous efforts to obtain living wages, and added : "So far these efforts have, as a rule, been frus- trated by the powerful organizations of the textile manufacturers whose influence upon the military authorities is so great that the war- arbitration offices and local war officers which are presided over by army officers have not shown much consideration for the demands of the textile workers." It may be remarked here that, according to the Bremer Burger-Zeitung, of Bremen, Sept- ember 1, 1917, that by September, 1914, the average wage of women workers in all groups of industries covered had greatly declined. Then war costs of living caused an increase of both men's and women's wages. By Septem- ber, 1916, this increase was 46 per cent for the men and 54 per cent for the women. "These," stated the Bremer Burger-Zeitung, "are ex- traordinary increases, to be sure, but they are still quite insufficient, as the prices of foodstuffs increased at least 100 per cent during the same period." WOMEN AND CHILDREN 57 Before the war there were about 64,000 women and girls employed in the German metal trades, working mainly from 9 to 10 hours a day. A lucid idea of what militarism brought to the German women and girls may be seen in the fact that by April, 1916, 266,530 women and girls were forced into work in these trades. So reported the Federation of German Metal Workers in the Soziale Praxis, Berlin, April 19, 1916. The report gives this frightful picture of the slavery of women in the metal trades : "Even for men, and still more for women, work at flanging machines is too hard. ... At these machines projectiles weighing from 22 to 82 pounds have to be lifted breast high and clamped to the bed ; then undamped and placed again on the floor. This entails a great physical strain. In order to earn a wage of 3 marks (71 cents) a day a woman must perform this oper- ation 75 or even 100 times. The women com- plain very much of abdominal pains caused by frequently having to lift (without any tackle) shells weighing 52 pounds." There was a fur- ther description giving almost unbelievable de- tails of other kinds of inhumanly severe work that women and girls were compelled to do in these factories. It was also an ordinary condition of peace 58 THE GERMAN MYTH times for women and children to do hard work in the coal and salt mines of Germany. In 1914, before the war, 7,265 women and 31,290 juve- niles were thus employed. For this work women were paid 30 cents per shift and juve- niles about the same in the coal mines. And what of child labor in Germany! Under the German law governing child labor, children are construed to be boys and girls under 13 years of age and those more than 13 who still attend school. During the last 10 years in the United States, all but four of the 48 States of the Union have prohibited the employment of children under 14 years of age in factories. Two of these ex- ceptions are not manufacturing States; and in one of the States not having reached this stand- ard, children of 13 are allowed to be employed, and in the other, boys 12 years of age are al- lowed employment in factories, the employment of girls under 14 years of age being prohibited. Nearly all the mining States in the United States have prohibited the employment of chil- dren under 16 years of age, and the largest manufacturing States containing the greatest number of employees prohibit the employment of children under 16 years of age more than eight hours a day or at night WOMEN AND CHILDREN 59 But on September 1, 1917, the Federal child labor act, passed by Congress, went into ef- fect. This act prohibits the shipment of goods in interstate commerce from any mine or quarry in which children under 16 years of age are em- ployed, or from any factory or workshop in which children under 14 years of age are em- ployed, or in which children under 16 years of age are employed more than eight hours a day or at night. The act is being thoroughly en- forced and has practically eliminated the em- ployment of children below the ages specified in mines and factories. According to the census of 1910, the evils of child labor in factories in the United States had been so effectively reached by State legis- lation that there were only 150,000 children under 16 years of age employed in factories who were affected by the Federal act. This num- ber has been considerably reduced by the time the Federal act went into effect. The number of juveniles employed in Ger- man mines, mills, and factories was, as stated in a report in 1914 by United States Consul Gen- eral Henry H. Morgan, Hamburg, during 1910- 11: "1910 under 14 years, 7,014 boys and 4,856 girls; 14 to 16 years, 309,101 boys and 167,225 60 THE GERMAN MYTH girls. 1911 under 14 years, 7,434 boys and 5,970 girls ; 14 to 16 years, 332,882 boys and 172,- 535 girls. " (See Daily Consular and Trade Re- ports No. 130, June 4, 1914, p. 1287.) Hence, in 1911, there was a total of 518,821 children employed in the mills, mi Ties, and fac- tories of Germany. But it is highly probable that this number does not by any means include the total num- ber of children employed. Reporting to the Department of State, in 1914, Consul General T. St. John Gaffney, in sending the Saxony sta- tistics, said that they applied only to those es- tablishments in which at least 10 persons were employed. If the number of children employed in all home shops were included, the total would undoubtedly be much greater. Of the 518,821 juveniles reported thus em- ployed in Germany 40,799 boys and 1,063 girls worked in mines. 29,164 boys and 8,398 girls worked in stone and earth trades. 55,821 boys and 12,027 girls worked in metal trades. 67,258 boys and 4,917 girls worked on ma- chinery, etc. 35,091 boys and 56,709 girls worked in textile trades. WOMEN AND CHILDREN 61 28,320 boys and 4,575 girls worked in wood and wood carving. 9,386 boys and 45,168 girls worked on wearing apparel. Since the war child labor in Germany has vastly increased. Submissive as the German worker has always been taught to be to the autocracy and its bu- reaucrats, yet conditions were so intolerable that often he was forced to strike. Not many of these strikes were successful. From 1904 to 1908, according to the Imperial Statistics Of- fice, there was an annual average of 279,817 striking and locked-out workers. From 1909 to 1913 the annual average was 327,593. In 1914 there were 1,115 strikes, of which only 17 per cent were wholly successful and 38.1 per cent partially successful. At least 38.5 per cent of the strikes were failures. Backed by the ruthless police methods and the full weight of court power, employers in Germany have been easily able to defeat at- tempts of the German workers to get better conditions. This is strikingly shown by the data published in the German Statistical Year Book giving the outcome of strikes and lockouts in Germany. In 1912 only 4.8 per cent of the strikers obtained full success from their strikes, 62 THE GERMAN MYTH and 26.9 per cent were partially successful. But 68.3 per cent, or more than two-thirds of the strikers, had to return to work without having had any success whatever. How greatly defeated the German strikers have been is more fully seen when these figures are compared to those pertaining to strikes and lockouts in other countries. The same author- ity the German Statistical Year Book shows that in Great Britain and Ireland in the same year 74.5 per cent of the labor conflicts ended with full victory for the strikers; in 11.1 per cent of the strikes the strikers obtained partial success; and 14.3 per cent of the strikes were failures. In 1912 in Belgium 45.3 per cent of the strikes were successful and 23.8 per cent unsuccessful. In Holland 27.5 per cent of the strikes were successful and 32.4 per cent were failures. These are some of the things that have gone on in Germany where, the writer of a current pretentious book claims, " Property, business, and industry are regulated in the public inter- est'* and where there is "industrial and social equality. ' ' But there are many other iniquities. The facts as to these have been easily obtain- able, but in their aim to present Germany as the model nation of the world, the eulogists have WOMEN AND CHILDREN 63 refused to state them, as they have declined to give all other facts that would hurt their spe- cial pleading. CHAPTER V WRETCHED HOUSING CONDITIONS WHAT have been the living conditions of the mass of German men, women and children! The German Government never deceived it- self on this question. Its governmental and municipal census reports showed exactly what those conditions have long been. But it did de- ceive American writers and official inquirers who made their jaunts to Germany. It de- ceived them with showy exhibits of "model dwellings" and with alluring stories of what a noble benefactor the German Government had been to its working people. These exhibits bore the same relation to the housing of the mass of German people as a few endowed "model tene- ments" bore to the immense bulk of ordinary tenement houses in New York City before the passage of the modern tenement-house laws 15 years ago. In the wordy products stimulated by the German Government the entire space is given to an enumeration of these German 64 HOUSING CONDITIONS 65 ' ' model laws ' ' and ' ' model dwellings. ' ' Most of these, by the way, have been designed for the benefit of the army of German officials and petty officials. But the vital question as to how the many millions of the German working people actually lived has been altogether ignored in this cam- paign of publicity. To have given the facts would not have looked nice for German ''efficiency." Germany has been vaunted as the originator of a housing reform. The fact is that it has been a cheap imitator, and a backward, inferior one at that. As early as 1831 France appointed a Commission on Workingmen's Dwellings. Housing reform projects in Great Britain began in 1841-1851, and the important movement in 1882. In the United States housing reforms were agitated as long ago as 1829. They, as well as other reforms, would have made far greater progress had it not been that public at- tention was long absorbed by the overshadow- ing issues of the Civil War and the problems that came after it. The German so-called housing movement dates from 1884. It made up in braggadocio what it lacked in sincerity and effectiveness. For two years a noisy splurge was made of 66 THE GERMAN MYTH doing something. It is on the reputation of that splurge that Germany has been traveling ever since. The fiction was spread that slums had been abolished. But the German landlords knew that the slums had been merely trans- ferred out of casual sight from the front to the rear. They knew because they have increas- ingly profited from the shocking overcrowding in the mass of rear tenements in many German cities. To impress visitors the German Gov- ernment veneered the outward aspect. Since 1886 very little in the adoption of im- proved housing measures had been done in Ger- many. In the United States the most far-reach- ing and comprehensive housing laws have been passed in many States ; in fact, a revolution in that respect has taken place in the laws here in the last 20 and 25 years. In England, since 1875, millions of pounds were spent by municipali- ties in effacing slums; and in 1914, before the war, Lloyd-George proposed a comprehensive scheme of housing reform. This has become a matter of national policy in Great Britain and comprehends the building of possibly 1,000,000 houses at a cost estimated to exceed $1,000,000,- 000. In other countries great changes have been made. But with the exception of some minor building regulations adopted by some of HOUSING CONDITIONS 67 the German States, housing laws in Germany stand mnch where they did early in 1887. And why? Mainly because under the elec- tion-law system concentrating the effective voting power in the rich, the city councils have long been composed chiefly of landlords and land and building speculators. They, as a mat- ter of course, have constantly opposed any real housing reforms for the working mass. Year after year the German Society of Hous- ing Reform pressed a proposed housing-reform law for Prussia and for Germany. But neither the majority of the Prussian Legislature or the German Parliament could be budged. The real housing reform demanded in 1887 has not been provided for in legislation up to the present time. The horrible conditions in which the mass of German workers have lived have been fully known to German legislators. The Junkers and industrial lords (most of whom are intermarried with the military caste) controlling the lawmaking bodies have refused to act. On January 25, 1913, the old housing-reform bill that every year had been (making allowance for later modifications) brought forth since 1887 was again introduced in the Prussian Leg- islature. The bill's preamble, giving the gen- 68 THE GERMAN MYTH eral motives of the measure, stated with refer- ence to the large cities and to all those industrial towns which showed a rapid increase in popu- lation : "In these localities many people live in rooms so small and so lacking in privacy that neither the requirements of hygiene nor of family can be met. Dwellings for people of limited means are often so unsatisfactory and insanitary as to be entirely unfit for permanent occupation. The supply of small apartments is insufficient and rents are frequently out of all proportion to the incomes of the wage earners. As a result overcrowding is common, and so is the practice of taking lodgers. The risks of thus introduc- ing strangers into a crowded family life are well known. . . . People of small means must either satisfy themselves with apartments wholly in- adequate to their needs, or if they can not find these and must take larger ones, they are obliged to make up the rent by keeping board- ers or lodgers." The full details of this bill are set forth in Soziale Praxis and Archiv fur Volkswohl- f art, Berlin, 1913, Vol. XXII, p. 513. It need hardly be added that the bill did not pass. Characteristic it is that the rulers who have refused the German workers this reform 69 are those that for more than fonr years have been trying to introduce "German kultur" into Belgium by devastating and terrorizing that country. Yet Belgium is the very country that by its laws of 1889 developed novel ideas of housing reform that later served as a pattern for French and Italian legislation. Save in a few large American cities, where apartment houses in certain sections are the rule for the working-class families, the work- ers in the United States live in private houses. The single house predominates, with a certain number of two-family and three-family houses. The family of a skilled and usually the unskilled American worker lives by itself. It has privacy, plenty of room, and all modern conveniences. The general standard, except in some parts of the largest cities, is high. There is no attempt here to ignore the fact that in some of these large cities there is much more to be done in correcting conditions. But the point is that taking the United States as a whole compared to Germany as a whole, hous- ing conditions in this country are far superior to those in Germany. In New York City the changes brought about in the last 15 years have been so striking that in 1913 Dr. Nemenyi, of Budapest, who was sent 70 THE GEEMAN MYTH by the Hungarian Government to study Ameri- can housing-reform methods declared: "New York's tenement laws and their en- forcement have no parallel anywhere in Europe. New York's handling of the tenement problem is, to European eyes, unique, admirable, impres- sive. Conditions in the worst of your tenements are vastly better than in the worst of Europe's. Your tenements, as a whole, are far better than those of Europe, while your slums are not nearly as bad as those of many cities in Eu- rope. Of course, there are tenement houses and building laws in Hungary and Europe gener- ally, but they are not such laws as you have. They do not protect the health and lives of dwellers in the tenements as do yours, and it is for this reason that Hungary wishes to revise her laws along American lines. ' ' "German kultur" is only across the border. But Hungary's commissioner had to come to the United States to find good tenement-house laws. While the "survey" dilettanti have been going to Germany and boosting Germany's "model housing" after their return, the practi- cal housing reforms of Europe have looked to the United States for laws and plans as a model for European legislation. Throughout Germany the "barrack" tene- HOUSING CONDITIONS 71 ment house is the usual living quarters for the mass of workers, skilled and unskilled. In nearly all places it has been the rule to build these "barracks" in series of blocks one behind the other, not visible from the ornate street fronts. Often a row of half a dozen of them in back streets grimly abut one another only 30 or 40 feet apart and from three to five or six stories high. The courtyards and rooms are accordingly enshrouded in gloom, and the ven- tilation is bad. The street exteriors, overloaded with ornamentation, impress visitors who forth- with conclude that all within is in fine order. The sordid interiors of these "barracks," however, are anything but inviting. The rooms are small and unrelieved by any of those adorn- ments, appurtenances, and fixtures usual to the American apartment or house. Hideous in its stark bareness is the room in which the German worker must exist. Likewise so in its lack of conveniences. Bath facilities in working-class districts in general are a rarity. So are heated apartments. The family must provide its own stove and supply its own heat. In many places the sanitary arrangements are on the landings, and their use is shared by from four to eight families. In old sections and they are numer- ous water has to be carried from the yards. 72 THE GERMAN MYTH German official statistics have a high-sound- ing way of describing all living places as " dwellings." A one-room flat is thus held to be a "dwelling." The German official notion of what constitutes overcrowding is large and elastic. In official statistics a "dwelling" in Germany has been only considered overcrowded in which there have been 6 or more persons liv- ing in a single heatable room or 11 or more per- sons in a "dwelling" with two heatable rooms. Why have the German authorities been so generous in their definition of overcrowding? Because the great mass of workers are so pov- erty stricken that they could not possibly pay the rents demanded if they did not take board- ers or lodgers. In Germany be it remembered, rents do not include taxes. Overcrowding in liv- ing quarters is one of the few things in Germany that is not * * verboten ' ' ( forbidden) . Nominally the police have strict rules, but on tacit orders from "higher up" they ignore overcrowding. But in most places the playing of children in the courtyards is severely prohibited. The study of the cost of living of wage-earn- ing families published in 1909 by the Imperial Statistical Office of Germany showed that one- fourth of the families investigated derived part of their income from the subletting of rooms. HOUSING CONDITIONS 73 Were it not for this widespread practice of tak- ing in lodgers, great numbers of German work- ers wonld have to face dispossession, and the ranks of ontright paupers would be enormously swelled. For years an astounding number of Berlin's habitations of working people have been one and two-room flats. The Berlin census of 1900 showed that a total of 96.7 per cent of that city's population lived in rented " dwellings " mostly tenements of the notorious "barrack" type. Of 412,713 tenement flats in Berlin 37,369 were of one room. 175,163 were of two rooms. 143,744 were of three rooms. 56,197 were of four rooms. And what were the housing conditions 10 years later? In the main they had not im- proved. True, the number of three-room flats had greatly increased, but so had the number of ' lodgers huddled with the family in these rooms. The Berlin housing census of 1910, the results of which were officially published in 1913, re- ported of Berlin That there were 555,416 "dwellings" hous- ing a population of 1,996,994 persons. That 40,690 "dwellings" consisted of one room. 74 THE GERMAN MYTH That 186,756 consisted of two rooms. That 180,850 consisted of three rooms. That 62,676 consisted of four rooms. The comparatively small remainder of five to seven rooms. That 34,508 "dwellings" had no kitchen at all. That in 41,115 households roomers were kept. That in 58,400 households lodgers (renting beds by the night) were taken in. That a total of 64,031 regular roomers and 88,560 regular lodgers were kept. (Many fam- ilies, it may be added, have concealed the fact that they kept lodgers.) The preponderance of working people, the Berlin housing census of 1910 showed, were chiefly herded in one and two-room habitations. These workers were not unskilled laborers. They were largely skilled workers. In his volume "My Four Years in Germany," James W. Gerard, U. S. Ambassador to Ger- many up to the war, says that "over 55 per cent of the families in Berlin are families liv- ing in one room." German writers on housing conditions in Berlin state that 45 per cent of the fa-mi lies in Berlin have been living in one room. s The two-room flat has remained the predomi- HOUSING CONDITIONS 75 nant working-class type of housing in Berlin and in many other German cities. These two rooms are made up of a combination living and bedroom occupied day and night throughout the year, and the other room a small kitchen which likewise is pressed into service as a bedroom. In these stuffy rooms there will commonly be found a family of four to six persons and boarders or lodgers besides. Often the husband and wife (and children, if they have any) sleep in the kitchen and the other room is let to lodg- ers. Frequently, also, the two rooms, when work is done at home, are used as a work- shop. In recent years the Berlin worker has had to give up, on the average, the earnings of about 56 days (of a total of 300) for rent payment. In addition to rent, all German workers with incomes of $225 or more a year have had to pay local taxes and State income taxes. In Stuttgart, Magdeburg, Solingen, Munich, Elberfeld, Barmen, Dusseldorf, Dantzig, Chem- nitz, Breslau, and many other German cities housing conditions in working-class districts are essentially similar to those in Berlin. There is a large number of one-room flats and a great proportion of two-room flats. In many places from more than one-fourth 76 THE GERMAN MYTH to more than one-half of the population is com- pressed into one and two-room flats. In Dusseldorf , in 1910, more than one-quarter of working-class abodes were two-room habi- tats or less. In some parts of Dusseldorf the block-behind-block "barrack" system is not to be found, but nevertheless the workers have been packed together in many sections. Bremen is not a "barrack" city. Stuttgart, too, has not had this kind of "barrack" construction, but according to the latest available census (that of 1905) more than one-half of the workers' "dwellings" were of two rooms. In Leipsic and Hamburg the three-room flat has been the usual workers' living place; these cities, how- ever, have been among the exceptions, and as sweatshops abound, particularly in Hamburg, the fact of one more room generally means no additional comfort. Apart from a very few places, the block-be- hind-block housing has been the prevailing rule in Germany. In Munich the municipal house bureau census a few years ago showed that no less than nearly 29 per cent of the entire population of 539,000 lived in one and two-room tenement flats. Almost 11,000 of the 17,717 working-class ten- ements in Magdeburg were rear tenements HOUSING CONDITIONS 77 that is to say, tenements behind tenements. Many were slums that did not appear to be slums because they were hidden from exterior view. Dantzig has long been notorious for its malo- dorous tenements in the old part of the city. The spiral staircases in many of these holes have long been so dark that tenants in going up and down have had to use a rope to feel their way. These foul quarters have been fertile breeding places for roughs and gangs. Yet for 25 years German officials have brazenly denied that there were slums in Germany, and the rest of the world has been credulous enough to be- lieve their fabrications. In the newer sections of Dantzig the tenements are of the flimsiest construction, and this in a region where the cli- mate is exceptionally severe. Fully 44 per cent of the working-class habitations in Dantzig have consisted of one room and a kitchen. In Breslau one-half at least of the renting population has lived in two rooms or less. In a report of an investigation made by it some years ago the Association of Local Sick Funds complained of damp cellar flats, dark and win- dowless rooms, absence of ventilation and heat- ing arrangements, of beds shared by sick and well, and of overcrowding of the worst kind. 78 THE GERMAN MYTH The much glorified Essen, ruled over by the Krupps, has, for more than a quarter of a cen- tury, been conspicuously advertised through- out the world as a " model housing place." Quite true, the Krupps did build a certain num- ber of "model houses." But these have been mostly occupied by officials. The living quar- ters of the mass of workers were, however, not advertised. For good reasons. The municipal census of 1905 showed that 65.4 per cent, or nearly two-thirds of all of the tenement flats in Essen, were of two or three rooms. Nearly 39 per cent consisted of two rooms. Here, as else- where in Germany, the practice has been fairly general of taking in boarders or lodgers. And here it may be said that the housing done by private corporations or by the Government in Germany represented not only a small but diminishing share of the accommodation needed by workers in proportion to the greatly in- creased population in industrial cities. The report, in 1910, of the British Labor Party and Trade Union Commission declared (p. 61) after a thorough investigation of con- ditions in Germany, that in the German indus- trial cities visited the "German workingman is paying more for his two miserably small rooms than the Lancashire worker is paying for HOUSING CONDITIONS 79 his little cottage of four or five rooms with back yards and conveniences. ' ' Housing conditions at the outbreak of the war were even worse in Germany than in the previous years. Kents had acutely increased in previous years, and this inevitably led to worse overcrowding. Yet the eulogists, with a characteristic suppression of facts, have been telling the American people that it is because of the German Government's watchful, tender care for the comfort of its working people that the German workers have been so loyal to their Government. CHAPTER VI CHBONIC UNDERFEEDING AND GREAT INFANT MOETALITY THE conditions already described as to how the many millions of Germany's working men, women, and children have had to toil and exist are but a few of the long-prevailing abomina- tions. Behind the doors of the workers' paltry households, so called, underfeeding has been persistently chronic. Year by year as rents and other costs of living increased it grew even worse. Had it not been for the practice of rent- ing bunks to roomers and lodgers the fate of many a worker's family would have been one perilously near starvation. Accompanying this overcrowding, undernourishment and other conditions, there has gone on for years the most appalling scourge of infant mortality known in any country in the world except Austria and Russia. Preceding Germany's massacres in this war was her practical massacre of the in- nocents within her own borders. 80 CHEONIC UNDERFEEDING 81 Visitors were encouraged to look at the pretty parts of cities, and at broad avenues and what seemed to be festive music halls. But they were never officially conducted into the grim precincts of the " barrack " tenements, and if some of them did venture into these quarters they gave no evidence of having tried to find out what actually went on there. The family budget of the average German workman's family has been one of such monoto- nous meagerness that it would drive the Ameri- can worker and housewife to despair. Notwith- standing the fact that in Germany, as we have seen, husband, wife, and children often work out or in home sweatshops, the combined earn- ings of all have been so scanty that they could not afford to buy enough elemental food or a sufficient variety. Foods that have been neces- saries to the American worker have been lux- uries to the German. The study of wage-earn- ing families in Germany made public by the German Imperial Statistical Office in 1908 showed accurately on what small nourishment the German worker has been compelled to sub- sist. The average skilled worker's family in Ger- many has not been able to afford veal, chops, steaks and other kinds of meat. Its meats have 82 THE GERMAN MYTH been mainly ham, bacon, pork, and sausage com- pounds. During the entire year it could buy only 79 cents worth of meat a week, and about 26 cents worth of sausage weekly. Fish, whether fresh or smoked, has been a rare lux- ury; what the family spent for fish during the year amounted to about 7 cents a week. About 36 cents worth of butter nominally had to do for the family for the week but, as a matter of fact, many German workers' families hardly even have had butter on their table ; they spread their rye bread with suet, oleomargarine, and often with lard. Seldom have eggs come on the table ; the en- tire expenditure for the year for eggs amount- ing to about 12 cents a week. The average fam- ily could not afford more than about 7 to 8 cents a week for cheese which, by the way, is a favor- ite German food. It had to get along with 15 or 16 cents worth of potatoes, and 10 to 11 cents spent for vegetables, a week. Sugar and fruit have not been common to the average working- class family in Germany ; and if it did buy these articles it did not spend more the year round than 11 cents a week for sugar, sirup, and honey, and about 12 cents a week for fruit. For flour, rice, and similar foods the weekly bill averaged less than 13 cents a week. For coffee and coffee CHEONIC UNDERFEEDING 83 substitutes (chiefly the latter) its bill was re- stricted to about 12 cents a week. Not quite 4 cents a week covered its weekly bill for tea, chocolate, and cocoa. Its expenses for milk were held down to a little more than 45 cents a week, and for bread and pastry to about 75 cents a week. These were the main food expenses. The principal diet articles of the skilled worker 's family in Germany during peace times were swine products, potatoes, bread and pastry and milk. About 14 cents a week was the outlay for drinks, and less than 10 cents a week for cigars and tobacco. These and incidentals brought the average expenditure of the skilled worker 's family for foods to $230.65 a year. The un- skilled worker's family fared, of course, much worse. The difference in costs of foods between Ger- many and the United States was not nearly as great as has been commonly represented. For the same low standard of living it amounted to about 17 to 20 per cent less in Germany. But a clearer idea of the underfeeding of the German worker is shown by a comparison of what the average workman in Germany in 1907 consumed and what the average adult male in the United States in 1903 consumed in certain 84 THE GERMAN MYTH specified articles of food. These statistics are from official sources, in the one case from the records of the German Imperial Statistical Of- fice ; in the other from the report of the United States Bureau of Labor : United German States workman, adult male, 1907, 1903- Meats, pounds 60.63 185.19 Poultry, pounds 19.44 Butter, pounds 16.31 30.13 Other fats, pounds 13.23 22.50 Fish, pounds 20.46 Cheese, pounds 8.38 4.38 Eggs, dozen 23.48 Potatoes, pounds 202.82 240 Coffee, pounds 6.83 13.37 Milk, quarts 111.90 103.71 Sugar, pounds 69.75 Tea, pounds 3.13 Molasses, gallons 1.06 Flour meal, pounds 166.25 Eice, pounds 7.90 t Inasmuch as the figures as to adult males in the U. S. investigation of 1903 applied to wage- earning families and did not include the well- to-do, the above is a fair comparison. CHRONIC UNDERFEEDING 85 But the statistics of the German Imperial Statistical Office do not by any means reveal the whole grnesome story. They do not tell, for example, of the great consumption of horseflesh or the use of dogflesh by the working people before the war. For many years there has been a considerable mar- ket for horseflesh in many German cities. In at least five German cities dog slaughter houses were officially recognized. The police regula- tions have required the slaughtering of horses and dogs in special abattoirs and the sale of horse and dog flesh in special shops, where the meat and the sausage " delicacies " made from it have had a brisk sale. Much of this horse- flesh, as investigations showed, was diseased. In Berlin from 11,000 to 14,000 horses were slaughtered yearly before the war for the Ber- lin horseflesh markets. In Munich, Bremen, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipsic, Elberfeld, Dussel- dorf, Essen, Crefeld, and many other German cities horseflesh and products made from it have been a staple in increasing demand. The abattoirs have been either in the cities or in the rural districts, and the horseflesh and dogflesh butchers have been conspicuous in the indus- trial centers. The insufficiency and poor quality of food, 86 THE GERMAN MYTH however, do not complete the picture of the German worker's dire subsistence. Those who have worshipped German "efficiency" have carefully avoided looking into the facts as to the widespread and flagrant adulteration of foods in Germany. Basing its facts upon the reports of Prussian state officials, the Zeit- schrift fuer oeffentliche Chemie published in 1914 a description of some of these adulteration methods. The facts narrated in that publication were transmitted by United States Consul Gen- eral J. I. Brittain at Coburg and republished in the Daily Consular and Trade Reports, No. 145, June 22, 1914. The Zeitschrift fuer oeffent- liche Chemie reported: "The use of artificial butter grows from year to year; it is even being used in the country. In spite of this increasing consumption, there is much uncleanliness where it is produced, and there is great necessity for purifying the raw products used. Tallow is often confiscated be- cause it contains hair, flies, splinters, and other foreign substances. The manufactured butter is also sometimes confiscated because it contains a large percentage of soda. Margarine manu- facturers are still using benzoic acid and sul- phuric acid as preservative agents. Up to the present the penalty for using such adulterants CHRONIC UNDERFEEDING 87 has not been clearly defined because the law has not been properly explained. Mixtures of lard, beef fat, and artificial fats are often made. Vegetable fats are being more and more used, especially in the form of hardened oils. ''Flour and bakery products also need care- ful supervision, because of the mixture of in- ferior products, sand, weed seeds, and mites. In many districts it has been found that talcum was used to adulterate flour, and that there was uncleanliness in the storerooms and in the man- ner of manufacture. Mites, worms, and spiders were found in the flour bins. So-called egg mix- tures often resemble eggs only in color, and that is given by a coal-tar product. Fruit juices are also artificially colored often with poison- ous coloring matter. "In a sparkling fruit wine advertised as free from alcohol, 7 per cent of alcohol was found. The green color of canned vegetables was found frequently to be the result of the use of salts of copper. In 1 kilo (2.20 pounds) 132 grams (4.65 ounces) of copper salts were found. Mar- malade and fruit jellies were found often to consist almost entirely of artificial ingredients. Coffee was most frequently adulterated with pulse or lupine seeds. "In many instances malt coffee was found 88 THE GERMAN MYTH to be simply unmalted, roasted barley. Adul- terated vinegar is said to have caused two deaths. Wines were less impure, owing to the strict supervision exercised over the wine in- dustry, but in the manufacture of beer much is to be desired in the matter of cleanliness. Twice brandy was found to be adulterated with methyl- ated spirits. Lead was also used for coloring utensils and vessels in daily use. A substance advertised for nickel was found to consist of a strongly poisonous quicksilver solution. In a baby's rubber nipple 40 per cent of zinc was found. ' ' The adulteration of candy made in Germany and sold throughout Germany was carried on shamelessly with the callous absence of regard for human health, morals, and life characteristic of the German official code. Quoting from the Massigheits-Blatter, which gave the alcoholic contents of certain liquor candies manufactured in Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, and Wittenberg, Vice Consul General Ernest L. Ives, at Frank- fort-on-Main, reported in the Daily Consular and Trade Eeports No. 179, August 1, 1914: "Reduced to percentages, the alcoholic content of the different candies is as follows : Cologne, 5.28 per cent ; Hamburg, 2.14 ; Berlin, 4.04 ; Wit- tenberg, 3.4. Ordinary beers contain 2.16 to CHRONIC UNDERFEEDING 89 3.2 per cent of alcohol, while the Bavarian beers contain 4 per cent and the English beers and ales over 5 per cent. The liquor candy manufactured in Cologne contains more alcohol than the strongest beer." Such exposures as these did not interest rul- ing German officialdom, which, of course, was the military caste. The whole training of this caste was for the slaughter not the saving of human life. At this very time the military caste was industriously and jubilantly putting the final touches to its preparations for the war that it well knew it would soon seize a pretext for declaring. An exceedingly tender subject to German officials has always been that of Germany's in- fant mortality. They avoided discussing it and distracted attention from both it and its causes. German propagandists filled America with effusive accounts of the " innumerable clinics, krippen, milk stations and institutions for indi- gent mothers in Germany. ' J They thus dissemi- nated the idea that "extraordinary Germany'* was the originator of child-saving agitation and measures, and that it was a "wonderfully effi- cient" country where health was high and people were happy. What they did not say was that France 90 THE GERMAN MYTH started the world-wide movement to reduce in- fant mortality more than a centnry before Ger- many wakened np to it. And what they did not tell or care to tell were the simple figures of infant mortality in Germany. These wonld have completely spoiled their gorgeous propaganda. The German official figures alone would have shown that the number of infant deaths in Ger- many has been continuously and incredibly large higher than in any other registered coun- try in ftie world except European Russia and Austria. It was in 1786 before the French Revolution that the child-saving movement was begun in France by the founding of the Societe de Charite. This is the same institution that in 1910 aided 30,000 poor married mothers during confinement. Other such French institutions came into being in 1836 and 1844. Babies ' milk stations were established in France nearly 25 years ago. France was the originator, yet Ger- many and its boosters have boldly claimed the credit for this movement (as they have of nearly everything else) for "German Kultur." Look, if you please, at the eloquent figures given here, and see what "German Kultur" has done to its infants. The figures are official and are those of deaths under one year of age per CHRONIC UNDERFEEDING 91 100 births, and an average for 1910-1914: Russia (European) 24.6 Austria 19.7 German Empire 17.0 Prussia 16.6 Spain 16.5 Bulgaria 16.1 Japan 15.7 Italy 14.7 Belgium 14.1 France 11.0 England and Wales 10.9 Scotland 10.9 Switzerland 10.9 Holland 10.4 Denmark 9.9 Sweden 7.6 Norway 7.0 For years there has been an enormous infant death rate in German cities. The 1912 report of the Prussian medical department, ministry of the interior, reported (p. 9) that the infant death rate per 1,000 of living children was, in the year 1912: Berlin, 178; Danzig, 203; Bres- lau, 203; Magdeburg, 202; Posen, 212; Dussel- dorf, 146; Hanover, 132. 92 THE GERMAN MYTH These are some typical infant death rates in German cities. If any American city, at this time and age, were to show death rates even approaching those of many German cities, there would be an upheaval and drastic steps would be taken to remedy matters. The infant death rate in American cities having white popula- tions is a low one. It would be still lower were it not for the fact that in many large American cities there is a heterogeneous, polyglot element of the foreign population to educate which in health matters takes much time and consider- able expense. There is no such difficulty in Germany, the population of which has been homogeneous. Despite its variegated popula- tion, New York City's infant death rate in 1912 was only 105 per 1,000 births. Boston's was 110. Cincinnati's was only 103. If in any American city with a preponderant white popu- lation the infant death rate now reaches 125 or 130, per 1000 births, the situation is re- garded as an alarming one. Yet in Germany the usual infant death rate in many cities has for years ranged from 130 to 258. Why has the infant death rate been so ab- normally high in Germany? Germans have boasted of their laws prohibiting the use for infants of milk not pasteurized. But, in the CHRONIC UNDERFEEDING 93 first place, neither they nor the other acclaim- ers of German " efficiency" have ever told the real reason why these laws were adopted. The fact is that so general in Germany has been for years the condemnation of women to severe drudgery that vast numbers of them lost the power to nourish their babies. The Berlin sta- tistics, prepared by Breckhs, showed that only one-seventh of all of the infant deaths reported were those of breast-fed babies, while the re- maining six-sevenths were those of bottle-fed babies. Needing the men for its military ma- chine, the German autocracy was not disposed to do anything that would release girls and women from hard labor in fields, mines, fac- tories, and shops. Consequently it did the next best thing, which was to decree the use of pas- teurized milk a measure that had some effect in saving babies for its war machine while at the same time giving the German rulers the reputation of being a "marvellous social reform government. ' ' Ordinarily the use of pasteurized milk for infants ought to bring about a great decrease in the number of infant deaths. Its increasing use in the United States has produced an immense transformation in this respect, because other conditions are good here. But in Germany the 94 THE GERMAN MYTH milk laws have been far offset by a militarist- feudal-industrial system which in peace times drove nearly 10,000,000 women to hard work, exiling many of them from their children while they did the most strenuous labor such as only men are normally qualified to do and should do. The same system has grossly underfed and foully housed the mass of German working men, women, and children. These are the main causes of the terrific in- fant mortality which for years has accursed the German people. The statistics for the city of Leipzig have shown that in rooms containing three or more occupants there was an adult death rate three times greater than in rooms with one occupant, and for children under one year of age a death rate four times greater than in rooms with one occupant. The average num- ber of persons to a house or "dwelling" in Ber- lin a few years ago was 46.6 as compared with 13.7 in New York City, 8.8 in Chicago, 8.4 in Boston, 6.3 in Pittsburgh, and 5.4 in Philadel- phia. In Leipzig and Dresden there have been more than 27 persons to a house ; in Elberf eld, Barmen, and Essen more than 18 ; in Dusseldorf more than 19 ; in Hanover 20 ; in Chemnitz more than 29; and in Breslau more than 39. These figures of themselves graphically present the CHRONIC UNDERFEEDING 95 hideous housing congestion throughout Ger- many. In its investigation in 1910 of "Life and Labor in Germany," the British Labor Party and Trade Union Commission inquired into the astounding infant mortality rate. Reporting that in the town of Gera, for example, during the 10 years 1898 to 1907, inclusive, more than 30 per cent of the children born died before they reached 1 year of age, the commission proceeded to review the infant mortality in Germany 's textile industrial centers as a whole. Its report continued (p. 60) : "And the reasons given to us for this phe- nomenal state of things were: "1. The fact that wages are so low that the wife is obliged to go to the mill to help keep the house going. "2. That prices of necessities are so high that a sufficient amount can not be purchased, especially of meat, to keep the mother in a state of physical efficiency. "3. That a considerable number of the chil- dren are handed over to the care of neighbors or older children, and lose the close attention of the mother, who returns to the factory as soon after confinement as possible. * * Perhaps the principal reason has been over- 96 THE GERMAN MYTH looked by the Germans themselves. From the number of workmen's homes we visited and the inquiries we made, it is safe to assume that the average textile worker's family is housed in two small rooms, measuring 12 feet by 9 feet, in a high building of 5 or 6 stories. It is the exception rather than the rule for a worker to have three of these rooms, unless he has other members of the family working ; and the stuffi- ness of these rooms can be better imagined than described, when the family is all present." CHAPTER THE LABGE EXTENT OF PAUPERISM THE climax of falsehoods that the German Government succeeded in imposing upon the American people, as well^s upon other peoples, was the claim that there was little or no paup- erism in the German Empire. The idea that pauperism was about extinct in Germany became more than impression. It settled in the minds of many people here into such a fixed belief that even after war was de- clared by the United States a prominent So- cialist in Minnesota in a public speech there said, in effect : "What if the Germans do come over here and rule us? What do we care who governs us so long as we are well fed and happy?" He was simply voicing what others who had imbibed German propaganda were saying in private. They had absorbed so much of the praise of the German Government's schemes for the prevention of poverty that they took it for 97 98 THE GERMAN MYTH granted that those schemes were both genuine and successful. The unusually significant fact that the Ger- man Government neither published nor appa- rently had any comprehensive statistics of paup- erism in Germany was unnoticed. Here was a potent, fact that instantly should have aroused suspicion. Endlessly had the German Govern- ment bragged of its thoroughness and excel- lence in gathering the most minute statistical details about anything and everything. Why did it or its States not have the full facts on pauperism, or if it had them why did it not publish them! Had there been such a big omission in the United States the German critics would have been the first to raise an outcry about official incapacity or denounce official suppression of important facts. In Germany there was much greater reason than here for the systematic assembling and complete publication of pauperism data. If there was little or no pauperism there, as the claim was, the yearly statistics for a given period ought to have shown it, and the German Government, it might reasonably be expected, would be only too eager to publish them. Even to the most unsophis- ticated mind the fact that the German Govern- ment avoided the subject ought to have opened PAUPERISM up sharp suspicions that it was trying to con- ceal something of great importance. German officials knew well enough that paup- erism statistics had a greater significance than any other kind. These statistics were the real test of Germany's boastings. And why? For several reasons. If conditions in Germany were as ideal as they were represented, pauperism should have become nonexistent. If, also, Ger- many's compulsory social insurance schemes had been so successful as they were lauded in the vaunted object of removing poverty, the statistics would have shown the gradually di- minishing number of paupers, year by year. Well-informed Germans knew that there was plenty of pauperism. They knew that much of it was downright destitution, and that much more was the same but disguised from super- ficial view by palliative coverings. But the mass of Germans were effectively chloroformed by the Government. With every motion of their life regulated, their beliefs and views were also regulated. When they were told to believe that everything was going on happily and harmoni- ously and that the compulsory social insurance laws were a great benevolence and benefit the most of them believed it. Officially assured that pauperism thereby had been immensely reduced 100 THE GERMAN MYTH they believed this, too, accepting the official word against the evidence of their own observa- tion and experience. Their national pride was flattered by this agreeable misinforma- tion. Enongh authentic facts, and more than enough, are available from authoritative Ger- man sources on the actual status of pauperism in Germany. Germany's compulsory sickness and working- men's accident insurance system dates from 1883-84; its invalidity and old-age insurance from 1889. The main convincing argument used in adopting these compulsory schemes was that the powerful intervention of the State was nec- essary to force people to submit to measures that would protect them against want. If these laws had brought about this end, or nearly so, impressive results would certainly have shown by the year 1910. By that time these as well as other so-called "reform" laws had been in force long enough. That was the crest of the time, too, when all over the world the legend had been adroitly disseminated that Germany was a veritable paradise where con- tentment dwelt and bliss crowned all. Turning from legend to fact what do we find ? That instead of decreasing, pauperism in Ger- PAUPERISM 101 many had increased, not only absolutely but relatively. In 1912 there was held an international con- vention composed of men to whom the prepa- ration of statistics was a life passion. This gathering was called "The Fifteenth Interna- tional Congress on Hygiene and Demography" a formidable title, sufficiently dry to insure its proceedings against reportorial curiosity. But although the voluminous papers read there were not, to be sure, reported in the press, they were published in full in the regular volume issued by that congress in 1913. One of the delegates to this international congress was Dr. Friederich Zahn, director of the Bavarian Royal Statistical Office, Munich, Germany. Dr. Zahn is the greatest authority in Germany on poor relief in that country. He had spent a lifetime exploring records of German municipalities and compiling the statistics of his own State of Bavaria. In the paper that he read on "Workingmen's Insurance and Poor Relief in Germany," Dr. Zahn gave the solid facts including many tables of statistics, dry, perhaps, yet having an eloquence that nothing else on the subject could so convincingly impart. What of the German cities about the "ele- 102 THE GEKMAN MYTH gance" and " well-being " of which so much had been written? Dr. Zahn drew the deceptive cur- tain aside and showed these conditions behind the scenes: Berlin. The number of persons receiving poor relief from the public funds had increased yearly from 31,358 in 1891 to 55,601 in 1909. This was an increase in pauperism from 1.99 per 100 inhabitants in 1891 to 2.64 per 100 in- habitants in 1909. Pauper burials were fre- quent. Hamburg. Pauperism was so constant a state that from 1895 to 1909 between 9,000 to 10,000 persons annually were given poor relief from the public funds. Many paupers were buried at public expense every year. Munich. Here the number of publicly re- lieved paupers more than doubled in five years. The number receiving public alms rose from 11,133 in 1895 to 25,187 in 1909. The expense of this poor relief nearly tripled in this period although the population had increased less than one-third (from 395,000 to 560,000). Pauper burials were numerous. Leipsic. A steady army of paupers. About 7,500 persons a year received public poor relief from 1905 to 1909. Many pauper burials. Breslau. Nearly 10,000 persons a year had PAUPERISM 103 to apply to the public authorities for alms from 1905 to 1909. Poor-relief expense greatly in- creased dnring this period, although the popu- lation (about 475,000) remained fairly station- ary. Every year pauper burials went on. Frarikfort-on-tJie-Main. An average of about 2,500 destitutes had yearly to get poor relief from the public authorities in the years 1905- 1908. Poor-relief expenses increased almost a third from 1905 to 1909, while the population increased only one-tenth (332,000 to 369,000). Here, too, pauper burials were a regular feature. Nuremburg. A big increase in paupers. The number getting public alms rose annually from 9,030 in 1900 to 14,496 in 1908. During that period the growth in population was propor- tionately much less from 257,706 to 316,400. A considerable number of paupers were yearly buried. Dusseldorf. The number of down-and-outs getting public poor relief almost doubled in 10 years. In 1900 public alms were given to 6,966. Year after year the number of almsgetters in- creased. In 1909 a total of 11,700 got poor re- lief. The expense in this period had more than doubled, but the population during the same time had increased less than one-fourth. The ex- pense for burying paupers constantly increased. 104 THE GERMAN MYTH Elberfeld. Here, also, pauperism was a chronic condition, with little or no variations. A yearly average of 1,250 destitutes received public alms from 1880 to 1909. During that time the public expense for poor relief bounded from 545,000 marks in 1880 to 954,756 marks in 1910. A part of it went for pauper burials. Elber- feld 's population increased from 93,000 in 1880 to 170,000 in 1909. The foregoing statistics do not by any means give the poor-relief totals in the large German cities named. These totals could be ascertained only by a complete register of all of the poor helped out by private as well as by public alms. Then, in addition, is the list of those destitute who never applied to either public or private agencies but were assisted by relatives or friends or by trade-union or other benefit or- ganizations. In extenuation of these pauper conditions the excuse can not be advanced that it is only in the large German cities that pauperism was to be found. The statistics presented by Dr. Zahn show that it was a common, general condition throughout Germany, in small as well as in large cities. The 46 German cities in the list below ran from Berlin with its more than 2,000,000 inhabitants to Plauen, Erfurt, Mayence and PAUPERISM 105 others each with barely more than 100,000 popu- lation. The actnal total public expenditures of all kinds for paupers and orphans in 46 German cities in the fiscal year 1910 were : Per capita expenditure. City. Expenditure, 1910. 1907 1910 Marks. Marks. Marks. Berlin 15,651,325 6.44 7-56 Hamburg 7,709,240 7.53 8.28 Munich 3,178,798 4.67 5-33 Leipzic 3,868,567 7.22 6.56 Dresden 3,305,722 5.07 6.03 Cologne 3,321,212 .... 6.43 Breslau 2,107,812 3.49 4.12 Frankfort-on-Main .... 3,085,527 6.62 7.45 Dusseldorf 1,811,947 5.71 5.05 Nuremberg 1,340,687 3.46 4.02 Charlottenburg 2,137,281 5.88 6.08 Hanover 1,408,183 4.32 4.74 Essen 1,228,104 3.67 4.17 Chemnitz 884,483 3.17 3.07 Stuttgart 1,191,062 5.68 4.16 Madgeburg 1,114,466 4.56 3.09 Konigsberg 1,041,324 4.61 4.23 Bremen 1,683,007 5.58 6.87 Bixdprf 598,884 2.09 2.52 Stettin 976,192 3-59 4-13 Duisburg 829,318 3.41 3.61 Dortmund 1,032,903 3.40 4.86 Kiel 1,079,219 6.23 5.10 Mannheim 1,215,263 5.32 6.27 Halle 842,104 4.14 4.66 Strassburg 886,753 3.12 4.96 Schoneberg 581,123 2.41 3.36 Altona 839,497 4-57 4-86 Danzig 891,740 4.60 5.23 Elberfeld 954,756 4.80 5.61 Gelsenkirchen 456,851 2.17 2.69 Barmen 596,284 3.38 3.52 Posen 865,674 4.46 5.52 Aachen 1,090,036 5.93 6.98 106 THE GERMAN MYTH Per capita expenditure. City. Expenditure, 1910 1907 1910 Cassel 557,733 2-92 3-66 Braunschweig 685,005 3.71 4.77 Bochum 505,513 3-02 3.69 Karlsruhe 580,902 2.55 4.33 Crefeld 659,777 4-23 5-> Plauen 303498 2.50 Erfurt 337,055 3-02 3-O2 Mayence 503,819 4-55 Wilmersdorf 213,833 1.42 1.95 Wiesbaden 495,953 3-66 4.55 Saarbrucken 394,282 3.75 Augsburg 430,927 .... 4-21 Judging by German standards of expendi- tures these were enormous amounts. They were also merely the public sums, not the total of all amounts variously spent in relieving destitu- tion. Even as public sums they did not include the entire public costs; in the case of some cities certain costs such as the care of sick paup- ers in hospitals are not included in the list here given. As they stand, however, the sums item- ized were obviously great, and this for pauper conditions which, it was popularly supposed elsewhere, did not exist within the blessed pre- cincts of the Kaiser's imperial proprietary do- minions. The large number of paupers in the one Ger- man State of Bavaria alone gives a clear insight into what conditions, as a whole, in Germany must have been up to the war's outbreak. Ba- PAUPERISM: 10? varia is one of the few German States which does keep a comprehensive statistical record of paupers and of every factor connected with pauperism. Bavaria, too, is the richest agri- cultural State in the German Empire. Accord- ing to the table prepared by Dr. Zahn this is the record and only a partial one at that of pauperism as officially registered in Bavaria : Poor relief in Bavaria. Number relieved ("exclud- Expenditures per Year. ing other members of head of the family"). population. Marks. 1900 189,484 1.5 1901 200,265 1.5 1902 202,555 1.6 1903 205,649 1.6 1904 201,695 1.7 1905 200,334 1-7 1906 199,029 1.8 1907 198,277 1.8 1908 215,438 2.0 1909 235,269 2.1 1910 239,696 2.1 I9H 230,218 2.1 Of this extensive partial list of persons re- ceiving poor relief in Bavaria, more than one- half received "permanent relief," the remain- der * ' temporary relief. ' ' From 1900 to 1909 the number "permanently relieved" in Bavaria varied from 17 to 18 per 1,000 inhabitants. 108 THE GERMAN MYTH The increase in expenditures for poor relief in Bavaria is here shown: Per too Year. Total inhabitants. Marks. Marks. 1807 9,442,955 I59-I 1900 10,368,387 168.6 1902 11,286,433 178.9 1904 12,199,398 188.7 1906 13,296,000 202.3 1908 15,266,000 227.0 1911 17,460,000 252.1 The total amount in public funds spent for poor relief in Bavaria in the whole of the 10 years 1897-1906 was 111,375,955 marks (about $26,000,000). Not only in the large and small cities of Ger- many has outright destitution been continuous but also in the rural regions. In the rural sec- tions of Germany, as in the cities of that coun- try, the expenditures for poor relief constantly rose year after year, as these statistics for cer- tain districts given by Dr. Zahn show: Cost of rural poor relief. Year. Westphalia. Rhenish Prussia. Marks. Marks. 1886 .- 300,000 611,000 1890 330,400 700,000 1895 491,600 1,006,000 1900 615,700 1,349,000 1905 835,800 1,510,000 1906 817,300 1,504,000 1007 895,100 1,583,000 1008 984,000 1,715,000 1909 1,034,650 1,697,000 PAUPERISM 109 Of these public sums spent for poor relief in these two rural districts alone, an increasing amount went year after year for the support of the rural poor in institutions. Thus in 1886 less than one-fourth of the total costs in West- phalia was applied to care of paupers in insti- tutions, the bulk going to out-door poor relief. From 1905 onward two-thirds or more of the costs of poor relief had to be applied to the care of paupers in institutions. Part of this increase is explainable by the greater cost of supplies, but the bulk was a sheer increase of per capita expenditure. When it is considered that for many years the movement of Germany's population was from the rural regions to the cities, it can be seen at once that these increases in poor costs in the rural districts were out of all proportion to the population. For example, as illustrating this cityward movement: In 1882 there were 15 large cities in the German Empire with a population of 3,400,000, or 7.6 per cent of the total population; in 1907 there were 42 large cities with 11,790,000 inhabitants, or 19.1 per cent, not including the populous sub- urbs. The explanation of economic depression may account for an increase in poor relief in certain years, but it does not account for the chronic 110 THE GERMAN MYTH prevalence of pauperism both in periods of de- pression and prosperity. The years 1907-1909 were a period of economic depression in Ger- many, but in the preceding years, which were estimated as those of national prosperity, pauperism kept on in general growing with ominous steadiness. This increase in pauperism went on contemporaneously with the assumption of increased power by the German State, and with the increased power of German trade unions, consumers' distributive organizations and of so-called rural credit organizations. It was during the very period when Germany's so- called social reform laws were enacted and when they were supposed to have had a cumulative effect that pauperism in Germany so greatly in- creased. Brag the German Government has of its " enlightened" and "civilized" treatment of its working people. But the stern fact has been that any workman so reduced as to have to beg for alms has been automatically deprived by law of even the paltry civil rights that he had, and that same law branded him with a distinct social as well as political odium from which he could never recover. Although some German States (but only as late as 1910) modified the severity of the laws imposing disabilities upon those soliciting or PAUPERISM 111 getting poor relief, yet German law as a whole still harshly penalizes the unfortunates driven into poverty. Everywhere, it is true, poverty is stigmatized, but in a country such as the United States no law discriminates against it, and no obstacles are put in the way of the sufferers to prevent them from breaking from its meshes. In Germany, however, poverty is in law a pe- culiarly heinous disgrace. The impoverished loses even the shadowy voting rights that he had. He is prohibited from voting in the Em- pire, in the State, in the Commune, or even in the Church. He is debarred from serving as a juror and in all other civil capacities. He is shorn of even the ordinary rights of settling anywhere. Nowhere are the poor allowed any voice in the management of the communal and the provincial poor unions. And such degrada- tions as the law does not otherwise impose upon the poor, a rigid caste system and cruel social custom do. The modern humanitarian concept that poor relief is a general kindly duty of so- ciety to be administered with consideration has hardly penetrated Germany. No destitute person in Germany can get even the mite of poor relief allowed without being first subjected to a gruelling, terrifying inquisi- tion. Every detail of the applicant's private 112 THE GERMAN MYTH affairs is probed into and exposed by a search- ing, antagonistic inquiry that destroys all self- respect and humiliates all spirit. The suppli- cants' faces and bodies may be emaciated; they may be staggering, from hunger and exhaustion, but such evidence is never accepted. They must undergo a multitude of formalities and prove, point by point, that they are in need and can not supply essential needs. Until they have run this ordeal of an inflexible officialdom no relief is given. The same officials who brow- beat the poor cringe before the aristocracy and are rewarded for doing both. In order to conciliate the organized city work- ing people and at the same time to give a genteel outward appearance to city conditions, the usual form of poor relief in the cities has been that of grants of money. The individual sums thus given have been well, what have they been? Commonly about $1.50 a month or there- abouts ; sometimes a little more. A $3 or $4 a month allowance of alms has been considered generosity. In official parlance these poor re- lief grants are sonorously styled "benefits." Miserable as are these sums they have somehow been the means of diverting a mass of paupers from being shifted to almshouses. Hidden in the congested byways and festering in the PAUPERISM 113 squalid back neighborhoods of the cities, these impoverished semblances of human beings have mysteriously existed. Meanwhile the officials, well knowing that these submerged elements have been lost to view, have proudly pointed out to visitors the delusive fact that their alms- house population is almost nil. But in the rural districts, where the art of disguising disagreeable facts has not yet been learned, the methods of dealing with paupers are the reverse. Here the old attitude toward the pauper has survived in all its naked bru- tality. If the down-and-out has been known and liked the village people have helped him or her out by supplies contributed by them in rota- tion. But if paupers have happened to be from some other place in Germany, which has often been the case, they have been unceremoniously consigned to the almshouse. And of all things, country people object to individual grants of money because it means a direct assessment on them, already overburdened as they have been by taxes. These are facts that German propagandists carefully concealed. Glossing over almshouse pauperism in Germany by professing never to have seen any marked evidences of it, they at the same time distributed implications upon the 114 THE GERMAN MYTH growth of pauperism in the United States. In Germany they avoided consulting statistics. In the United States they did nibble at them but only at such parts as fitted their purposes. One phase of a fact such as that the number of alms- house paupers in the United States had in- creased from 73,045 in 1900 to 84,198 in 1910 would be stretched to a sweeping claim that pauperism in America had increased. If the other phase of the same fact, however, had been considered, the result became a very different one. This other phase was that per 100,000 of population the proportion of almshouse paupers in the United States had decreased from 116.6 in 1900 to 91.5 in 1910. Moreover and a highly important fact it is much of this pauperism was pauperism trans- planted here direct from Europe. United States Bureau of the Census Bulletin 120 ("Paupers in Almshouses") further shows (p. 49) that of the 84,190 paupers admitted to almshouses in the United States in 1910, a total of 33,353 were foreign-born white paupers, 5,531 of whom, by the way, came from Germany. Another part of our almshouse population 6,281 were negroes. "Taking the country as a whole," says the 1910 census report on the United States, "the foreign-born whites in pro- PAUPERISM 115 portion to their numbers contribute to alms- houses about four times as many paupers as the native white." It is this immigration that has swelled the ranks of pauperism in our large eastern port cities and States. Germany has had no such problem thrust upon it. Almost wholly Germany's paupers have been native Germans or other subjects of the Kaiser home-grown products of German "Kultur." CHAPTER COUNTERFEIT "SOCIAL INSURANCE LARGE, however, as has been the officially registered multitude of paupers in Germany, the actual total would have been immensely greater if much of the pauperism had not been masked. The German compulsory workingmen's in- surance laws have simply covered over another large proportion and have given it an alias. The fundamental remained the same, but the garb was altered. Still another considerable part of pauperism in Germany has been kept from prominent view by the glamour of these social insurance laws. Large numbers of people have drawn poor relief alms at the same time that they have received insurance pensions. But of the first fact little was said, while the insurance "benefits" were given the fullest em- phasis and the blare of world-wide notice. Social insurance is a valuable and growing feature in society. But when its operations 116 COUNTERFEIT "INSURANCE" 117 are founded, as they are in Germany, upon fallacies and deceptions from beginning to end, its workings are well worth scrutinizing. Germany's scheme of compulsory working- men's insurance was originated as a device. The aim was to represent the Hohenzollern dynasty as the benevolent conserver of "their people's" welfare and thus chloroform any popular sentiment that might arise to threaten its autocratic powers. It was only a new ap- plication of the old despotic principle of ap- peasing the populace by throwing out what seemed to be attractive sops. But the Hohen- zollern method showed variations from the an- cient. Just as the Hohenzollerns have insisted that their power was derived from "divine right," so they have loftily plumed themselves as being the sole source of "benefactions" flow- ing to "their people." To them the German people have been expected to look for every- thing, and in turn the German people are com- manded to be duly thankful for what they get, even if it be crumbs in peace times and pesti- lence and slaughter in war times. The whole scheme of workingmen's insur- ance in Germany as it came from the autocracy is based upon a series of dogmatic assump- tions. 118 THE GERMAN MYTH The leading assumption is that sickness is one of the prime causes of poverty. Students of social conditions might well in- quire if, in a large sense, the reverse were not true. Indeed, German municipal and other re- ports themselves show by the facts the sweep of sickness and mortality caused by the long work hours, the strain of intense drudgery upon men, women, and children, the terrible housing conditions, and the widely prevalent underfeed- ing. But it has suited the interest of the feudal- militarist-industrial regime to ignore these facts. When it, therefore, pronounced the sweeping mandate that sickness caused poverty, it became so in law and in obedient popular belief. The aim was to divert attention from low wages and other factors so powerfully con- tributing to poverty. A second assumption is that the death of the head of the family is one of the most frequent causes of poverty. (This, it may be remarked at the outset, is a finely ironical assumption on the part of an autocratic government, the mili- tarist system of which has long been devised for the express purpose of slaying in battle hundreds of thousands, yes millions, of heads of families.) COUNTERFEIT " INSURANCE " 119 Apart from this present historic fact, if this assumption is so largely true how is it that among the recipients of poor relief in Germany there have been so many heads of families? Without doubt, the loss of the chief earner does in many cases reduce the family to destitution, particularly if there be very young children. But in the United States vast numbers of peo- ple are protected by voluntary insurance. Without compulsion or coercion the United States has developed more life insurance pro- tection per capita than Germany or any other country in the world. A third assumption underlying Germany's compulsory insurance laws is that pauperism is inevitable as a result of industrial accidents. So it often is, but much more often these accidents cause temporary disabilities which do not entirely unfit the wage earner from later employment of some kind or other. The princi- ple of compensation is generally provided for in law in the United States, and it is a good principle. But it is a principle founded upon justice in providing compensation for the in- jury suffered, not upon the assumption, as in Germany, that the sufferer is practically a pauper. The wage earner in the United States gets compensation as a matter of fairness and 120 THE GERMAN MYTH just dealing ; its acceptance in no way detracts from his self-respect or standing. But in Ger- many the driblets that the injured worker gets are only another form of poor relief. A fourth sweeping assumption is that old age is one of the prolific causes of pauperism. Is it ! No doubt it may be in a country such as Germany, where adult workers have had to labor for starvation or semi-starvation wages, and where the savings of the average worker, as shown by the study of wage-earning families by the Imperial Statistical Office of Germany, amounted to $4.73 a year for the skilled worker and $2.80 a year for the unskilled laborer. In Germany, where men, women, and children have had to work to make the family's barest ends meet, no adequate provision could, to be sure, be made for any contingency whatever. Here in the United States old age has by no means been the chief factor in pauperism. The United States Bureau of the Census 1910 report on "Paupers in Almshouses" states (p. 17) that "one-third of the paupers admitted are under 40 years of age, one-third are betvreen 40 and 59, and one-third are 60 and over." In the very act of attempting to show the beneficial efforts of Germany's social insurance laws Dr. Zahn, director of the Royal Bavarian COUNTERFEIT "INSURANCE" 121 Statistical Office, repeatedly admits that they are merely another kind of poor relief. In one part of his paper he discloses the fact that investigations made by two private poor- relief associations in Germany indicated "that the actual increase in the number of persons receiving poor relief and the increase in ex- penditure would both have been far greater if there had been no laws on workingmen's insur- ance, for the most of the persons so assisted would otherwise have been a charge upon the poor funds." The amounts in pensions thus given have been so infinitesimal that if these very alleged beneficiaries had received outright poor relief they would have received more, and the corresponding costs would, of course, have been greater. According to the Statistisches Jahrbuch fur das Deutsche Reich (vol. 37, Berlin, 1916), com- pulsory insurance in 1913 comprehended: PERSONS Accident insurance 25,800,000 Sickness insurance 14,555,669 Invalidity and old-age insurance 16,323,800 From 1885 to 1913 the total pension disburse- ments for accident insurance were $591,736,068. 122 THE GERMAN MYTH From 1891 to 1913 the total spent for invalidity and old-age pensions was $641,606,802. "Very respectable sums," say the eulogists. They look so when the lump sums are mentioned and when is omitted the fact that much of this was virtually poor relief. But what have been the amounts of the individual pensions? According to the Amtliche Nachrichten des Reichs-Versicherung-Amt, Berlin, these were the average pensions paid out in the years 1909- 1914. Average amount of pensions, 1909-1914. Year. IQOQ Inva- lidity. $41.60 Sick- ness. $41.4"; Old age. $78.01 Wid- ows and wid- owers. Wid- ows' sick- ness. Or- phans IQIO 42 II 41 Si ^0 II IOII 4286 42.24 ^0."U 1912 1913 1914 44-50 46.51 4779 4576 48.45 49.38 39-54 3975 39.98 $18.34 18.49 18.77 $18.46 18.59 18.95 $19.25 19.07 18.59 Thus we see that the largest pension given did not amount to $1 a week. The disabled had to get along in 1914 on a pension of about 91 cents a week, and less in previous years. The sick invalid, in 1914, had to subsist on a pension of 95 cents a week, and old age on a pension of less than 77 cents a week. Widows and widowers, sick widows and orphans each COUNTERFEIT "INSURANCE" 123 received the munificent pension of between 36 and 38 or 39 cents a week. How they performed the miracle of existing on these sums no German official report explains. But what the reports of the Berlin Invalidity Insurance Institution do show is that in a great number of cases these so-called "pension bene- fits" have not prevented the recipients from becoming a charge upon the poor law. Thus in Berlin of 15,799 males receiving invalidity pen- sions, 2,530, or 16 per cent of the total number, also received poor relief, and of 13,032 females who received invalidity pensions, 2,643, or 20 per cent, also received poor relief. It is a fact of the greatest significance that of the persons becoming entitled to invalidity pensions nearly one-half were already in receipt of poor-law money grants, and most of them retained those poor-law allowances, generally at a higher figure. The same was true of those receiving old-age pensions. "Abandonment of the poor- law money-grants," Dr. Zahn comments, "oc- curred only in isolate^ cases." Here we have the true inklings of the opera- tions of Germany's "wonderful" working- men's insurance laws. Most palpably they are the rankest counterfeit. Yet ignoring both their essentials and their effects a prominent writer 124 THE GERMAN MYTH of a widely circulated book booming Germany's " socialization " has the impudence to assert that these laws prove Germany to be "a demo- cratically minded country. " The doling out of miserable pittances passing under the high- flown term of pensions, of 36 to 95 cents a week, is transformed by that prismatic writer into "a juster distribution of wealth" and "a more gen- erous distribution of the gains of civilization. ' ' Extraordinary, indeed, have been this "gen- erosity" and these "gains" in Germany where a large proportion of those receiving these in- surance pensions have already been on the reg- ular official pauper list and have remained there. If the number thus getting double government alms in Berlin about one-fifth to one- sixth has applied to the whole German Empire, then self -evidently there has been an enormous num- ber of "pensioners" who at the same time have had to draw poor relief alms. Even when both pensions and poor relief alms were combined the total sum has been so puny that it would require the most violent stretch of the imagina- tion to dignify it as even beginning to pay for the crudest elementals of life. What a cheap bribe! For thirty years the German people were taught to look upon their Government as "the most benevolent on earth," COUNTERFEIT "INSURANCE" 125 and a few paltry coins thrown to them con- vinced them that that was actually the fact. They were assured (as we in America have been assured) that compulsory insurance prolonged life to an unusual degree when, as a matter of fact, as Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman has demon- strated, the actual gain in longevity in Ger- many during a 30-year period was only 1.6 years. From 1888-1892 compared with the 4- year period 1908-1912 Berlin's death rate de- creased only 27.8 per cent while during the same period New York City's death rate decreased 39.9 per cent. New York City in 1917 had the lowest death rate in its history, and a lower death rate than was ever experienced by the city of Berlin up to the outbreak of the war. Another potent fact passed over by eulogists of German conditions has been the abnormal number of suicides, both child and adult, in Germany. If Germany's "social measures" have been so conducive to health, security, and happiness, as has been claimed, why should so shocking a proportion of Germans, especially children and youths, have violently projected themselves out of what Americans have been told was a paradise? This strikingly large number of suicides in Germany was not occa- sional : it was continuous, and went on in peace 126 THE GERMAN MYTH times. Instead of delights this mass of self- destroyers evidently found nothing but de- spair. Statistics applying to a definite period of years show that there have been 8 times as many child suicides in Saxony as in the United States, and 15 times more child suicides in Berlin than in New York City. The suicide rate for children from 10 to 14 years of age has been Per 100,000 popula- tion. United States Registration Area 0.55 Alsace-Lorraine 0.85 Bavaria 1.55 Saxony 4.39 Saxony is an intensely industrial State, the working population of which was badly over- worked, underfed, and vilely housed. Saxony has also long been under strong Prussian in- fluence. Bavaria has been less so, and Alsace- Lorraine has been the least affected by German and Prussian influence combined. During the same period of years the child suicide rates of New York City and Berlin COUNTERFEIT " INSURANCE " 127 were : New York City, 0.19 per 100,000 popula- tion; Berlin, 2.99 per 100,000 population. There were, therefore, in proportion to popu- lation, 15 child suicides in Berlin to every 1 child suicide in New York City. In other words, child suicides were 15 times more frequent in Berlin than in New York City. And what of youths or girls of 15 to 19 years of age I The suicide rates for them have been Per 100,000 popula- tion. United States Registration Area 6.82 Alsace-Lorraine 7.65 Bavaria 11.93 Saxony 26.98 Hence, there were approximately 4 suicides of adolescents in Saxony for every 1 in the United States. Or, to put the fact in another way, suicides in early life were 4 times more frequent in Saxony than in the United States. Comparing the cities of New York City and Berlin the suicide rates of youths or girls 15 to 19 years of age during the same period were: New York City, 6.07 per 100,000 population; 128 THE GERMAN MYTH Berlin, 29.09 per 100,000 population. To put the concrete fact approximately, there were during the same period 5 suicides of youthful persons in Berlin to every 1 in New York City. As for the general suicide rate, including all ages, it has been abnormally high in many parts of Germany. During the five years ending with 1913 the suicide rate per 100,000 of population was 32.6 in the Kingdom of Saxony ; 33.1 in the Province of Brandenburg, exclusive of the city of Berlin ; 16.2 in the Kingdom of Bavaria; and 15.5 in Alsace-Lorraine. During the same period of years the suicide rate of the United States Reg- istration Area was 16.1 per 100,000 of popula- tion. The suicide rate of the city of Berlin during the five years ending with 1913 was (per 100,000 population) 35.8 against 17.2 for the city of New York and 11.0 for London. The differ- ence in favor of the United States is, therefore, very decided. There are, of course, more or less pronounced variations in the suicide rate throughout Germany. A low rate prevails generally in the Catholic section of Westphalia, the Rhine provinces, and the Polish provinces of Prussia. A wide belt of intense suicide fre- quency or a rate of from 30 to 35 per 100,000 COUNTERFEIT "INSURANCE" 129 stretches from the North Sea along the Elbe to Bohemia. The high rates show unquestionably the de- cided unfavorable moral and spiritual condition of the German people attributable in part no doubt to discontent arising from prevalent in- dustrial and political conditions. Still another highly significant fact ignored by the eulogists of Germany is that disclosing the astounding extent of crime in the German Empire. In his illuminating volume entitled 4 'The Soul of Germany," Dr. Thomas F. A. Smith gives (p. 350) these figures of the aver- age yearly number of convictions for serious and brutal crimes in Germany and England, re- spectively, taking care to point out that the population of the British Isles was 45,000,000, and that of Germany 66,000,000. The following figures cover the period of twelve years from 1901 to 1912 inclusive: Germany British Isles Malicious and felonious wounding. . . 125,386 1,213 M'irders, including every class 1,106 296 Rapes, defilement of imbeciles and girls under 14 5,310 789 Incest 489 53 Unnatural crimes 648 122 Illegitimate children 178,1 15 48,702 Divorce petitions 20,340 965 Malicious damage to property 19,689 358 Arson 610 278 Perjury 554 98 White slavery and procuration 3,900 27 ISO THE GERMAN MYTH The foregoing figures, says Dr. Smith, "for both the British Isles and Germany are the numbers of individuals actually convicted. Fur- thermore, the German figures do not include the crimes committed by soldiers and sailors in the German army and navy respectively. The Brit- ish statistics include all persons convicted in these islands, whether civilians or other- wise " These figures, showing such flagrant immor- ality and criminality in Germany, so amazed Principal George L. Fox, of the University School, New Haven, Conn., that he could not believe their accuracy. He accordingly exam- ined the official statistical publications issued by the German Government to see whether Dr. Smith had stated the figures correctly. A thorough study of these and other German docu- ments showed that the situation had not been exaggerated. The figures for Germany given in "Statistik des Deutschen Reichs (Imperial Statistics of the German Empire), vol. 228, en- titled "Kriminalstatistik," show the continuous great proportion of crime. One of the worst features of this sweep of criminality was the amount of youthful deprav- ity. Of 13,562 persons convicted in 1908 of COUNTERFEIT " INSURANCE " 131 crimes against morality, 1,319 were between the ages of 12 and 18, and of 1,957 persons con- victed in the same year of crimes causing death, 176 were of the same ages. There was also a large proportion of juveniles convicted of arson. (Large as the extent of juvenile crime was be- fore the war, the figures of juvenile criminality, so Minister of Justice Spahn of Prussia recently declared, were "extraordinarily serious.") The annual number of illegitimate children born in Germany was enormous. In 1910 there were 179,584. From 1901 to 1910 about 178,000 ille- gitimate children were yearly born in Germany. Extraordinary as the fact may seem to those who read only fairy tales of Germany it is a fact, as the German official statistics show, that 25 per cent of the children born in Berlin annu- ally have been illegitimate. No doubt, this may be attributable in part to the frightful tenement overcrowding in one or two rooms, but it also sprung from the scorn of morality set in fashion by the militarists and their philosophers and teachers in order to prepare the German people more effectively to rob and despoil their neigh- bors. The crimes that were so prevalent in Germany before the war were only the precur- sors of the greater crimes committed during 132 THE GERMAN MYTH the war in the sacking of Belgium, France, Serbia, and other countries, such enormities as the torpedoing of the Lusitania, and the mass of other atrocities committed by the German army and navy. But when we turn from statistics to recent consequential realities what is it that we fur- ther see! That the very autocracy which by its methods practically bribed the German people into acquiescence is the identical dynastic clique that plunged the world into war and which knew in advance that its carefully-con- cocted war would cause the butchery of vast numbers of its "dear people." While the Ger- man people were influenced to regard their Government as benevolent toward them, the Government contemptuously had the working people enrolled as virtually a nation of paupers dependent upon its bounty. All of the fine-spun " benevolent " schemes of the German Govern- ment were but so many adroit agencies to en- chain the people to its divine-right militarist system. This is the great salient fact, the fact of facts. The compulsions of the German social, educa- tional, and militarist system went far in crush- ing independence of thought and action. The compulsory insurance schemes completed the COUNTERFEIT "INSURANCE" 133 process. They fixed as a finality the habit on the part of the mass of people of humbly look- ing up to the Government for everything. The autocracy deified itself as the enthroned arbiter of popular well-being. As its deceptions in or- dinary times were blindly accepted so were its deceptions as blindly believed when the German people were ordered to the sacrifice for its ag- grandizement. Commanded to immolate themselves for a Government in which they have no real voice, what is the fate of the German people? What does the German Government do for the fam- ilies of its fighting men for the legions of maimed and mangled, for the widows and or- phans 1 It flings them sums in military pensions and military separation allowances so small that they can not suffice for normal wants. In fact, great numbers of families of German trades-union members have been compelled to draw upon the trades-unions for war service subsidies, which drain has greatly depleted trade-union treasuries. In Germany the wife of an enlisted soldier gets a separation allowance of $4.76 a month* If she has children the monthly amount varies from $7.14 for one child to $14.28 if she has four children. For each additional child $2.38 a 134 THE GERMAN MYTH month is allowed. In the United States military separation allowances are paid to the wife as a matter of right irrespective of her circum- stances. But in Germany the wife can not get these allowances unless she pleads and proves pauperism. And after she is awarded them she and her children have to face semi-starvation in a country where, according to the Leipziger Volksseitung of September 3, 1917, the price of potatoes had increased 233 per cent, the price of lard 371 per cent, and the prices of other staples had enormously increased since the war's outbreak. Great Britain pays more than twice what Germany does to enlisted soldiers' families. France pays $24.60 a month to a wife and four children. To disabled soldiers the German Govern- ment pays only $10.72 a month, and in case of mutilation, extra bonuses varying from $3.57 to $12.86 a month. Hard-pressed France pays $19.30 per month. Great Britain pays from $28.99 to $50.07 a month to disabled enlisted men. The German soldier's widow having no chil- dren gets a pension of only $7.94 a month, and from $11.27 to $21.26 a month according to the number of children up to four. To each addi- tional child $3.33 a month is allowed. France pays less, but Great Britain much more. In Great Britain widows' pensions range from $14.49 to $30.31 a month and more. If the German Government is, as its eulogists say, so "generous," what superlative is to be applied to the United States Government in its provisions for the families of its fighters? From the United States Government the family of an enlisted man gets one-half of his pay with a supplementary allowance up to $50 a month. The United States Government pays $15 a month to a wife. If the wife has one child she gets $25 a month ; and for each addi- tional child $5 more a month. To an orphan child $5 a month is paid; to two orphan chil- dren $12.50 a month ; to three $20 ; to four $30 ; and to each additional orphan $5 a month. One or two parents of an American soldier each get $10 a month ; and where there is dependency step-parents, grandparents, grandchildren, brothers and sisters each receive $5 a month. These payments are in addition to the family allotment of one-half the soldier's pay. In case of death all dependents are more fully provided for by the United States Govern- ment. This applies to Army, Navy, and Nurse Corps. A widow gets $25 a month. If the widow has one child she receives $35 a month ; 136 THE GERMAN MYTH if two children, $47.50 a month ; and $5 a month for each additional child. A child left an or- phan receives $20 a month; two orphans in a family, $30 a month; three orphans, $40 a month, and $5 for each additional child. To a widowed mother $20 a month is paid. Pay- ments to a widow or widowed mother continue until death or remarriage. All of these benefits are fixed sums and are uniform for all classes of persons without regard to rank. For total disability suffered by any Ameri- can soldier, sailor, or Army or Navy nurse there is another scale of compensation. A single man gets $30 a month. If he has a wife he gets $45 a month. If he has a wife and one child he re- ceives $55 a month ; if a wife and two children, $65 a month ; and $75 a month if he has a wife and three or more children. If the wife is not living, but there is one child, the United States Government pays $40 a month, with $10 a month For each additional child up to two children. An additional $10 is paid in case there is a dependent widowed mother. If a constant attendant is needed the Government allows an amount not to exceed $20 a month. For the loss of both feet or both hands or for total blindness causing helplessness, $100 a month, with other allowance, is paid. Partial disability is compensated on the basis of reduction of earning capacity. No payments are however, made where the reduction is less than 10 per cent. Medical, surgical, and hos- pital services, with all necessary supplies such as artificial limbs, are furnished by the United States Government. And where death ensues before the discharge or resignation from the service $100 is given for the cost of bringing the body home and burial expenses. The fourth article in the law allows every person in the service to take out insurance. All expense of administration and the excess mortality and disability cost caused by the haz- ards of war are borne by the United States Government. By January 31, 1918, a total of 631,476 applications for insurance policies had been made by soldiers, sailors, marines, and nurses in the service of the United States. The Insurance applied for at the War Risk Insurance Bureau totaled $5,290,746,000. It is now billions of dollars more. The average amount of insur- ance asked for was $8,378. The wide difference between the character of the two Governments is manifest. The German autocracy makes the pretenses; the American democracy gives performance. In the one the people exist for the Government and must per- 138 THE GERMAN MYTH force take what it gives them. In the other, the Government exists for the people, and its laws measure to genuine ideals and make real provi- sion for the popular welfare. Many shams are being swept away by the great war. One of these is the long-maintained pretense of Germany's unexcelled social prog- ress. It was a sham elevated to be a fetich. Examined, it turns out to be a poor shoddy thing which can no longer be imposed upon the world. CHAPTER IX TEACHING MENTAL AND SOCIAL SERVITUDE THE exhorters of German "Kultur" repre- sented the Prussian school system as the world's model. The same crowd so extrava- gantly praising Germany's "social uplift " claims was equally vociferous over what they called Germany's superior educational system. These extreme admirers of Germany's ways and measures liked to draw a contrast to Amer- ica's disadvantage. They saw little that was commendable in our educational methods. Crude, superficial, insubstantial these were a few of the characterizations they applied to our schools and colleges. They declared that on the whole our educational institutions were without solidity or character, and could pro- duce nothing but mass mediocrity. The Prussian school was their ideal. There, they told us, could be found purpose and sys- tem. There could be seen appreciation of real scholarship diffused among the people from the 139 140 THE GERMAN MYTH child to the adult. There could be found the kind of training that beginning with the juvenile was so highly developed as to breed a nation of thinking, intelligent, cultivated people, the very flower of the human race. Large were these flattering generalizations. Their very fulsomeness might well have aroused doubt if not suspicion. Specifications, too, were conspicuously absent. "We were not told just what was the purpose at the foundation of the Prussian school sys- tem. It was never explained why an autocratic government, based upon a feudal-industrial oli- garchy, should so energetically approve of that school system. That an arbitrary government steadily denying real political power to the Ger- man people should insist upon retaining that system was a most suspicious circumstance. Alone, that ominous fact should have stimulated inquiry into the purpose behind it all. But it did not, at least among the considerable groups whose writings were devoted to the one end of glorifying Germany. Neither did they tell us what the Prussian school system was actually accomplishing in results. Culture, said they, and the most of the world believed their asser- tions. That was before the world had the hor- rifying opportunity of seeing just what this MENTAL AND SOCIAL SERVITUDE 141 "Kultur" consisted of the ingrained brutality of a whole people and the prevalence among it of a code of immorality and immorality the frightful workings of which have put a world in arms determined to stop them. To many people, perhaps, the particular qual- ities revealed by the German people are inex- plicable phenomena. A people that we were long assured were inoffensive show themselves bar- barians outclassing even ancient barbarians. A people that we were told were intelligent and thinking disclose themselves as automata, blindly obeying the decrees of authority, hating as a unit when ordered to do so, believing as a unit, or almost so, whatever authority tells them to believe, committing the grossest, most appalling violations of the rights of other peo- ples when imperial authority issues its man- dates. Why is this so? And why is it that a people held in abject subjection by its rulers, imposed upon by spurious "social reforms" as well as in other ways, should die by the millions to intrench and extend the power of the very autocracy which oppresses it most? This would be a riddle were it not for one fact. That fact is the Prussian school system. It was adroitly originated as the most power- ful means of assuring a submissive, pliable 142 THE GERMAN MYTH populace. That function it has continued to fill successfully to this very day. When during the course of the war the German Government, for ulterior purposes of its own, caused news dispatches to be sent out intimating that a revo- lution might break out in Germany, many people in other countries accepted those reports. This was what the German Government wanted. It sought to discourage protective war prepara- tions in other countries by convincing them that there would soon be a change in Germany. But the German Government well knew that there would be no revolution. It knew that no matter how much the German people suffered, starved or faced slaughter, it had them well in hand. Only dire defeat could bring revolt, and this it never foresaw. It trusted in its school system, devised for the express purpose of insuring submission. From the time of Frederick the Great the Prussian school system has been the most ef- fective auxiliary and mainstay of the autocracy based on the feudal caste and the industrial oligarchy. Not the army, as has been popularly supposed. Militarism has been the outward tool, but the real agency has been the school system. To speak of one purpose for which the Prus- MENTAL AND SOCIAL SERVITUDE 143 I sian school system was founded is incorrect. It was founded for three clear purposes. These purposes all interlinked and formed the unity desired by the rulers. In America public schools were established on the theory that a common- wealth could not exist without an intelligent, discerning, self-reliant citizenship. But what has been and is the threefold purpose of the Prussian school system? It is: 1. To drill the idea firmly into the children of the common people that they must be con- tent to remain in the station of life in which they were born. They must not think of aspir- ing higher. The effect of a century and a half of systematically teaching this is evident. It aims at the perpetuation of a humble attitude toward the royal, feudal, military and pluto- cratic caste. It seeks to assure an immunity of those castes against questioning, criticism and overthrow, and a perpetuation of their rank, privileges and power. It guarantees to the ruling castes an abundance of docile, sub- servient drudges, properly trained to humil- ity. 2. To teach the child incessantly from its sixth year of age absolute obedience to author- ity. This, of course, in Germany signifies the Hohenzollerns, encircled by the feudal and in- 144 THE GERMAN MYTH dustrial lords. The common people have, as we have pointed out, no real political power. Ar- rogating all central power to themselves, the Hohenzollerns claim their power by "Divine Appointment." 3. To instill the "historical motive." This means imbuing the child from its early years with an exalted idea of the glorious deeds of Germany, which, again, of course, is made to re- volve around the Hohenzollerns. This is the teaching that has always been depended upon to appeal to the child 's imagination and ego- tism, and generate a passion for things martial. The foundation for militarism is thus laid in the public schools. All the teachings from the first grade illustrate or point to its necessity. At the same time the teachings of the glory of Germany create a passion for the "Fatherland" idea a passion that in the man or woman be- comes a positive mania. This threefold purpose did not develop acci- dentally or without forethought. It was estab- lished calculatingly from the start. The whole system and the results to be expected from it were carefully thought out before being decided upon. In his work on "The Prussian Element- ary Schools," Professor Thomas Alexander shows this clearly. MENTAL AND SOCIAL SERVITUDE 145 Frederick the Great wrote to Minister von Zedlitzinl779: "... It is sufficient in the flat conntry (northern Germany) if the people can read and write a little ; for if they know too much, they rush off to the cities and want to become secre- taries or clerks, etc. For this reason we must so arrange the instruction of the youth in the flat country that they learn that which is most necessary for their knowledge yet they must be taught in such a way that they will not run away from the villages but remain there con- tentedly." And Frederick the Great saw to it that the kind of teachers appropriate for his purpose were placed in the schools. They were nothing more or less than drill-sergeants invalided and crippled soldiers, products of the militarist system he wanted perpetuated. King Frederick "William III of Prussia fol- lowed the same lines as Frederick the Great. His circular order of August 31, 1799, dealing with garrison schools to " educate" soldiers while serving gives his ideas of just what sort of "education" he prescribed for the mass of people. That circular order read: "True enlightenment, in so far as it is neces- sary for his and the general good, is the ineon- 146 THE GERMAN MYTH testable right of that person who, in the walk of life in which fate has placed him, knows his relationships and duties and has the ability to satisfy them. Therefore, to this purpose, the instruction in all Volksschulen should be limited. The time which one applies therein to a super- ficial study of the sciences for which the ordi- nary man has little use is for the most part lost. He forgets quickly what he has heard, and there remain in his memory only incomplete conceptions out of which false conclusions arise, and tastes which his social standing does not allow him to satisfy, and which only make him discontented and unhappy. "Since the chief purpose of the 'garrison' schools is to train future soldiers, it is only necessary to teach them what is necessary for the common soldier, under officer and sergeant to know in order to fill their places as useful and contented men. . . . "I demand for the intellectual [!] training of a soldier that he know exactly his duties as a man, as a subject and as a soldier ; that he be taught enough of the different trades which are suited to his position in life, and of the means of applying this knowledge, so that he can select those things for his future calling which cor- respond most closely with his inclinations and ability ; and that he can read, write and cipher well for the conduct of his own affairs as well as for the advancement to the position of under officer or sergeant, and that he acquire the in- formation necessary for an artisan. "A soldier fitted out with these qualities will be in his own place a useful servant of the state, and likewise a happy man, if no one seeks to awake in Mm a striving toward higher things. The seed of discontent with one's social station will develop in that degree in which one expands further one's scientific training. Only a few men in the lower classes are so neglected by Nature that they do not have the ability to ac- complish more than their social position or call- ing demands, and to raise themselves to some higher position. A too expansive course of instruction will awaken the feelings of such ability in them, through the application of which they would easily ~be able to gain for themselves a much more favorable fate than that of a com- mon soldier. The result is that a superficial acquaintance with the sciences generally pro- duces a disinclination toward learning a trade. "The spirit of the age," the circular went on, doubtless referring to America and to the French Eevolution, "has aroused in all classes 148 THE GERMAN MYTH of society an unceasing effort to raise one's self above one's own social stratum, or at least to extend its pretensions higher. ... I will, therefore, see that in all Volksschulen such in- struction be introduced that will instill in the younger generation more love and respect for the trade and social position of their parents. I hereby make it the duty of all military chiefs not to lose sight of this point of view. ' * The soldier must be instructed so carefully concerning the claims which the State has upon his services, and also concerning his duties and obligations, and likewise his rights, that his own judgment will lead him to ~be contented with his lot, and that he will cease as far as possible to look with envy and secret hate upon his su- periors. "Whoever has the ability to write a good text-book with this end in view can render great service to the future happiness [!] of the sol- diers, and can be assured of my most earnest gratitude. I would desire that the religious in- struction be included in this text, and that after discussion of the Ten Commandments all civil crimes and their punishments be explained briefly and plainly in categorical form. Such a book would in itself be more useful reading for the soldier than all the devotional books, and MENTAL AND SOCIAL SERVITUDE 149 would fully supply the lack of all popular maga- zines and newspapers, in which, on every page one observes the financial speculations of the publishers more than any real advantage to the public, and through which only a hurtful thirst for reading is spread among the common people. . . ." King Frederick William III of Prussia added in this circular order that the teaching of his- tory "should limit itself solely to the most im- portant national events, and have no other pur- pose than to awaken patriotic love and affec- tion, pride in the deeds of our forefathers and the desire to emulate them. 9 ' As an effect of this "educational" policy the reader will at once see how the German people under their Kaiser of to-day set out in 1914 on a career of conquest in emulation of that of Frederick the Great who stole Silesia from the very Queen that by treaty he had bound him- self to defend, and in emulation of Kaiser William I who in 1870 stole Alsace-Lorraine from France. Commenting on the foregoing circular order issued by Frederick William III in 1799, Pro- fessor Alexander remarks that Frederick William III wanted a meagerly-educated, con- tented lower class. Every Kaiser ever since has 150 THE GERMAN MYTH wanted the same. Elsewhere in his volume, Professor Alexander observes of this royal cir- cular order of 1799: "No passage in the history of the Prussian elementary school states so clearly the attitude of the Prussian policy toward popular educa- tion. It aids in interpreting the methods and purposes of elementary education in Prussia and Germany to-day. The common man must have a limited amount of knowledge only, and it must be taught him in a way that he can be logically content with his lot in life and may not look with envy and hate upon those who have been born in higher stations. This pas- sage epitomizes the difference between the ideals of Germany and America with reference to the common people. " The " educational " policies ordered by Fred- erick the Great and his successors are those prevailing in Germany to this very day. We have already in this work quoted from a speech of the present Kaiser, William HI, sneering at popular education. Of present conditions in Germany's elementary schools Professor Alex- ander says: "The Volksschulen in Germany are, there- fore, for the very large under class. Class lines are very marked, and those lower orders of so- MENTAL AND SOCIAL SERVITUDE 151 ciety which send their children to the Volks- schulen very rarely even think of breaking over into the forbidden fields. There is, further- more, a marked difference in the quality of pu- pils in the upper schools and those of the lower. The lower classes unconsciously admit their in- feriority in their attitude to the ruling ten thou- sand, and they have maintained this attitude for so long, that they are now really inferior, mentally, morally and physically. This inferi- ority may often show itself in a form of hatred of the better classes, or in an uncouth impu- dence or bravado but it is nevertheless an ack- nowledged inferiority. ' ' ("The Prussian Ele- mentary Schools," page 87.) According further to Professor Alexander, this under class in Germany is composed of the peasants, small tradesmen, subordinate officials, artisans and other laboring classes. It com- prises fully 90 per cent of the total population. "About one hundred years ago, and again forty-five years ago," says Professor Alexander further, "the leaders of the German nation de- termined to place Germany in the place of lead- ership among the nations of the world. To ac- complish this end a highly developed leadership, both leaders and followers, was necessary. The universities and the higher schools have trained 152 THE GERMAN MYTH the leaders; the Volksschnlen have trained the followers. TTie great masses Have been molded and cast in one die they think alike, they act alike. What they think and do is determined by the leaders of the nation. This is achieved by the Volksschulen." How do the German elementary schools do it? The answer is simple. "In two subjects, history and religion, is found the key to the whole situation. The courses of study in these subjects are so selected that a certain attitude of mind and a certain mind content are afforded the lower classes, which when finally fixed in the consciousness of the people means devotion to the Emperor and self-abnegation and devotion to the State. Those portions of the Bible are chosen which have most to do with obedience to the Holy Father and his representatives on earth, which are, in this case, the princes of Hohenzol- lern. . . . "By an inordinate amount of memorization of the selected facts, by a constant drill on the achievements and power of the German nation, by line upon line, and precept upon precept, for eight years, and then by service in the army, fhe youthful mind is Germanized, is set like adamant and is capable of no change. The MENTAL AND SOCIAL SERVITUDE 153 work of the Volksschulen is accomplished, for the masses think alike and respond as a man to the slightest suggestion from authority." ("The Prussian Elementary Schools/' page 554.) This explains what has puzzled so many of our Federal judges as well as Americans in gen- eral. In sentencing to prison various offenders of German birth and upbringing convicted of sedition, several of our judges expressed their amazement at one notorious fact. Some of these particular Germans had been resident in Amer- ica for long periods, from 16 to 24 years, and long ago had become naturalized citizens. Yet instead of assimilating themselves, they per- sisted in thinking as Germans, and did not even try to think as Americans. They professed to become American citizens, but in reality they retained their allegiance to Germany, its rulers and ideas. They and their kind made groups of "Little Germanys" in many places in the United States. They were typical products of the Volks- schulen system in Germany. Their mental processes had been formed there, and so thor- oughly had they become saturated with those poisonous teachings, that twenty years of living in the free atmosphere of America had not 154 THE GERMAN MYTH changed their outlook one particle. This fur- ther verifies Professor Alexander's comment that the one ineradicable effect of Germany's so- called educational system is to harden the mind to such an unchangeable degree that it is in- capable of learning new things or of responding to other ideas. To a larger extent it is this pseudo educa- tional system that is mainly responsible for the German people's national megalomania. It is also the basic cause of their committing the most atrocious barbarisms at the command of their masters. Dr. Thomas F. A. Smith, who for many years was English lecturer in the University of Er- langen, Germany, thus observes : "The German Government does not wish any of its schools to teach self-reliance or independ- ence of thought and action ; it is no part of the school's duty to cultivate in the individual a conscience which is to become his king. The dictates governing a man's actions, the motives inspiring his deeds must not come from within, the State will supply those from without. In this manner educated automata are created, whose impulses of motion do not radiate from within, but from a brain center outside them." ("The Soul of Germany," page 30.) MENTAL AND SOCIAL SERVITUDE 155 This fact is also well pointed out by Karl Ludwig Krause, a German himself, in his re- markable volume "What Is the German Nation Dying For?" It is dying for the sake of cer- tain ideas that the rulers of Germany have cun- ningly used the elementary schools to instil. It believes in those ideas because it knows no other, and was never permitted to learn any other. For generations those ideas have been so sys- tematically soaked into the heads of the German people that they have constituted a horrid men- ace to the entire world. And they are still a menace and will remain so until Germany's school system is done away with and replaced by one that does not teach the youth that mili- tarism is a glorious thing and that each genera- tion of Germans should emulate the predatory deeds done by their forefathers at the command of robber rulers. Germany's present rulers have caused the slaughter of many millions of human beings including millions of Germans themselves, and the slaughter is not ended. But the elementary schools of Germany are still busily teaching the very ideas that were even more of a preparation for this world slaughter than armies or armaments. Unless those teach- ings are stopped, another generation of Ger- 156 THE GERMAN MYTH mans will grow up with, precisely the same ideas that impelled the German armies violating and ravaging Belgium and France, devastating Rus- sia and Serbia, bullying, bribing, murdering wherever they went. The elementary school system of Germany is the great instrument used by Germany's ruthless rulers to enslave the people and make them completely pliable to their plundering schemes. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. REC'B URL-ID LD-URL j\ov 2 7 1967 OF 6 196? Form L9-8eries 444 A 000 047 493 2 I PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD J , University Research Library f I I J 0)