Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

Every one has his place, and shall keep it. Such shifting as now is tolerated is due to wealth and to the kind of ambition which luxury always awakens.

You cannot have superimposed classes without obedience. The average German is docile, and wants to be told what to do. "The conscious subordination of the people to enlightened leadership," Dr. F. E. Junge, the counsel of the German Conservative party, calls it. He continues: "In a bureaucracy, either in its military or civil connections, every citizen almost has his superiors and his inferiors; the manner of our social intercourse savors of soldiership rather than of gentle and upright humanity." It will do no harm for the American to reflect on these words of a distinguished Conservative lawyer.

The discipline of his army training adds its influence to the power of national habit in making the German citizen amenable to the drill sergeant and the bureaucrat. Everywhere you are confronted by an infinite complex of regulations. Von lago, the noted chief of the Berlin police, has a genius for inventing new rules to regulate little details of conduct that have escaped his predecessors. Recently the street traffic of the capital has been put under new restrictions, which determine even the length and swish of women's skirts — they are not to be dust sweepers - and the way you swing your cane or umbrella; and every window must be tightly closed when you "make music" in your room.

The Government has its eager hands in every pocket, its anxious fingers on every pulse. From the cradle to the grave, the State watches the individual, commands him and, in a way, cares for him; always seeing to it that he has a place in the national economy and that he keeps it.

What are the results? What reactions are noticeable upon frugality, independence, efficiency, and initiative?

It is impossible to answer these questions from statistics. A great deal of this paternalism is too recent to show appreciable results. It is possible to question reliable witnesses, and to observe.

In my journeyings around Germany I have talked with all kinds of people about the effect of this governmental care upon

the workman and upon his work and upon the nation. I found, naturally, every variety of opinion. As a rule, the laboring man thinks that not enough is being done for him; the manufacturer is equally positive that too much is being done; and the scholar, the economist, and the sociologist incline to the view that the State has gone as far as it ought.

The German economists as a rule follow the teachings of Professor Schmoller and Professor Wagner, the veteran economists of the University of Berlin, who were so potent in shaping the first insurance laws and who have ever since been champions of this kind of regulation.

Dr. Jastrow, one of the younger economists of the University of Berlin, who has also had a great deal of practical experience in "social reform" as a member of the Charlottenburg city council, said to me: "I personally believe we have gone as far as we should, if not a trifle too far Because the reaction upon character is apparent. The workingman is showing less self-reliance, is more dependent. My conclusion, however, is not universally believed, and there are many able men who think just the contrary. The evidences upon which I base my views are still microscopic. But I believe I am right, and that we should pause now, before we attempt further paternalism, and determine its effect upon our economic order."

Prof. Werner Sombart, of the School of Commerce, Berlin, who is well known in this country through his writings on American industrialism, said: "It is difficult to say just what the effect of our paternal system is on labor. It is all too recent. But, as a vague opinion, I should say we have gone far enough. On the other hand, we are in grave danger of being overflooded with a class of petty officials who lean on the State. This caste-system and our great materialism make us a cross between China and America."

The German system of factory inspection is very rigid. The inspectors take up the work as a profession; it is a life work, not a political job as with us. They pass through a long preparation both in the university and the factory. Among them are many able men whose judgment, on

the whole, is probably the best that can be found upon this intricate question. They spend their days among the workmen, and are given every opportunity of observation. I talked with a number of these inspectors. Their opinions coincide generally with that of a chief inspector, whom I quote below, and who, for obvious reasons, wishes his name withheld. He is well known for his success in gaining the coöperation of workingmen with the State in bettering industrial conditions.

I asked: "You know thousands of workmen. Is the German workman contented?" He answered: "No, he is not; he is always looking for more.

"Are there any evidences that he is growing less careful, less frugal, and less ambitious?"

"As to carefulness, yes. Since the accident insurance, there has been a large rise in the number of accidents. I have heard one workman who had lost two fingers in a machine say: 'Too bad it was not the whole hand. It would have brought me more insurance.' This, of course, is not the rule. But it shows the tendency toward carelessness that such provisions produce in some men.

"As to frugality, I think the German workman saves as much as he ever did.

'As to ambition, that is a psychological question and is not easily answered. Of course, here in Germany a workman cannot rise very far unless he is a positive genius. But I do say, quite positively, looking back over twenty years of service, that I discern a growing tendency to lean on the State and a lessening desire to stand alone. The independence, not alone of the workman, but of all classes, is showing the effect of our habit of relying on the State."

The elaborate system of industrial pensions is administered by an army of civil service employees. In the higher service are men of exceptional training, who are keen observers of things and men. I quote Mr. Walter Herring, of the Central Office:

"It is difficult to say, exactly, what is the effect of our pension system. It seems that dependence on the State is increasing. It has even been noticed that some men welcome minor accidents, and that others

prolong their illness as much as possible, and physicians find some simulating. But I suppose we suppose we must take human nature on the average. Some are shiftless, some are reckless, but most are not. I think the German workman is as ambitious as he ever was. No, he is not satisfied. Who of us is?"

Mr. Kaempf, president of the Chamber of Commerce, and now president of the Reichstag, a fine type of the German merchant of the old school, told me that, so far as he could see, the State's attitude toward the industrial problems had not in the least decreased the efficiency of labor.

This was also the opinion of Mr. Heinrich Maas, a Berlin business man who has studied for years social and industrial questions; and his brother, Mr. Stadt-Rat Maas, whose activities in practical municipal affairs have made him widely known, was emphatic in his statement that the labor laws and pension system had not decreased the efficiency nor the independence of the workman. dence of the workman. Mr. Maas guided Mr. Roosevelt through a number of Berlin's municipal enterprises, when the ex-president was returning from Africa. He told me that, as they were inspecting the new and beautiful Municipal Old Peoples' Home, in Buch, a leafy suburb of Berlin, Mr. Roosevelt exclaimed: 'How can there be any Socialists in a country where this is done for the people!"

Some of the larger employers of labor share this favorable opinion. At the office of Schurhardt & Schutte, manufacturers of machinery, whose product is well known in this country, I was introduced to an employee who explained to me the practical details of the pension system, showing me how the firm's accounts are kept, pension stamps licked, etc. He said: "Frankly, I cannot see that these laws have changed the fundamental nature of the workman at all. Our men are just as faithful, frugal, and self-respecting as ever. The workman is not satisfied, of course. Who is? And State aid will go on until the limit of the people's capacity to pay is reached."

The president of one the oldest iron manufacturing concerns in Germany, Mr. C. L. Netter, a man of unusual business

capacity. and open-mindedness, whose thirty years of experience in active business have given him wide opportunity to observe labor conditions, said:

"There is no more work done now than was done formerly. The exertion per man is probably less. But certainly the man is more independent, and is careful to stop on the minute.

"The German workman lives infinitely better than he did in my boyhood days. He dresses like a man of property; meet him on a holiday and you scarcely know him. There is also greater intelligence. These changes are due largely to his own efforts, to his unions, and to the agitation of the Social-Democrats.

"But the spirit of willingness to coöperate with his employer that, I fear, is lessening. And to that extent all our highly specialized laws and machinery are a failure."

A former minister, whose ability and broad political and economic principles have earned him a world-wide reputation - and led to his resignation from the Imperial Cabinet - takes a positive stand on the influence of paternalistic industrialism. I withhold his name at his request; but here is his opinion:

"It is getting so that the German workman and nearly all other Germans, for that matter are gradually losing their erstwhile independence, and are looking for a sure thing. They want to become pensioners, or government servants; anything that will relieve them from the necessity of constant effort and alertness. I cannot, of course, speak from an exact knowledge of individual cases, but I speak from general tendencies. It is evident that the psychological effect is not good.

"The manufacturers, as a rule, think we have gone too far, and are opposed to any further extension. The Socialists want all they can get, the Conservatives are willing to vote for such laws as a palliative. I thus see no end to the extension of paternalism, except the limit of the endurance of the people to pay for it."

The shift in the attitude of the Socialist party toward labor laws is significant. During Bismarck's day they bitterly opposed his State insurance. To-day they

cheerfully offer amendments to the laws to increase their scope and power.

Intent on getting more tangible evidence, I visited the office of the Municipal Charities, where I was shown long columns of figures that indicated a heavy and rapid increase in poverty. I was told that this was due largely to the migration of rural laborers to the city, where they soon find themselves out of work and in need of public aid. I was also told that the city helps to support many old people who also receive old age pensions, the amount of this pension being miserably small.

I talked with scores of workmen, in all parts of the country. As a rule, they deny that State paternalism has had any effect on their attitude toward their work, toward their employer, or toward the State. Some, naturally, would prefer to keep the pittance they pay into the sick benefit fund; others are looking forward to the day when more, much more, will be paid to them; all unite in praising the accident insurance insurance all which is borne by the employer and all are agreed in ridiculing the pitifully small sum of the old age pension, which, they say, is scarcely enough for "beer and tobacco.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

With slight variations, every industrial city reproduces the same set of facts and the same opinions that I found in Berlin; the ancient art centre of Dresden no less than the new manufacturing city of Chemnitz; Munich, whose people take their time to live easily and happily; and Mannheim, whose inhabitants rush to and fro like the denizens of Chicago.

The conclusion from such testimony which could be indefinitely multiplied seems to be that all this intricate and expensive mechanism has, after all, not changed the sum total of human conditions very much; that human nature remains about the same. A recent English writer says that the German insurance system "has solved neither the social nor the political problem in some ways it has actually aggravated them."

To an outsider, of course, the inner workings of the mind and heart are hidden. But the outer aspect of the German State is perfectly patent. It is mechanism

there can be no doubt about it the mechanism of the solar system. It is a land where every member of Society has an ordained orbit and moves in it around the central sun, the State, which radiates a mystic gravitation into every activityalmost every thought of every man, woman, and child.

Here you see the most varied activities held to the ideals of efficiency through a perfected feudalism. So that all Carl and John need to do is to obey; then they are taught the rudiments of learning and a trade, are insured against the most disturbing episodes of life, assured also of some leisure, considerable amusement, and a decent burial. And that is life!

Of all invented contrivances this German machine is the most amazing, this vast enginery of State with the patents of Hohenzollern, Bismarck, & Co. on every part, that has reduced the life of a great people to complacent routine and merged the rough eccentricities of all into a uniformity of effort and ambition.

It is true that John and Carl can live their ordered lives in routine and contentment, rounding out year after year of plodding toil, paying their dues to the various funds and their taxes to the Government, rearing their families, and entrusting them to the same over-care. But what sort of creatures does it make of John and Carl, and of their children and their childrens' children? That is the important question. My witnesses have My witnesses have not directly answered it. One thing is certain: it makes obedient creatures of them.

There is no exact way, not even a German way, of measuring originality, individual initiative, and independence. But this also is certain: patience, obedience, minute training, do not foster daring and versatility. John and Carl settle down, literally settle down, to an uneventful life, looking forward to no change, taking no risks, seeking no alternatives. Once a butcher, always a butcher. This makes Germany depressing to a restless American who is always willing "to go it alone" and to get "a run for his money."

[ocr errors]

men the cheering news that Americans need not be feared, because "all that they have done, we can imitate." This is an actual policy. I have been told by American manufacturers that they have found their machines so exactly copied in German shops that only the absence of the patent dates and of the name of the makers told them that the machines were not made in the American shop. Already this land of drill and obedience is becoming an empire of conscious imitators.

There are on the German horizon ominous portents. First I should place the moral and psychological effects of luxury. Few nations can stand the sapping suction of plenty. The effect of the profligacy that is everywhere apparent in the New Germany will be particularly swift and fatal in a people who for generations have been frugal and plain. When that sort of a nature surrenders itself to such orgies as the much vaunted Berlin "Nachtleben" (night life), vulgar decadence may be rapidly expected.

On top of this wealth is an imperial debt that has risen from $490,000,000 in 1901 to $1,345,000,000 in 1912; this without reckoning the provincial and municipal debt which is four times larger than the imperial. The burden of taxation in 1912 was $70 per average family.

And on top of this burden of debt sits the militarist, taking, in 1911-12, 622,520 young men out of the fields and factories for the standing army. This year 130,000 more are to be called out; and a new and unheard-of war tax is proposed to this patient and obedient people. One must admire both the audacity of the proposal, the patriotism of the voter, and the magnificent discipline that has wrought such submissiveness.

The red omen is the most conspicuous. Socialism is skillfully combining the revolt against this imperial, personal Government, and the desire of the workman for a greater share of the wealth of the land.

The wage earner, the tradesman, the professional man, are all simmering. No doubt the habit of centuries will be too much for them, and they will never boil But 4,250,000 Socialist votes, and

Some years ago, Mr. Ludwig Max Goldberger wrote a treatise on The American Peril," in which he gave his country- the Socialist leaders' spirit of stubborn

over.

resistance to the "Kaiser's thumb," make me believe that some change must come, sooner or later.

Then what will happen to this centralized bureaucracy; and what will become of the system of State aid and municipal socialism? For without an efficient bureaucracy you cannot have an effective paternalism; and without centralized administration you cannot run railroads, theatres, and pawnshops.

This is the important lesson we may learn from Germany. It is the one point usually overlooked by the enthusiasts. They paint glowing pictures of socialized Germany, but they fail to look under the surface. Germany's system is built upon discipline; hard, military, iron discipline, that grips every baby in its vise and forces every man into his place; a benevolent tyranny, no doubt, but nevertheless a tyranny; an efficient feudalism, but none the less a feudalism of self-conscious caste and fixed tradition.

No doubt the time has come when we must modify our system of extreme

individualism by some system of social coöperation. How far shall we proceed in this path of socialized efficiency? Are we willing to pay the German price? Could we do it even if we wished to? Only a few peoples are fitted for such rigor. I believe that America would be a poor place for a Hohenzollern efficiency test. The carefully trained American barber would quite suddenly take it into his head to be a sailor or a constable, and "all the king's houses and all the king's men" couldn't hold him to his economic predestination.

We cannot make a feudal-ocracy out of a democracy. Maybe we can make a bureaucracy out of a republic.

When all has been said, I cannot escape the conviction that the real significance even of Germany is not in what the State has done for the workman but what the German workman has succeeded in doing for himself, in spite of the State.

This brings us back to the first postulate of Anglo-Saxon individualism: the basis of social coöperation is self-help.

THE TRUTH ABOUT TUBERCULOSIS

EXACTLY WHAT THE SCIENTISTS AND THE PHYSICIANS KNOW ABOUT THE NATURE,
THE CAUSE, AND THE CURE OF CONSUMPTION THEIR CONFIDENT HOPE THAT
A SPECIFIC TREATMENT FOR ADVANCED CASES WILL BE DISCOVERED

I

BY

EDGAR ALLEN FORBES

TIS a long journey that the race has traveled from Hippocrates to Koch, and we have been talking and writing about tuberculosis all the way. In the course of the centuries we have learned nearly everything about it except how to cure it. Presently we shall know that, also. The children of children now living will all be vaccinated against tuberculosis as a matter of routine, and a case of tuberculosis will be so rare that medical colleges will gladly exhibit it to new students for their clinical observation. But at the present time this is about the extent of our knowledge:

66

(1) We know positively what it is. 'Consumption" or "phthisis" is tuberculosis of the lungs; "scrofula" is tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands; "white swelling," "hip-joint disease" and "spinal disease" are synonyms for tuberculosis of the bone and joints; and a score of other old-fashioned diseases are now at once recognized as tuberculosis of some other organ or tissue. And unmistakable diagnosis is the first step in the direction of a cure.

(2) We know the cause a tiny rodshaped mite known as the bacillus tuberculosis. Koch saw him first rather saw it first, for science says that the bacillus

« PředchozíPokračovat »