IV. (2)

Of course, only the great landowners have an interest in Customs duties. The Vossische Zeitung asks how they can benefit the small owners who have no corn to sell. A small farmer produces 10 tons of rye and sells 1 ton; supposing that he gets the full profit of the duty of 2s. 6d. per cwt., the tariff gives him 50s., which, spread over his 10 tons, leaves him a profit of 3d. per cwt. The great owner producing 2,000 cwts. can sell 1,800 of them; Protection gives him £225, a profit on his total production of 2s. 3d. a cwt. Thus the small farmers cannot buy at a profit; they must buy at a loss.

The following table summarises the burden that would be imposed upon Germany by the rise in duties:—

That is, a total for the landed proprietors of £56,800,000, and for the State of £10,275,000. Subtracting about one-third to cover the farmers’ expenditure, and adding their gains from other forms of agricultural produce, one would not be far out in assessing the total at £40,000,000 for them, and more than £10,000,000 for the State—a total of about 50 millions, or an increase of 25 millions on existing burdens.

Much, indeed, would be gained if the Emperor, instead of running off on schemes for sanatoria, would allow his subjects wheat and rye enough to eat; if the Socialists of the chair of the type of Mr. Schmoller would turn their philanthropy from the service of Imperial paternalism to defending the great majority of the poor from his hunger tax. As a matter of fact the population, “protected” by Customs duties which make it the slaves of the rich, is in a condition which has been described by Mr. Arnold White, former United States Ambassador to Berlin: “The food of the poorer classes in Germany is wretched; in many of the great industrial centres human beings live like animals. The condition of the peasants in Prussia, Silesia, and Thuringia is fearful. This terrible misery is hidden by the humanitarian political institutions which deceive the superficial foreign inquirer, but they are the merest disguise for the all-directing state, and already falling into ruins.”

Such are the results of German Protection from the point of view of the food and “general well-being of the working classes.”