The economy, 1890–1914

The speed of Germany’s advance to industrial maturity after 1890 was breathtaking. The years from 1895 to 1907 witnessed a doubling of the number of workers engaged in machine building, from slightly more than one-half million to well over a million. An immediate consequence of expanding industrial employment was a sharp drop in emigration; from an average of 130,000 people per year in the 1880s, the outflow dropped to 20,000 per year in the mid-1890s. The surplus population continued to leave Prussia’s eastern provinces, but the destination was the growing and multiplying factories of Berlin and the Ruhr rather than the Americas. Earlier British fears of German competition were now fully justified. While Britain produced about twice as much steel as Germany during the early 1870s, Germany’s steel production exceeded Britain’s in 1893, and by 1914 Germany was producing more than twice as much steel as Britain. Moreover, only one-third of German exports in 1873 were finished goods; the portion rose to 63 percent by 1913. Germany came to dominate all the major Continental markets except France.

The focus of national wealth as well as population shifted to the urban industrial sector by 1900. Only 40 percent of Germans lived in rural areas by 1910, a drop from 67 percent at the birth of the empire. Cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants accounted for one-fifth of the population in 1914, compared to one-twentieth at the time of unification. The application of intensive agricultural techniques led to a doubling in the value of all farm products despite a sharp decline in the rural population. Industry accounted for 60 percent of the gross national product in 1913.

The German working class grew rapidly in the late 19th and the early 20th century. Total union membership reached 3.7 million in 1912, of which 2.5 million were affiliated with the socialist unions. Bismarck’s social welfare legislation covered some 13.2 million workers by 1911. Although German employers were extremely authoritarian and hostile to collective bargaining, the labour force did make significant economic gains. Between 1867 and 1913 the average number of hours worked per year declined by 14 percent. Nearly every study of real income shows a rapid rise until 1902 and then a modest increase yearly thereafter. National income per capita rose from 352 marks to 728 during the life of the empire. Despite these advances, industrial workers lacked full political rights, which led a large number of them, including many Roman Catholic workers, to vote for the revolutionary socialist party.

While industrialization was rapid, it occurred only in certain sectors of the economy; other areas were only marginally affected. Some two million Germans persisted in traditional artisanal enterprises even as the nation became an industrial colossus. While Germany was characterized by large Junker estates and cartels, it was also the nation of dwarf-sized farms (60 percent of farmers owned less than five acres) and small workshops. German factories were larger and more modern than their British and French counterparts, but the preindustrial sector was more backward. During depressions those in the traditional trades often turned to anti-Semitism as an ideology that was portrayed as both patriotic and anticapitalist.