IV] SLOW GROWTH OF MODERN INDUSTRY 87 eager for a favourable balance of trade. The collapse and-

poverty of PrussiaafterJena (1806)and Napoleon'scontinental system ruined

most

of them.

By

1816 the industry ofBerlin

had

slidback into the state

from

which only an "artificial and expensivegovernmentalpolicy" hadraisedit

—

^astatein

^which

the typical figure

was

the independent master craftsman, with few employees or none.

There

were 10,000 fewer people in the

town

ⁱⁿ 1810 thanthere

had

been in 1801.

With

thepeace, itsindustries

had

tostart afresh.

What

istrueofBerlinistoa great extent true ofall

Germany.

^{"^}

She had

beenfought over againandagain. Politicalboundaries,

and

with

them

the lines ofcustoms houses, had been changed every

few

years. Napoleon'scontinentalsystemhadlainheavy

upon

her. Blockade conditions, as in France, had called into existence industries

which had

no natural vitality, especially in face of English competition.

Many

little spinning mills-^

of a very primitive type

—

^and

^many

^{little beet sugar factories}

sprang

up

in war; only to collapse

when

England poured her

yam

and her stored

up

colonial sugars into the

Hanse

towns

after Waterloo.

The

artificial products of eighteenth century mercantilism

had

vanished with those created

by

blockade conditions;

and

everywhere there was lost ground to be re- covered.

There was

a great deal to learn in the conduct of the

new

English type of industry. Englishmen were called in, as in France. CockerilltheyoungerofSeraing paidavisitto Berlin.

Some

nameless

Englishmen

started a wool factory there after Waterloo,

and made

^their

own

^machines.

Then,

in 1821,tbe^

Prussian

government

took an ^important step. It created the Gewerbe Institut (Institute of Trades),

somewhat on

the lines of the

French

Conservatoire desArtsetMetiers,with the object of spreading the knowledge of

new

industrial

methods

and encouraging experiment.

A

^{year or} two before this, the first

machine making workshop had

^{been started at Berlin. In the}

early days, its products were sold chiefly to officials and in- stitutions,tohelp

government

inthetaskofindustrialeducation.

Hand- worked

machinery, suchasimproved loomsandspinning jennies,

was

comparatively easy ^to introduce; but there were

88

SLOW GROWTH OF MODERN ^INDUSTRY

^[ch.

specialdifficultiestobe overcomebefore

power

couldbeapplied toindustry inor about Berlin.

Water power

ishard to geton theNorth

German

plain;andthereisnocoalwithin

many

^miles

of^its Prussian capital. Aftersixteen years of

work by

the In- stituteofTrades,in theyearof

Queen

Victoria's accession, there were only thirty steam-engines averaging 13 h.p. each in the city.

Now

^Berlin at that time had over a quarter of a million inhabitants.

Even

in those parts of

Germany

best fitted for industrial development, such as Saxony and the

new

Rhenish provinces of Prussia, therewas no rapid

movement.

For fifteenyears at leastafterWaterloothe dislocationsdue to both

war

andpeace actedasa dragonprogress.

There was

notraditionof individual industrial enterprise or of large scale operations. Capital was scarce.

The

accumulations of thecommercialentrepreneurshad been dissipated, and the process of reconstruction was neces- sarily slow. Industrial freedom was not yet guaranteed.

The

eighteenth century

method

of direct government action had gone out of fashion, with the arrival of those

new

economic doctrines which

Germans

called Smithianismus, the doctrines of

Adam

Smith. Political questions occupied men's minds.

The

^{politicaldivisions}andrivalriesofthe

German

stateslimited thepossiblescaleof industrial operations.

There

were so

many

different lawsand such anendless successionoffrontiers.

''

The

Rhineprovinceshadthegreatadvantageofhavingbeen for

many

^{years in}Frenchoccupation,with theresultsthat

much

antiquatedlegislation hadvanished and

—

^even

more

important

—

^{thatgoodroads}had been made.

These

roadswere improved and extended in course of time

by

the Prussian government.

By

1845 an Englishman could report that "not only good, but luxurious roads...traversed those districts in all directions^";

and although

much

ofthe

work on them

had been done after 1830, there had been roads enough to be a real assistance to industry and trade ever since 1815. Yet so slowly did things

move

before1840, that in 1837, theyearinwhichBerlinreported its390^{h.p. of steam,all}theterritoriesofPrussia,includingthe coal-fieldson bothsidesoftheRhine, that ofthe Saar,andthat

* Banfield, op.cit.i,24.

IV]

GERMAN MINING AND METALLURGY

89 of

Upper

Silesia, were only employing 7500 h.p. for raining, metallurgy, spinning, _millingand every otherpurpose

—

mainly

mining and

metallurgy.

By

1846 the h.p. had risen to 22,000, of

which

over 14,000

was employed

inminingandmetallurgy.

§ 20. Before the nineteenth century,

Germany

had

made

very

'

little use of her extensive coal resources.

Her

iron and steel industries,thoughancientandwelldevelopedin certaindistricts,

were

carried

on

entirelyalongthe oldlines ofcharcoalsmelting

and

handicraft work.

The

mines of the precious and rarej^

metals, in the

Harz

mountains and elsewhere, had lost the importantposition

which

they heldinmedievalandearly

modern

times.

They

were not large enterprises. Thirty or forty

men was

the ordinaryworking staffofa copper lead or silver

mine

in 1837.

But

at least they

had

bequeathed to the country a store of technical knowledge and experience.

What

the old

German

metallurgical industries were like at their best can be learnt

from

an account of the iron-working district ofthe Sieg valley, east of Bonn, and of the famous steel-working district of Solingen, written in 1846, at a time

when

the

new methods which

were

coming

intouse elsewherehadnotyet affected these ancientindustrial centres.

The wooded

valleys ofSiegerlandcontained anendlessseries of little metal working establishments.

There

were stamping mills for crushing the ore; charcoal smelting furnaces; tilt-

hammers

for the production of wrought iron and steel; slit- mills

which

cutsheets of iron into rods for nail-making; wire mills, with rollers for drawing out the metal

—

_"all

_worked

_by"

water

power and on

^the

most

diminutive scale,"

The

mines

from which

the ore

came

rarelyemployed so

many

asten

men.

"Manufacturing," the English account^ continued, speaking of the Solingen district further north, "as in the greater part of

Germany,

^{is dependent}

on

the land.

The

furnace

owner and

forest owner, ^aswell as the miner, clubtheirproperty together to

make

iron, living the while

on

the produce of their little estates." Iron

making

ⁱⁿ fact

was

a peasant's by-industry.

The

peasant-miners habitually

wore

their white "furnace skins" of calf's hide

"when ^haymaking

^{or working in their}

^ Ban&eld, passim.

90

GERMAN ^MINING AND METALLURGY

^[ch,

meadows."

Having

made

theiron,theysolditon credit tothe small^"

hammer

master^";

who

beatandrefined it intosteel and soldittotheworkingcutler;

who

^soldtothe dealer^;

who

sold to theshipping house. Perhaps,attheselasttwostages,something which might be called capitalismcropped out.

The

^{Solingencutler oftheforties}was an independentcrafts-

man,

working at

home

or in a small hired workshop, under- taking

work "by

the dozen."

"No

large establishments were anywheretobefound," except asingle cast steelfactoryrecently established at Burg. This Solingen industrial organisation, it

shouldbeadded,isnotaninstance of

German

economicback- wardness;ratheroftheconservatismofanoldskilledhandicraft.

As

the English traveller did not fail to notice, it had a great resemblance to the Sheffield organisation of his day; or,

he

might haveadded,tothatof

many

hardwaretrades inthe English Black Country.

The

need for charcoal iron in cutlerymaking, iron which England

drew

from the forestfurnaces of Sweden, helpedtokeepalivethe oldmethods ofironproduction inthe Rhineland,

and

so tokeep thewholescale ofindustrysmall.

The

great

Ruhr

coal-field, the heart of the Rhenish

manu-

facturingdistrict,onlybegantobeworkedeffectively after1815.

Much

the

same

is true of the Roerfield,

by

Aachen, which is

the

German

tailofthe Belgiancoal-field.

As

for

what

became, in thelaternineteenthcentury,thethird

main

fieldof

Germany,

the field which lies where three empires met, on the former boundaries of Silesia, Galicia and Russian Poland; serious,

work

on it began

much

^later

—

^{towards 1840.}

On

the western fields large scale operations were hardly

known

before 1830;

but from that time joint stock businesses of

some

magnitude took

up

the

work

of development.

The

capital

came

mainly from the merchants of Cologne. It is the familiar economic sequence; capital accumulated in

commerce

goesto supply the needs oflarge scale industry. In 1846 all the

Ruhr

mines are said to have been worked

by

companies.

About

Aachen, too, as the English observer put it, coal mining

"was

nearly ^all

managed by

pits,anditthereforerequiredlargeandconcentrated capitals, as

we

foundto bethecaseon the Ruhr."

And

yet, so recent was the development, so comparatively small was the

iv]

GERMAN MINING AND METALLURGY

91 scaleofoperations, thatthewholePrussianoutputfromthe three fields just mentioned

and from some

lesser fields, including that of the Saar,

was

only about 3,200,000 English tons a year in1846.

At

^thattime France

was

raising4,500,000tons,Belgium agreat dealmore,

and London was consuming more

than Pnissia- raised^. If the comparison were taken a few years earlier,Tt

would

be

much more

unfavourable to Prussia

—

^which for this

purpose is almost equivalent to

Germany —

^for her develop-

ment was

the

most

recent of all. In engineering and iron^

working it is the

same

story.

There was

nothing in

Germany

to

compare

with Codterill'sSeraingworksin1837. In theearly,

'

forties,

Belgium was

turning out

more

iron than the whole of the Zollverein.

By

that time however a few

German

concerns had

become

important.

At

Berlin theofficialattemptstofound"%

a

machine making

industry,

by means

of theGewerbe Institut,

begantotell. Bqrsig, apupil of theInstitute, set

up

asamachine^'-

maker

in 1837 with^fifty

men. Ten

yearslaterhewas employing twelve hundred. In the Rhine provinces therewerea

number

oflarge scale undertakings.

At

Ruhrort, forexample, the firm of Haniel,

Huyssen and

Jacobi

had

a big engineering works

where

"the order, quiet, and businesslike arrangements were quite English."

They

built river steamboats

among

other things.

The same

firmcontrolled largeiron-worksatSterkerade

and

Oberhausen.

At Oberhausen

ⁱⁿ 1846theyused Nasmyth's^

steam

hammer;

they smelted with a mixture of coal and charcoal; theblast

was

heated

by

gas taken

from

the top of the furnace

— ^an

^{early instance} of judicious fuel

economy;

and the working staff",

which

^it is interesting to learn

was composed

mainly of landowning peasants,

numbered

over a thousand.

Again, "atEssenthereis a caststeelworksbelongingto Messrs

'

Krupp and

Co.,

who

enjoy the reputation of

making

goodsteel;

and,itissaid,sellagreat deal as English." Before oureyes,the independent peasant ironworkers ^of the Siegerland type are turned into landowning

wage

earners,

where

capital for big concerns is forthcoming. In a generation, their children, the^

land probably sold, will learn to think of themselves as a

wage

1 Not actually more in 1846, butmoreon the average 1845-7. Porter, Progress of^theNation,p. 581

.