orous; and yet it is, in effect, hardly more than a piece of
social reform legislation, though a more radical one than we have
hitherto seen....

"In Germany, 'the individual withers' and the world of State and
Society, with its multifarious demands upon him, 'is more and
more.' This is, of course, a Socialistic tendency, but the
substitute that the Germans are finding for unlimited competition
is not radical Socialism, but organization....

"The State, of course, takes hold of the individual life more
broadly, with more systematic purpose. The individual's health is
cared for, his house is inspected, his children are educated, he is
insured against the worst vicissitudes of life, his savings are
invested, his transportation of goods or persons is undertaken, his
need to communicate with others by telegraph or telephone is
met--all by the paternal State or city.

"Twenty-five years ago the Prussian government was spending only
about $13,500 a year on trade schools; now it is spending above
three million dollars on more than 1300 schools....

"The Prussian State had also long been an extensive owner of coal,
potash, salt, and iron mines. In 1907 a law was passed giving the
State prior mining rights to all undiscovered coal deposits. In
general, however, it must cede those rights to private parties on
payment of a royalty; but the law makes an exception of 250
'maximum fields,' equal to about 205 square miles, in which the
State itself will exercise its mining rights. It has recently
reserved this amount of lands adjacent to the coal fields on the
lower Rhine and in Silesia. The State has already about 80 square
miles of coal lands in its hands, from which it is taking out about
10,000,000 tons of coal a year. Its success as a mine owner,
however, appears to be less marked than as a railway proprietor;
experienced business men even assert that the State's coal and iron
mines would be operated at a loss if proper allowances were made
for depreciation and amortization of capital, as must be done in
the case of private companies. The State also derives comparatively
small revenues from its forest and farming lands of some 830,000
acres, which were formerly the property of the Crown....

"The most important State tax is that on _incomes_, which