as
possible. He hires foreign labor to get from it all that he can. The
impersonal relations of employer and employed replace the patriarchal
traditions. Thus the land owner finds himself caught in the mechanism of
the capitalistic system.

As to the "weight" of the new class, it increased prodigiously during
the years following the war of 1870, thanks to the millions which the
empire could invest in its industries and which allowed it to endow its
commerce and its merchant marine, to complete the network of its roads,
canals, and railways.

The law of concentration of capital was verified on this occasion in a
striking manner. In the famous years 1871 to 1874, which the Germans
call the Gruendejahre, the foundation years, gigantic industrial and
commercial enterprises took a spring which seemed irresistible. A
Director of the Deutsche Bank, of the Dresdener Bank, the President of a
company for transatlantic commerce, such as the Hamburg-American Line,
or of the committee of great electric establishments, enjoyed an
influence in the councils of the State far greater than that of a Baron,
a Count, or a little mediatized Prince.

What was the aristocracy of birth going to do about it? Struggle
desperately? It took that tack at first. Bismarck ranged himself in its
support for some time. He was himself an agrarian. But he was not long
in installing paper mills on his estates at Varzin. It is said that the
Emperor himself possesses porcelain factories. A part of the nobility
for a long time tried to adapt itself to the new method of production.
It took to it awkwardly and often ended in ruin.

Freytag has described this phenomenon at its beginnings in a romance
which is a chef d'oeuvre. A part of the nobility yielded, fell into the
hands of the financiers, the money lenders, the managers of agricultural
enterprises, sold their lands, and took refuge in the great civil,
administrative and military posts. The remainder resisted as well as
they could. There was antagonism between their interests and those of
the capitalists, between the religious and particularist tendencies on
one hand and free thought and cosmopolitanism on the other. The
agrarians demanded tariff duties on agricultural products to raise the
price of their foodstuffs. The industrials wanted a low cost of living
in order to avoid the rise of wages and to compete with better advantage
for foreign markets.

Bismarck was the target for vehement opposition