industrial districts. Factories and rent are considerably cheaper, taxes
and licenses lower, seeing that, to a certain extent, the landed
proprietors are themselves lawgivers and law officers: from their midst
numerous representatives are sent to the Reichstag: not infrequently
they also control the local administration and the police department.
These are ample reasons for the phenomenon of increasing numbers of
funnel-pipes in the country. Agriculture and industry step into ever
closer interrelation with each other--an advantage that accrues mainly
to the large landed estates.

The point of capitalist development reached in Germany also by
agriculture has partially called forth conditions similar to those found
in England and the United States. As with the small and middle class
industries, so likewise with the small and middle class farms, they are
swallowed up by the large. A number of circumstances render the life of
the small and middle class farmer ever harder, and ripen him for
absorption by the large fellow.

No longer do the one-time conditions, as they were still known a few
decades ago, prevail in the country. Modern culture now pervades the
country in the remotest corners. Contrary to its own purpose, militarism
exercises a certain revolutionary influence. The enormous increase of
the standing army weighs, in so far as the blood-tax is concerned,
heaviest of all upon the country districts. The degeneration of
industrial and city life compels the drawing of by far the larger
portion of soldiers from the rural population. When the farmer's son,
the day laborer, or the servant returns after two or three years from
the atmosphere of the city and the barracks, an atmosphere not exactly
impregnated with high moral principles;--when he returns as the carrier
and spreader of venereal diseases, he has also become acquainted with a
mass of new views and wants whose gratification he is not inclined to
discontinue. Accordingly, he makes larger demands upon life, and wants
higher wages; his frugality of old went to pieces in the city.
Transportation, ever more extended and improved, also contributes toward
the increase of wants in the country. Through intercourse with the city,
the rustic becomes acquainted with the world from an entirely new and
more seductive side: he is seized with new ideas: he learns of the wants
of civilization, thitherto unknown to him. All that renders him
discontented with his lot. On top of