rotestant members who hold
similar views to their own. Its political activity began in 1870, and
the first call for the formation of the party came from Reichensperger
in the Koelnischer Volkszeitung. The famous leader of the party, and a
politician who even held his own against Bismarck, was the Hanoverian
Justizminister, Doctor Ludwig Windthorst. The stormy time of the party
was from 1873 to 1878, when Bismarck attempted to oppose the growing
power of the Catholic Church, and more particularly of the Jesuits.
The so-called May laws of that year forbade Roman Catholic
intervention in civil affairs; obliged all ministers of religion to
pass the higher-schools examinations and to study theology three years
at a university; made all seminaries subject to state inspection; and
gave fuller protection to those of other creeds. In 1878 Bismarck
needed the support of the Centrum party to carry through the new
tariff, and the May laws, except that regarding civil marriage, were
repealed. The party stands for religious teaching in the primary
schools, Christian marriage, federal character of empire, protection,
and independence of the state. More than any other party it has kept
its representation in the Reichstag at about the same number. In 1903
they cast 1,875,300 votes and had 100 members. In 1907 they had 103
members, and in the last election of 1912 they won 93 seats. Even this
Catholic party is now divided. Count Oppersdorff leads the
"Only-Catholic" party, against the more liberal section which has its
head-quarters at Cologne, where the late Cardinal Fisher was the leader.
At the session of the Reichstag in 1913, when the question of the
readmission of the Jesuits was raised, the Centrum party even sided with
the Socialists in the matter of the expropriation law for Posen, in
order to annoy the chancellor for his opposition to themselves. Such
political miscegenation as this does not show a high level of faith or
of policy.

It may be of interest to the reader to know that in 1903 the
population of Germany was 58,629,000, and the number qualified to vote
12,531,000; in 1907 the population was 61,983,000, and the number
qualified to vote, 13,353,000; in 1912 the population was 65,407,000,
and the qualified voters numbered over 14,000,000, of whom 12,124,503
voted. In 1903 there were 9,496,000 votes cast; in 1907, 11,304,000.
The German Reichstag has 397 members, or 1 representative to every
156,000 inhabitants; the Unit