07, 217
new companies were formed in Germany, issuing $62,050,900 in
securities; in 1909, 179 new companies issued $54,929,450 of
securities; in 1910, 186 new companies issued $57,437,700 of
securities. In 1910, 340 companies increased their capital by
$142,657,200. In 1910 there were 5,295 companies in Germany with a
nominal capital of $3,680,979,400. It is estimated that since 1895
there has been invested in industrial companies in Germany
$1,200,000,000. It is to be said also that since 1897 German
agricultural production has doubled, German industrial production
increased sevenfold, and Germany is said to have $4,750,000,000 in her
savings-banks. The value of imports for home consumption, exclusive of
the precious metals, in 1911 was $2,386,200,000; the value of the
exports of home produce, exclusive of the precious metals, was
$2,025,450,000. It is a quaint result of her temperament and her good
forestry, that Germany sells $25,000,000 worth of toys a year; she is
veritably the workshop of Santa Claus, and many more than 25,000,000
children would bless her did they know.

German financiers affirm that she can stand alone financially, while
others assert that one sixth of her capital, I have heard it placed at
one third, is borrowed from France and England. It is certain at least
that the American panic of 1907, and the recent war in the Near East,
have seriously embarrassed Germany financially.

As Germany can only feed, even in good harvest years, forty-eight or
forty-nine millions of her people, a large proportion of her profits
from industry must necessarily go to the purchase of food for the
other sixteen or seventeen millions. The consumption of meat has
increased among all classes in Germany, and both the demands of the
individual and of the state have increased with the increased wealth
of the country. In Prussia alone the number of those subject to income
tax has increased from 2,400,000 in 1892 to 6,200,000 in 1912; but the
taxes have increased as well, or from $800,000,000 to $1,675,000,000.

In the endeavor to increase the manufacturing output and to find new
markets German credit has been stretched to a dangerous tenuity. While
the war feeling was at its height the Koelnische Zeitung, a
conservative and able journal, wrote: "In case of war both France and
Germany will be obliged to borrow; but it is certain that the credit
of Germany cannot as yet be compared with the credit of France: this
is a str