Greece had been in economic crisis for decades. Public debt (owed above all to the Great Powers) dating back to the War of Independence reached new heights in the 1890s. At that point the government of Charilaos Trikoupis recognised that the country was bankrupt by deciding to lower the public debt to 30% of its value, which angered the creditors, particularly the European powers. At the same time, export of the Zante currant entered a crisis. A new phenomenon then began: emigration of the working population. The number of emigrants (especially to the United States) went from 1,108 in 1890 to 39,135 in 1910 (of 2.8 million inhabitants); significantly, remittances from America and Egypt fell amid economic slowdown in 1908. Economic growth was too slow for the workers and farmers who left to seek work elsewhere. Until that time, only highlanders and landless island dwellers had left. However, this economic growth did lead to the creation, as elsewhere in Europe in the same period, of a middle class born out of industrial development, of growth in the number of bureaucrats (linked to political clientelism) and to an urban explosion. In the mid-1900s, this middle class could not understand why the country was prosperous while the state's finances were in such poor shape. Politicians, also dissatisfied with government policy, reacted as well. In 1906, a group of youngish radicals nicknamed the "Japanese Group" (Ομάς Ιαπώνων), in reference to the dynamism of the Meiji period, formed around the titular leadership of Stephanos Dragoumis, with Dimitrios Gounaris its moving spirit. It criticised the old oligarchy that was ruining the country and demanded radical reforms. The group of “Sociologists” (Κοινωνιολόγοι), especially influenced by Marxism, also called for modernisation of the state apparatus and the economy.