The times., 1898-06-26
NEWS FROM BERLIN.

The present German political campaign
hinges in the agrarian question:, and the
outcome Of the Reichstag elections June
16 will determine TO a large extent Ger
manys foreign and domestic policy dur
ing the next five years. especially so far
as concerns the nature of the new set
of commercial treaties that will have to
be concluded during the legislative period
of the new Reichstag, and the relations
with those countries becoming parties TO
these treaties. The agrarian question, l
said. lies at the bottom of all this, and
this question is, indeed, of vast impor-
tance TO the whole land. l think l shall
tell you little more about it. Since 1890
Germany has been suffering more and
more from an inability to compete with
the agricultural products of countries
more favorably situated, agricnlturally
speaking, such as the United States Ar
gentine. Australia, etc, and there have
been years when the large estate owners
of the eastern provinces of Prussia have
been forced to sell their grain and dairy
products at an actual loss. The conse-
quence Of it all has been the gradual i'm
poverishment of that class of tillers of
the soil. and ii is precisely this class-i e.,
the large estate owners. the so-called
younkers-which is behind the increasing
anxiety of the government to benefit agri-
culture at the cost Of nineteen-twentiethS
of the population. For the younker class,
which embodies the bulk of the lower no.
bility in Prussia, exercises an enormous
influence on the court, the emperor and
the whole government, the reason being
in part that from this class springs ira
ditionally the flower of the army and
navy. the larger part of the government
employees and administrative authorities,
and of officialdom generally speaking. In
the diet, too, and in a less degree in the
Reichstag. the younker party exercises
much influence, and the emperor, who for
a time sided against agrarian aspirations,
and who at that time gave vent to his
winged word that he could not aid in
a movement having bread usury for it's
object" has been brought around to the
conviction that for the interest of the
state and of the monarchy it is neces-
sary to foster and protect the agrarian
younker class.
In this opinion he is upheld by a large
number of writers who have published
their views on the question, and even
such an advanced thinker as the famous
philosopher Eduard Won Hartmann in the
last issue of the Gegenwart maintains
that the younker class is historically and
economically necessary to Prussia and
that their financial downfall would mean
a very grave injury to Prussias body pol
ltic. 1t is true that for this steady i'm
poverishment of the younkerS in Prussia
there are other and in part more remote
reasons besides the one cited above
During the two long periods of agricul-
tural imitation in Germany. VIZ, from 1850
to 1870 and from 1880 to 1896, these men
got accustomed to high living and to a
scale of expenditure which was only COM
mensurate with the imitation and with the
prices for their products they then real
lied, and when these fat years were over
and the lean ones began they were for
the most part unable to exercise sufficient
self-controi and sabnegation to reduce
their scale of living, although they, one
and ALL cried out against their diminish
ing profits and against foreign competi-
ton. And hence there was considerable
truth to it when the liberal press in Ger
many-serving more distinctly the inter-
ests of the manufacturing and trading
classes-used to make fun of the suffer
ing agrarians'' who came to town in
four-in-hands and discussed the waning
glories of their caste during a high-priced
dinner washed down with plenty of Pom
merry Sec. Their inability to fit them
selves to new circumstances, too, brought
1t about that they piled on mortgage after
mortgage on their estates until in many
cases they were only the nominal owners
of their vast estates. nine-tenths Of the