The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1912-10-12
TO The EDITOR
CONDITIONS IN GERMANY.
To the Editor:

Kindly allow me to comment on the
article headed World Problems at
the Present Hour" published in The
Catholic Bulletin of September %.
Your correspondent says:
Europe, with the exception of
Germany and Belgium, is certainly in
a bad way"
l have never been in Belgium, but
have spent five years in Germany,
travelling extensively, and have stud
led the political, social and economic
conditions of that country at close
range, and can endorse every word
the writer says in favor of it.
Now, why is the discomfort and
unrest so manifest elsewhere, absent
from the fatherland, or at least re-
duced to a minimum, and what is the
reason for this happy condition?
l answer that the Christian social
ism inaugurated by the Clerical Or
Centrist party, also called the Catho-
lie party of Germany, about forty years
ago, and continued and amplified day
by day, is the chief reason therefor
nationalized it's railroads, telegraphs
and telephones, enacted wise and
beneicent laws guaranteeing to it's
people invalid and old age pensions,
maternity, accident and sick benefit
insurance. The forests are largely
ties and wise laws carefully husband
and protect all the sources of wealth
springing therefrom
The municipalities own and operate
nearly all the, public utilities, the
parks and often the opera houses and
even state-owned and operated
brewery.
Unfair or cut-throat competition is
prohibited by law.
Wholesale unemployment, so
chronic in America, is impossible in
sighted system of public works, which
has given the nation good wagon
roads, splendid canals and improved
rivers and harbors, mostly built during
! periods of business depression and
during the less active portions of the
year, and because all the powers of
the state are exerted to the decentra-
lization of population and the encour-
agement of small land holdings, which
are intensively cultivated during
periods of business stress.
Germany has wise, just financial and
no nj 10 ING 0f
taxation based on incomes, inherit
ances and the unearned increment of
land values.
Civil service reform is living
reality.
The Germans also have solved the
problem of the public school without
neglecting the moral and religious
education of children.
To sum up, Germany comes nearer
than any other large nation of the
world to the cooperative common
wealth, based on Christian principles,
and therefore it is today the most
] stable government on earth.
Of course, endorse the writer's
conviction that America is Gods
country, if he wishes to convey thereby
that our people are, as whole, better
off than even the Germans. The rea-
sons for this are plain. The whole
German empire is not as large as
Texas, and has no greater natural
sources of wealth, enjoys no better
climate and has no transportation
advantages so far as access to the sea
or national inland waterways is con-
cerned, neither has it a more virile,
able or intelligent people.
It's advantages flow solely from the
wise, just laws there prevailing, which
enable it to maintain a population of
60, 100000, increasing at the rate of
1,0O0,0OO year, in frugal comfort.
America is prosperous, Ito be sure,
but not because of wise laws, but in
spite of very bad ones.
| But there is difference even here.
In Germany all classes of society
share in the prosperity, here only the
strong have rights The weak, the
sick, the aged and infirm, the widow
and the orphan would starve here if
private charity did not supplement the
crude efforts of the state, which latter
separates the unfortunates from their
friends and relatives and places them
in great, irreligious prisons, called
hospitals and aims houses. Germany
has but few very rich or very poor, the
wealth being more largely distributed
than here, although we are the
younger country.
1t is mistake to say that the dis.
satisfaction and discomfort in Amer
lea does not rest upon real and tang
ible causes, because, forsooth, wages
are high, when measured in money.
i When 10000 young women utterly
disappear, as if swallowed up by the
earth, in a single city every year
when bribery and corruption pervades
all classes of society, when public
4 Office is placed on the auction block