Order 1017647: political, social, religious and ethnic composition of german society from 1871-1924
tutorthammy
AgricultureundertheEmpire.pptAgriculture and Rural Society
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Agricultural modernization
entails..
The increase land of under cultivation,
increased use of natural (later chemical) fertilisers to maximise yield,
a shift to the most profitable crops,
changes in labour recruitment and deployment
and mechanization
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Kali - potash
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Sugar beet (tonnes) 1880 4.7 m. 1900 16 m
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Meat crisis! (Fleischnot)
Rising price of meat:
National production insufficient to keep price low, and restrictions on imports from 1895.
Meat regarded as essential for good health. (Value of vitamins (fruit & veg) not properly understood)
Protest by consumers, and fears over impact on working class diet / national public health.
Government refuses to lift restrictions, (argues imports risk disease)
landowner interest to keep profits high wins.
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Bund der Landwirte
Carl Robert Arthur Thiele (1860-1936)
Postcards for Fleischnot (‘need for flesh’) c1900
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Agricultural society
Estate villages
predominant in Eastern Prussian Provinces & Mecklenburgs
Mecklenburg-Schwerin
1300 estates 100 ha + own 60% of land. Farms of 5-20 ha, share 8%
Squire or ‘Junker’ major landowner
Village labourers live in tied cottages
Owner has local government and some judicial and police powers.
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The traditional model
relationship between owner’s family and workforce is personal, and stretches back generations.
and is characterised by dependency of estate worker on his master
Owners see the estate as a livelihood for himself and the villagers
Estate is projected as a community (festivals, funerals)
Paternalism: The squire takes care of ‘his’ villagers. Housing, health care and education in return for deference and obedience.
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..or rural factories?
Absentee owners. Leaseholder and/or inspector manages the estate.
Absence of personal ties to villagers.
Estate a business, production geared to profitable crops like sugar beet.
Local, resident workforce shrinks for reasons of cost, and out-migration.
Seasonal workers imported for planting and harvesting. c1900 usually Poles from Austro-Hungary or Russia.
housed in barracks and work long hours. Many young or female & do not need to be paid over the winters or require other financial / medical support.
Few villages resemble healthy communities. Remaining local families and foreign workers are housed and work separately. Foreign workers cannot settle.
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..or prison farms?
Codes and Contracts commit workers for a year, criminalise withdrawal of labour.
Convict labour. labour shortage saw some employers recruit from prisons and workhouses. Mecklenburg: discharged prisoners (freed or on parole) hired as ‘ancillary workers’.
1914-1918. Model adopted everywhere. Migrants interned as forced labour. Estates also hired POWs. c. 1.5 million deployed in German economy.
The ‘penal estate’ existed in a pure form in peace time. Many prisons, workhouses and borstals were run as estates.
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Postcard no. 7 Wahre Jacob
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Child Labour
No national restrictions 1871-1914
1904 survey of paid employment for -14s. (9.3 million questionnaires)
1.7 million (c20%) employed, inc. 445,000 -10
Planting, weeding, harvesting and sorting potatoes and beet.
Feeding animals, shepherding, berry picking, acting as beaters, service
c. 90% engaged in paid and unpaid work
Boehnert (2007) trend towards greater use of child labour
(migration and root-crop production - shortage)
(40% of children work for money in sugarbeet areas Pr. Saxony)
Employers and families benefit, and child labour also defended as healthy.
Critics: school exemptions, exhaustion.
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Landowner in western Saxony (1892 Verein für Socialpolitik)
Children are only deployed at agricultural work on a small scale, most at age eight or ten, during the school holidays for about 8-9 hours per day, or on afternoons when there are no lessons for 4-5 hours turning hay, tying up corn-bales, pulling up beet, sorting potatoes and tending livestock. As recompense they receive 4-5 pfennigs per hour, around Zittau 6-8 pfennigs. If they are working piece-rate then they are supposed to be able to earn up to 15 pfennigs per hour.
Normal hourly rate here: Women, 7-10 Pf., Men 11-16 Pf.
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Kinder beim Sammeln von Pferdeäpfeln
Jöhstadt, Steinbach,
Sachsen
Krauße, Hermann, um 1920
Beerenkinder
Erzgebirge
Krauße, Hermann, um 1910
Eigentümer: SLUB Deutsche Fotothek
Rybnik Kreisblatt 13.6.1914
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Rybnik Kreisblatt 13.6.1914
Landflucht (‘The flight from the land’)
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Rural-urban migration
Landflucht dominant solution by the mid 1890. No longer overseas
Hans-Dieter Laux: in migration accounts for 46% of population growth of Prussian cities
1907: 2 million residents of Berlin
800,000 born in Berlin, .5 million born in eastern Prussian provinces, further .3 million born elsewhere in Brandenburg
Causes
Conditions in the countryside:
And the pull of the cities
Punitive labour laws, lack of personal freedom, poor wages and medical care
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Berufliche Landflucht (exodus from agricultural work )
‘Commuting’ worker-peasants (peasant villages)
Railways, cheap fares
Work on the docks, in construction
Transmission: Commuters and returning migrants
transmission of ideas.
Priester (1913)
The connection with the village community is lost completely. They bring ‘modern’, usually strongly socialist ideas back home, which are largely incompatible with those of the residents. They set up Social Democratic associations, and thereby create conflict between the villagers
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