Part 5

One of the men with whom I discussed the aspects of farming under the handicaps which the war was imposing was Joachim Baron von Bredow-Wagenitz, a large landowner in the province of Brandenburg. As owner of an estate that had been most successful under scientific methods of farming, he was well qualified to discuss the situation.

He had tried steam-plowing and found it wanting. The man was on the verge of believing that Mother Earth resented being treated in that manner. The best had been done to make steam-plowing as good as the other form. But something seemed to have gone wrong. There was no life in the crops. It was a question of fertilizing, my informant concluded. The theory, which had been held, that there was enough reserve plant nutriment in the soil to produce a good crop at least one season with indifferent fertilization, was evidently incorrect, or correct only in so far as certain crop plants were concerned.

Baron Bredow had employed some threescore of Russian prisoners on his place. Some of the men had worked well, but most of them had shown ability only in shirking.

The older men and the women had done their best to get something out of the soil, but they were unable, in the first place, to stand the physical strain, and, secondly, they lacked the necessary experience in the departments which the men at the front had looked after.

Elsewhere in Germany it was the same story. It simply was impossible to discount the loss of almost four million men who had by that time been withdrawn from the soil and were now consuming more than ever before without producing a single thing, as yet.

To show what that really meant let me cite a few factors that are easily grasped. The population of the German Empire was then, roundly, 70,000,000 persons. Of this number 35,000,000 were women. Of the 35,000,000 men all individuals from birth to the age of fifteen were virtually consumers only, while those from fifty years onward were more or less in the same class. Accepting that the average length of life in Central Europe is fifty-five years, we find that the male producers in 1915 numbered about 20,000,000, and of this number about one-half was then either at the fronts or under military training. Of these 10,000,000 roughly 4,200,000 had formerly occupied themselves with the production and distribution of food. I need not state that this army formed quite the best element in food production for the simple reason that it was composed of men in the prime of life.

A survey in Austria showed not only the same conditions, but also indicated that the worst was yet to come. Austria and Hungary had then under the colors about 5,000,000 men, of whom, roundly, 2,225,000 came from the fields and food industries, so that agriculture was even worse off in the Dual Monarchy than it was in Germany.

The large landowners in Austria and Hungary told the same story as Baron Bredow. Experiences tallied exactly. They, too, had found it impossible to get the necessary labor, for either love or money. It simply was not in the country, and with many of the Austrian and Hungarian land-operators the labor given by the Russian prisoner of war was next thing to being nothing at all. The Russians felt that they were being put to work against the interest of their country, and many of them seemed to like the idleness of the prison camp better than the work that was expected of them on the estates, though here they were almost free.

I remember especially the experiences of Count Erdödy, a Hungarian nobleman and owner of several big estates. After trying every sort of available male labor, he finally decided to cultivate his lands with the help of women. The thing was not a success by any means, but when he came to compare notes with his neighbors he found that, after all, the women had done much better than the men on his neighbors' estates. As a sign of the times I should mention here that Count Erdödy, no longer a young man, would spend weeks at a stretch doing the heaviest of farm work, labor in which he was assisted by his American wife and two daughters, one of whom could work a plow as well as any man.

The war had ceased to be an affair that would affect solely the masses, as is often the case. Men who never before had done manual labor could now be seen following the plow, cultivating crops, operating reapers, and threshing the grain. The farm superintendents, most of them young and able-bodied men of education, had long ago been called to the colors as reserve officers, so that generally the owner, who in the past had taken it very easy, was now confronted with a total absence of executives on his estates, in addition to being short of man-power and animals of labor.

But the large farm-operators were not half so poorly off as the small farmer. I will cite a case in order to show the conditions on the small farms and in the villages.

The land near Linz in Austria is particularly fertile and is mostly held by small owners who came into possession of it during the Farmer Revolution in the 'forties. I visited a number of these men and will give here what is a typical instance of what they had to contend with in the crop season of 1915.

"It is all right for the government to expect that we are to raise the same, if not better, crops during the war," said one of them. "For the fine gentlemen who sit in the Ministerial offices that does not mean much. Out here it is different. Their circulars are very interesting, but the fact is that we cannot carry out the suggestions they make.

"They have left me my youngest son. He is a mere boy--just eighteen. The other boys--three of them--who helped me run this place, I have lost. One of them was killed in Galicia, and the other two have been taken prisoners. I may never see them again. They say my two boys are prisoners. But I have heard nothing of them.

"My crops would have been better if I hadn't tried to follow some of the advice in the government circulars. It was my duty to raise all I could on my land, they said. I doubted the wisdom of putting out too much, with nobody to help me.

"It would have been better had I followed my own judgment and plowed half the land and let the other lie fallow, in which case it would have been better for the crops next year. Instead of that I planted all the fields, used a great deal of seed, wasted much of my labor, first in plowing, then in cultivating, and later in harvesting, and now I have actually less return than usually I had from half the land."

The records of the man showed that from his thirty acres he had harvested what normally fifteen would have given him. Haste makes waste, and in his instance haste was the equivalent of trying to do with two pairs of weak hands what formerly three pairs of strong arms had done. The farmer explained that for several years before the war he had done little work, feeling that he was entitled to a rest.

Nor had his heart been in the work. One of his sons had been killed. Two others were in captivity, and the fourth, Franz, might be called to the colors any day. It seemed to him futile to continue. What was the use of anything, now that his family had been torn apart in that manner?

Taxes were higher, of course. On the other hand, he was getting a little more for his products, but not enough to make good the loss sustained through bad crops. While the production of his land had fallen to about one-half of normal, he was getting on an average 15 per cent. more for what he sold, which was now a bare third of what he had sold in other years, seeing that from the little he had raised he had to meet the wants of his family and the few animals that were left.

Neighbors of the man told a similar story. Some of them had done a little better in production, but in no instance had the crop been within more than 80 per cent. of normal. They, too, were not satisfied with the prices they were getting. The buyers of the commission-men were guided by the minimum-price regulation which the government was enforcing, and often they would class a thing inferior in order to go below that price--as the regulations permitted. These people felt that they were being mulcted. But redress there was none. If they refused to sell, the authorities could compel them, and rather than face requisition they allowed the agents of the food sharks to have their way. The thought that the government was exploiting them was disheartening, and was reflected in their production of food.

This was the state of affairs almost everywhere. The able-bodied men had been taken from the soil, just as they had been taken from other economic spheres. Labor was not only scarce, but so high-priced that the small farmer could not afford to buy it.

And then, I found that in the rural districts the war looked much more real to people. There it had truly fostered the thought that all in life is vain. The city people were much better off in that respect. They also had their men at the front. But they had more diversion, even if that diversion was usually no more than meeting many people each day. They had, moreover, the exhilarating sensation that comes from playing a game for big stakes. When the outlook was dreary they always found some optimist who would cheer them up; and the report of some victory, however small and inconsequential, buoyed them up for days at a time. Out in the country it was different. The weekly paper did its best to be cheerful. But its sanguine guesses as to the military future were seen by eyes accustomed to dealing with the realities of nature.

I visited many Austrian villages and found the same psychology everywhere. The Austrian farmer was tired of the war by December of 1914. When I occupied myself again with him a year later he was disgusted and had come to care not a rap who governed in Budapest. Of course, it was different should the Russians get to Vienna. In that case they would take their pitchforks and scythes and show them.

The Hungarian farmer was in the same mood. If the war could have been ended with the Italians getting no farther than Vienna things would have been well enough, but to have the Russians in Budapest--not to be thought of; not for a minute.

Meanwhile, the Austrian and Hungarian governments, taking now many a leaf from the book of the Germans, were urging a greater production of food next season. Highly technical books were being digested into the every-day language of the farmer. It was pointed out what sorts of plowing would be most useful, and what might be omitted in case it could not be done. How and when to fertilize under prevailing conditions was also explained.

The leaflets meant well, but generally overlooked the fact that each farm has problems of its own. But this prodding of the farmer and his soil was not entirely without good results. It caused a rather thorough cultivation of the fields in the fall of 1915, and also led to the utilization of fertilizing materials which had been overlooked before. The dung-pits were scraped, and even the earth around them was carted into the fields. Though animal urine had already been highly valued as a fertilizer, it was now conserved with greater care. Every speck of wood ash was saved. The humus on the woodland floors and forests was drawn on. The muck of rivers and ponds was spread over the near-by fields, and in northern Germany the parent stratum of peat growth was ground up and added to the soil as plant food.

V

THE FOOD SHARK AND HIS WAYS

There were two schools of war economists in Central Europe, and they had their following in each of the several governments that regulated food--its production, distribution, and consumption. The two elements opposed each other, naturally, and not a little confusion came of this now and then.

The military formed one of these schools--the radical. These men wanted to spread over the entire population the discipline of the barrack-yard. For the time being they wanted the entire state to be run on military principles. All production was to be for the state; all distribution was to be done in the interest of the war, and all consumption, whether that of the rich or the poor, was to be measured by the military value of the individual. It was proposed that every person in the several states should get just his share of the available food and not a crumb more. The rich man was to eat exactly, to the fraction of an ounce, what the poor man got. He was to have no greater a share of clothing, fuel, and light.

That seemed very equitable to most people. It appealed even to the other school, but it did not find the approval of those who were interested in the perpetuation of the old system of social economy. What the military proposed was more than the socialists had ever demanded. The enforcement of that measure would have been the triumph absolute of the Social-Democrats of Central Europe.

But for that the Central European politician and capitalist was not ready. With the capitalist it was a question of: What good would it do to win the war if socialism was thus to become supreme? It would be far better to go down in military defeat and preserve the profit system.

The struggle was most interesting. I had occasion to discuss it with a man whose name I cannot give, for the reason that it might go hard with him--and I am not making war on individuals. At any rate, the man is now a general in the German army. He was then a colonel and looked upon as the ablest combination of politician, diplomatist, and soldier Germany possessed, as he had indeed proved.

"You are a socialist," I said to him. "But you don't seem to know it."

"I am a socialist and do know it," said the colonel. "This war has made me a socialist. When this affair is over, and I am spared, I will become an active socialist."

"And the reason?" I asked.

That question the colonel did not answer. He could not. But I learned indirectly what his reasons were. Little by little he unfolded them to me. He was tired of the butchery, all the more tired since he could not see how bloody strife of that sort added anything to the well-being of man.

"When war reaches the proportions it has to-day it ceases to be a military exercise," he said on one occasion. "The peoples of Europe are at one another's throat to-day because one set of capitalists is afraid that it is to lose a part of its dividends to another. The only way we have of getting even with them is to turn socialist and put the curb on our masters."

There would seem to be no direct connection between this sentiment and the economic tendency of the military in food regulation. Yet there is. The men in the trenches knew very well what they were fighting for. They realized that, now the struggle was on, they had to continue with it, but they had also made up their mind to be heard from later on.

The case I have quoted is not isolated. I found another in the general headquarters of General von Stein, then commanding a sector on the Somme.

In the camp of the military economists was also that governing element which manages to drag out an existence of genteel shabbiness on the smallest pay given an official of that class anywhere. This faction also favored the most sweeping measures of war economy.

But it was in the end a simple matter of holding these extremists down. Their opponents always had the very trenchant argument that it took money to carry on the war, and that this money could not be had if the old system was completely overthrown. There was little to be said after that. To do anything that would make war loans impossible would be treason, of course, and that was considered going too far.

Regulation thereafter resolved itself into an endeavor by the anti-capitalists to trim their _bête noire_ as much as was possible and safe, and the effort of the economic standpatters to come to the rescue of their friends. Now the one, then the other, would carry off the honors, and each time capital and public would either gain or lose. It depended somewhat on the season. When war loans had to be made, the anti-capitalist school would ease off a little, and when the loan had been subscribed it would return to its old tactics, to meet, as before, the very effective passive resistance of the standpatters.

I may mention here that much of what has been said of the efficient organization of the German governments is buncombe--rot pure and simple. In the case of the Austrian and Hungarian governments this claim has never been made, could never have been made, and no remark of mine is necessary. The thing that has been mistaken for efficient organization is the absolute obedience to authority which has been bred into the German for centuries. Nor is that obedience entirely barrack bred, as some have asserted. It is more the high regard for municipal law and love of orderliness than the fear of the drill-sergeant that finds expression in this obedience. How to make good use of this quality requires organizing ability, of course. But no matter how the efficient organization of the Germans is viewed, the fact remains that the German people, by virtue of its love of orderliness, is highly susceptible to the impulses of the governing class. To that all German efficiency is due.

There had been some modification of distribution early in 1915. That, however, was entirely a military measure. The traffic on the German state railroads was unusually heavy, and trackage, rolling-stock, and motive power had to be husbanded if a breakdown of the long lines of communication between the French and Russian fronts was to be avoided. There was no thought of social economy. The thing aimed at was to keep the railroads fit for military service.

But by August of 1915 the military economists had managed to get their hands into economic affairs. It cannot be said that their efforts were at first particularly fortunate. But the German general staff was and is composed of men quick to learn. These men had then acquired at least one sound notion, and this was that, with the railroads of the several states under military control, they could "get after" the industrial and commercial barons whom they hated so cordially.

"In the interest of the military establishment" a number of socio-economic innovations were introduced. The first of them was the distribution zone. There is no doubt that it was a clever idea. It was so sound, at the same time, that the friends of the trade lords in the government had to accept it.

The arrangement worked something like this. A wholesaler of flour in western Hanover might have a good customer in the city of Magdeburg. Up to now he had been permitted to ship to that customer as he desired. That was to cease. He could now ship only to that point when he could prove that the flour was not needed nearer to where it was stored. But to prove that was not easy--was impossible, in fact.

Since the German state railroads had in the past provided much of the revenue of the several governments, this was no small step to take. But it was taken, and with most salutary effects. The trundling of freight back and forth ceased, and the food shark was the loser.

Ostensibly, this had been done in order to conserve the railroads. Its actual purpose was to check the trade lords by depriving them of one of their arguments why the price of necessities should be high.

What was accomplished in this instance should interest any community, and for that reason I will illustrate it with an example of "economic waste" found in the United States.

You may have eaten a "Kansas City" steak in San Antonio, Texas, if not at Corpus Christi or Brownsville. (I am an adopted "native" of that region and inordinately proud of it.) If you had investigated the history of that steak I think you would have been somewhat surprised. The steer which produced that steak might have been raised in the valley of the Rio Grande. After that the animal had taken a trip to Oklahoma, where better pasture put more meat on its back. Still later a farmer in Missouri had fattened the steer on the very cream of his soil, and after that it had been taken to Kansas City or Chicago to be butchered and "storaged."

It might then have dawned upon you that a great deal of wasted effort was hidden in the price of that steak, though no more than in the biscuit that was wheat in North Dakota, flour in Minneapolis, biscuit in San Francisco, and a toothsome morsel to follow the steak. You would be a dull person indeed if now some economic short cut had not occurred to you. The steak might have been produced by Texas grass and North Texas corn, and the like, and it need never have traveled farther than San Antonio. The biscuit might have been given its form in Minneapolis.

It was so in Germany before the military social economists took a hand in the scheme, though the waste was by no means as great as in the cases I have cited, seeing that all of the empire is a little smaller than the Lone Star State.

But the little trundling there was had to go.

In the winter of 1915-16 this budding economic idea was still in chrysalis, however. The several governments still looked upon it entirely as a measure for the conservation of their railroads. What is more, they were afraid to give the principle too wide an application. In the first place, the extension of the scheme into the socio-economic structure seemed difficult technically. It was realized that the reduction of traffic on the rails was one thing, and that the simplifying of distribution was quite another. To effect the first the Minister of Railroads had merely to get in touch with the chiefs of the "direction," as the districts of railroading are called. The chiefs would forward instruction to their division heads, and after that everything was in order.

But distribution was another thing. In that case the several governments did not deal with a machine attuned to obey the slightest impulse from above, and which as readily transmitted impulses from the other end. Far from it. Not to meddle with distribution, so long as this was not absolutely necessary, was deemed the better course, especially since all such meddling would have to be done along lines drawn a thousand times by the Central European socialist.

But the food shark had to be checked somehow. The unrest due to his sharp practices was on the increase. The minimum-maximum price decrees which had been issued were all very well, but so long as there was a chance to speculate and hoard they were to the masses a detriment rather than a benefit.

Let me show you how the food shark operated. The case I quote is Austrian, but I could name hundreds of similar instances in Germany. I have selected this case because I knew the man by sight and attended several sessions of his trial. First I will briefly outline what law he had violated.

To lay low what was known as chain trade throughout Central Europe, _Kettenhandel_, the governments had decreed that foodstuffs could be distributed only in this manner: The producer could sell to a commission-man, but the commission-man could sell only to the wholesaler, and the wholesaler only to the retailer.