7.—Removal of the Contrast between City and Country.
No one can adjudge our modern large cities a healthy product. The prevailing economic and industrial system constantly attracts great masses of the population to the cities.[248] They are the chief seats of industry and commerce, and there all the highways of traffic converge. There the owners of great fortunes reside, and there the civil, judicial and military authorities are located. In the cities are found the great institutions of learning, the academies of art, the places of enjoyment and recreation, exhibitions, museums, theatres, concert-halls, etc. Thousands are attracted by their occupations, thousands by pleasure, and thousands of others by the hope of greater gain and a more pleasant life.
But this formation of great cities, figuratively speaking, reminds one of a man whose girth is constantly increasing while his legs are constantly growing leaner, until they can no longer carry the load. In the immediate vicinity of these cities all the villages assume an urban character also, and here the proletarians flock together. These usually poor municipalities must tax their members to the utmost and still are unable to meet all demands. When they have finally extended close to the large city they are swallowed up by it, as a planet that has come too close to the sun. But thereby the conditions of life are not improved. On the contrary, they become more unfavorable by the crowding of masses in congested dwellings. These gatherings of masses are necessary in present-day development and, to a certain degree, form the centers of revolution; but in the new society they will have accomplished their purpose. Their gradual dissolution will be inevitable, for then the contrary will take place. The population will migrate from the large cities to the country, will form new communities adapted to the changed conditions, and will combine industrial and agricultural activity.
As soon as the urban population, as a result of the development of the means of transportation, methods of production, etc., is enabled to transfer to the country all its accustomed requirements of culture, its institutions of learning, museums, theaters, concert-halls, libraries, social centers, etc., the migration will begin. Life will offer all the advantages of the former large city without its disadvantages. The dwellings will be far more sanitary and pleasant. The rural population will participate in industry, and the industrial population will participate in agriculture and horticulture, a variety of occupations that only a few persons can enjoy at present, and only by excessively long and hard labor.
As on all other fields, the bourgeois world is paving the way for this development, as each year a greater number of industrial establishments are transferred to the country. The unfavorable conditions prevailing in the large cities, high rents and high wages, compel many manufacturers to transfer their establishments to rural districts. On the other hand, the large landowners are becoming industrialists (manufacturers of sugar, distillers, brewers, manufacturers of cement, earthenware, bricks, woodwork, paper, etc.) Even to-day tens of thousands of persons who work in the large cities have their homes in the suburbs, because the improved means of transportation enable them to live in this manner.
By the decentralization of the population the present contrast between urban and rural population will be removed. The peasant, this modern helot, who, until now, in his isolation in the country, has been excluded from all modern cultural development, will then become a civilized being[249] in the fullest sense of the word. The wish once expressed by Prince Bismarck, that he might see the large cities destroyed, will be fulfilled, but in a different sense than he anticipated.[250]
[248] According to the census of June 12, 1907, Germany had 24 large cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants each. In 1816, there were only two cities in Germany having more than 100,000 inhabitants. In 1871, there were only 8 of them. The population of Berlin was, approximately, 826,000 in 1871; 1,880,000 in 1900; 2,040,148 in 1905. So its population had increased by 147 per cent. in 34 years. “Greater Berlin” had 875,328 inhabitants in 1871, and 2,469,009 inhabitants in 1900. In 1907, 42 large cities had 11,790,000 inhabitants, and their proportion to the entire population now amounts to, approximately, 19 per cent. A number of these large cities found it necessary to admit into their municipalities a number of the suburban factory towns that, according to their population, were cities in themselves, and so they grew in leaps and bounds. During the period from 1895 to 1905, Leipsic increased from 170,000 to 503,672 inhabitants; Cologne from 161,000 to 428,722; Magdeburg from 114,000 to 240,633; Munich from 270,000 to 538,983; Breslau from 299,000 to 470,904; Frankfort on the Main from 154,000 to 334,978; Hannover from 140,000 to 250,024; Duesseldorf from 115,000 to 253,274; Nuremberg from 115,000 to 294,426; Chemnitz from 111,000 to 294,927; Essen from 65,074 to 239,692, etc.
[249] Professor Adolf Wagner says in his “Text-book of Political Economy by Rau” that has been previously quoted: “The small farms constitute an economic basis that cannot be replaced by any other institution for a very important part of the population, an independent, self-sustaining peasantry and its peculiar socio-political position and function.” If the author would not idealize the small farmer “à tout prix” to please his conservative friends, he would have to recognize the small farmer as the poorest of beings. Under existing conditions the small farmer is almost inaccessible to a higher culture. He works hard from dawn till darkness and lives like a dog. Meat, butter, eggs, milk that he produces are not consumed by him; he produces for others. Under existing conditions he cannot attain a higher status of life and so becomes an element detrimental to the progress of civilization. He who likes retrogression because it serves his own ends, may desire the continued existence of this social stratum, but human progress demands that it should cease to exist.
[250] In the Union Parliament at Erfurt, in 1850, Prince Bismarck raged against the large cities because they were “hot-beds of revolution” and should therefore be demolished. He was right. In the modern proletariat bourgeois society produces its own “grave-diggers.”