The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance [32]
eighteenth century was not in its place. The task set before the men of that time was to secure for the real centre of the Prussian state a share in the industries, and in the forms of industry, that constituted the essential features of the higher civilisation of western Europe. The prosperity of the silk manufacture in a distant and isolated fragment of the state, close to the Dutch frontier, namely Krefeld, could not make up for its absence in the east. Again and again did Frederick the Great endeavour to induce the von der Leyen brothers to move eastward with a part of their business; but all in vain. And so he had to make an effort to reach the same end in another way. In the course of his reign he spent some two million thalers over the silk industry, more indeed than for any other branch of manufacture. And what did he obtain therewith? That he had an industry which every year produced wares worth two million thalers or more, says the mercantilist; - no! that he created an industry which in the nineteenth century disappeared, says the free-trader. I say, the two million thalers are to be looked upon as an expenditure for schooling, as money spent on education, which engrafted on Berlin and the eastern provinces those powers and aptitudes, those manners and customs, without which an industrial state cannot endure. In these feudal territories with their impoverished country towns and craftsmen, both the undertakers and the workmen were altogether wanting who were indispensable for the finer manufactures aiming at the world-market. The introduction of foreigners and the laborious training of natives could be the work only of a political art which realised both its object and its materials. It is significant that at first we are met by Frenchmen and Jews among the factors, and by foreigners, chiefly Lyonese and Italians, among the workpeople; while in 1800, natives prevail in both classes. It might with truth be said, that by their services to the silk industry the French and the Jews repaid the Prussian state for its magnanimous toleration. It was in this way that the best Jewish families of Berlin, the Mendelssohns and Friedlanders, the Veits and the Marcuses, gained their reputation and social position, and at the same time turned the purely mercantile Hebrew body into an industrial one: they themselves changed in character in the process, and grew side by side with the state and society. Most important of all, Berlin in 1800 had a working class of great technical skill, and a body of business men possessed of capital and ability; and this fact remained the great result of the policy of Frederick, whether or no the silk industry survived. And it was not the least merit of that policy that it constantly, and with clear understanding, laboured towards a double end: to create a flourishing industry by state initiative and political means, and then, as quickly and as completely as possible, to set it on its own feet, and create thriving private businesses, - and so render itself superfluous. Similarly, in a place like Krefeld, where the favouring conditions afforded by the neighbourhood of the Dutch created a considerable industry without protective tariff or subsidy or regulation, the king did not think of state intervention: the most he did was to support the practical monopoly of the von der Leyen brothers, because he saw that this great house was capable of elevating and guiding the whole industry in an exemplary fashion. Moreover, his administrative wisdom, running not along the lines of rigid schemes, but in accordance with the men and circumstances before him, shewed itself precisely in this contemporary application of such divergent systems of industrial policy; in Berlin the most extreme state control and in Krefeld complete laissez-faire. The truth is, he himself, in his innermost nature, was just as much the philosophical disciple of the individualistic enlightenment (Aufklarung) of the period as the last great representative of princely absolutism. Under him the Prussian state was based as much