fortunes.  In the Property Tax class of 100,000 to 500,000 marks, the increase has been about 48 per cent.—­i.e., on an average for the fourteen years about 3 per cent. annually, while in the last three years it has been 4.6 per cent.  In the class of 500,000 marks and upwards, the increase for the fourteen years amounts to 54 per cent. in the taxpayers and 67 per cent. in the property; and, while in the fourteen years the increase is on an average 4.5 per cent. annually, it has risen in the three years 1905-1908 to 8.6 per cent.  This means per head of the population in the schedule of 6,000 to 100,000 marks an increase of 650 marks, in the schedule of 100,000 to 500,000 marks an increase per head of 6,400 marks, and in the schedule of 500,000 marks and upwards an increase of 70,480 marks per head and per year.

We see then, especially in the large estates, a considerable and annually increasing growth, which the Prussian Finance Minister has estimated for Prussia alone at 3 milliards yearly in the next three years, so that it may be assumed to be for the whole Empire 5 milliards yearly in the same period.  Wages have risen everywhere.  To give some instances, I will mention that among the workmen at Krupp’s factory at Essen the daily earnings have increased from 1879-1906 by 77 per cent., the pay per hour for masons from 1885-1905 by 64 per cent., and the annual earnings in the Dortmund district of the chief mining office from 1886 to 1907 by 121 per cent.  This increase in earnings is also shown by the fact that the increase of savings bank deposits since 1906 has reached the sum of 4 milliard marks, a proof that in the lower and poorer strata of the population, too, a not inconsiderable improvement in prosperity is perceptible.  It can also be regarded as a sign of a healthy, improving condition of things that emigration and unemployment are considerably diminished in Germany.  In 1908 only 20,000 emigrants left our country; further, according to the statistics of the workmen’s unions, only 4.4 per cent, of their members were unemployed, whereas in the same year 336,000 persons emigrated from Great Britain and 10 per cent. (in France it was as much as 11.4 per cent.) of members of workmen’s unions were unemployed.

Against this brilliant prosperity must be placed a very large national debt, both in the Empire and in the separate States.  The German Empire in the year 1910 had 5,016,655,500 marks debt, and in addition the national debt of the separate States on April 1, 1910, reached in—­

Marks
Prussia                                  9,421,770,800
Bavaria                                  2,165,942,900
Saxony                                     893,042,600
Wuertemberg                                 606,042,800
Baden                                      557,859,000
Hesse                                      428,664,400
Alsace-Lorraine                            31,758,100
Hamburg                                    684,891,200
Luebeck                                     666,888,400
Bremen                                     263,431,400

Against these debts may be placed a considerable property in domains, forests, mines, and railways.  The stock capital of the State railways reached, on March 31, 1908, in millions of marks, in—­