# 38

                         MADE IN GERMANY

 NOTE: This 1896 letter is fluent in the speech of that time period. The writer wants to point out how important Germany has become to the world economy.

 

You will find that the material, of some of your own clothes, was probably woven in Germany.
Still more probable are German importations of all sorts.
Some of the magnificent mantles and jackets that maids wear on their Sundays out are German-made and German sold.

Toys, the dolls, and the fairy books which your children maltreat in the nursery are made in Germany.
The material of your favorite (patriotic) newspaper are prepared in Germany.

The fateful mark will greet you at every turn, from the piano in
your drawing-room to the mug on your kitchen dresser, emblazoned
though it be, with the legend: "A Present from London".
Descend to your domestic depths,  and you shall find your very
drain-pipes German made.
You pick out of the fire place grate the paper wrappings from a
book consignment, and they also are " Made in Germany."
You stuff them into the fire, and reflect that the poker in your
hand was forged in Germany.
As you rise from your hearthrug you knock over an ornament
on your mantle-piece; picking up the pieces you read, on the bit
that formed the base, " Manufactured in Germany."

And you jot your dismal reflections down with a pencil that
was made in Germany.
At midnight your wife comes home from an opera which was
made in Germany, has been here enacted by singers, conductor
and players made in Germany, with the aid of instruments and
sheets of music made in Germany.
You go to bed, and glare wrathfully at a text on the wall; it is
illuminated with an English village church, and it was
"Printed in Germany."

If you are imaginative and dyspeptic, you drop off to sleep only
to dream that St. Peter (with a duly stamped halo round his head
and a bunch of keys from the Rhineland) has refused you admission
into Paradise, because you bear not the Mark of the Beast upon your
forehead, and are not of German make.
But you console yourself with the thought that it was only a Bierhaus
Paradise any way ; and you are awakened in the morning by the
sonorous brass of a German band.

Is this picture exaggerated ?
Bear with me, while I tabulate a few figures from the Official
Returns of Her Majesty's Custom House, where, at any rate,
fancy and exaggeration have no play.

In 1895 Germany sent us linen manufactures to the value of
£91,257 ; cotton manufactures to the value of £536,471 ;
embroidery and needlework to the value of £11,309;
leather gloves to the value of £27,934 (six times the amount
imported six years earlier) ; and woolen manufactures to the
value of £1,016,694.

Despite the exceeding cheapness of toys, the value of
German-made playthings for English nurseries amounted,
in 1895, to £459,944.
In the same year Germany sent us books to the value of £37,218,
and paper to the value of £586,835. For musical instruments we
paid her as much as £563,018; for china and earthenware £216,876;
for prints, engravings, and photographs, £111,825.

This recital of the moneys which in one year have come out of
John Bull's pocket for the purchase of his German-made house-
hold goods is, I submit disproof enough of any charge of
alarmism.
For these articles, it must be remembered, are not like oranges and
guano.
They are not products which we must either import or lack :
 — they all belong to the category of English manufactures, the
most important of them, indeed, being articles in the preparation of
which Great Britain is held pre-eminent.
The total value of manufactured goods imported into the United
Kingdom by Germany rose from £16,629,987 in 1883 to £21,632,614
in 1893 : an increase of 30.08 percent.

A few figures more.
I said that a little while since Germany was a large importer of manufactures needed for her own consumption.
Take as a first example, the iron and steel industries.
In 1878 the make of pig-iron in Germany was 2,147,000 tons;
in 1895 it was 5,788,000 tons.
Germany made in 1878: 492,512 tons of steel; in 1894
3,617,000 tons.

Her import and export statistics tell the same tale.
In 1880 her iron exports only totaled 1,301,000
tons; in 1894; they stood at 2,008,000 tons. (In the same
period England's exports of iron had decreased.)
In the matter of cottons Germany exported 14,666,100 kilos in 1883.
In 1893: 33,350,800 kilos; an increase of more than
127 per cent. (England's increase in the same period was only
about 21 per cent.)
Shipping returns are a pretty sure test of commercial prosperity:
it is therefore significant that in 1893 the total tonnage of the
sea-going ships which touched at Hamburg for the first time left
Liverpool behind, and in 1894 Hamburg cut her record of the year
before.

E.E. Williams "Made in Germany." 1896