half years of its existence. of its existence. It is a service rendered more in the sittings of Committees than in the plenary sessions, and, indeed, this not merely because one was unwilling to convene the plenum from motives of economy, but because, primarily, the earnest creative work which is necessary as a foundation to render valuable the advice of the Economic Council can only be performed in the narrower confines of the Committees. If people wish to make objective criticism of the work of the Economic Council, then one must not leave out of account the fact that the great and fundamental reforms in all the spheres of social, economic and financial legislation after the close of the war were already accomplished by the time the provisional Economic Council met. This is so in the socio-political sphere, in the case of the introduction of the Eight-hour Day, the Works Councils Bill; in the economic sphere, of the Export Trade Control and Compulsory Housing Law; and in the financial sphere, of the Transfer of Direct Taxation and Railways to the Federal Government, as well as of the Federal Emergency Levy Law. Finally, the depreciation of the currency, though not so low in value as at the present moment, had gone, by the time the Economic Council met, beyond the limits within which its recovery was possible by the Empire's own remedies. Therefore the Economic Council can bear only a limited responsibility for the fundamental changes in economic life in so far as they were brought about in the legislation of the after-war period." Also it could not co-operate as it wished in economic reconstruction through the consequences of the Versailles Treaty and the internal political currents. "Within these given narrow limits, however, the Economic Council had honestly set to work to promote the success of industry and to ward off or to mitigate its too heavy burdening as far as was possible. Among the basically important legislative projects in which, up till the present, the work of the Economic Council had

assisted are the following, standing out pre-eminently: In the socio-political field, the project for an Arbitration system, the Law on the Appointment of Members of the Works Councils to the Board of Directors, the Domestic Servants' Law, numerous complementary laws in the sphere of Social Insurance, as well as, most recently, the Hours of Work Law, upon which the discussions are not yet terminated. In the economic-political sphere, the laws on the gradual disestablishment of compulsory production of necessaries of life are worthy of special mention, as well as the reintroduction of a certain compulsory economy in trading with corn and sugar. Apart from this, the work of the Economic-political Committee has supplied a particularly rich material for the policy of the Government. Sedulous work has been accomplished in the Export Trade Committee and the Export Duty Committee. Finally, in financial-political matters the Economic Council has, as I believe I may say, according to the exhortation addressed to it last year by the Chancellor, Dr. Wirth, been taken into full co-operation. It has not only most minutely commented upon the great Reparations taxation programme in extraordinarily full detail-work, and eliminated this or the other economic impossibility from the project laid before it, but it also attempted to find the principles for a stable standard, for even at first mere permissive introduction, as well as the principles for the establishment of interestpayment and the amortisation of any foreign loans. I have picked out these points from the very comprehensive field of work of the provisional Economic Council, it is not to minimise the significance of the work of the Committees not specially mentioned, like the Constitutional Committee, the Committee on Procedure, the Transport Committee, the Water Traffic Committee and the Educational Committee."

If

Few people in Germany deny the value of the actual Economic Council; still fewer deny the promise con

tained in the institution. As a council of experts providing the creative power which is essentially lacking in the Reichstag, debating economic detail-work for which the Reichstag is unfitted and without the necessary time, as an instrument of expression of criticism, it has proved its worth and its right to exist. It is an institution which, provisional in powers and composition, has exercised much authority, and will, according to the prophets who have taken part in its proceedings, do even better service when its understructure gives it an even deeper foundation in the very heart of German industry, and when a period of peace renders its labours less hurried.

We have now to discuss the prevalent ideas about its future, and then to concern ourselves with some general reflections upon the study already madereflections which have so far been omitted in order that they might be formed by the reader unprompted. But let it at once be said that the ideal which some people, most closely in contact with the work of the Council, hope to see realised by its continued activity, constitutes not the least important sign of the vitality of its constitution and power to serve.

CHAPTER VII

THE FUTURE AND THE PROSPECT

But, oppression by your Mock-Superiors well shaken off, the grand problem yet remains to solve: That of finding government by your RealSuperiors! Alas! how shall we ever learn the solution of that, benighted, bewildered, sniffing, sneering, God-forgetting unfortunates as we are?" CARLYLE, Past and Present, " On Democracy.'

THE Conservative statesman Delbrück's prophecy that Article 165 would prove for many years the fermentpromoter of the new German Constitution has been amply fulfilled.1 Not only have the problems connected with the building and functioning of the Economic Council caused a fluttering in governmental and departmental circles, but the problems related to the establishment of the final substructure to the Federal Economic Council have proved to be not without an abundance of obstinate thorns. For Article 165 was couched in most general terms, and the study of its genesis could give no certain and detailed clue to the constitution of the more concrete.complex of institutions it foreshadowed.

Reference to the terms of Article 1652 will show that the following institutions were envisaged. First, to represent the peculiar interests of the workers there were to be established Works Councils for each separate works; then a series of District Workers' Councils, "based on economic districts"; and, crowning all this, a Federal Workers' Council.

Of these Councils only the Works Councils have 1 Heilfron, op. cit. p. 4318.

2 See Chapter V.

been established to the present, and, as they touch the Federal Economic Council in a comparatively remote degree, they must here be dismissed with a very brief remark. Put barely, then: by the Works Councils Act of February 4, 1920, there has been established a system of bodies representing the workers in all factories and workshops containing twenty or more employed. To these Councils a big range of powers has been accorded, in certain cases even the right to demand the production of a balance-sheet and explanation thereof by the employer; designed in all to secure, as Article 1 of the Act runs, a protection of the common economic interests of the workers (wage-earners and salaried) in relation to their employers, and to support employers in effectively carrying on the enterprise. The reader is referred elsewhere for further discussion of this most important innovation in the German industrial system.1

If the ideas that surged up from the Revolution of 1918-19 in Germany were vague as to the realisation of the promise of Works Councils, they were even less possessed of clarity and form in relation to the District Workers' Councils and the Federal Workers' Council. Nor were people clear about the District Economic Councils, designed to supply the co-ordinating factor for employers, employed, and other groups of the population in their contact with the Government of the economic affairs of Germany. Neither the territorial basis of these local Councils ("the economic district,” · or economic region"), nor their duties, nor their relation to the Federal Economic Council, had been made clear during the course of the last two years of constitutional

1 Cf. Dersch, Betriebsrätegesetz, Kommentar, Berlin, 1922 (a splendid discussion and commentary by a high official in the Federal Ministry of Labour), and Works Councils in Germany, Studies and Reports, Series B, No. 6, International Labour Office, Geneva, and The Labour Magazine, London, October-November 1922; Heilfron, op. cit. vol. ix. pp. 5-157, for the interesting and invaluable debates on the second and third readings of the Bill; Nörpel, Aus der Betriebsräte-Praxis, 2 vols., Berlin, 1922; and Korrespondenzblatt des Deutschen Allgemeinen Gewerkschaftsbund, Jan.-Feb. 21, 1920, for an account of the law and the background of opinion.