St. Martin
Canal
sioned one of the liveliest political struggles that Germany has had for a decade.
The chief argument for the canal was, of course, that it would give cheap transpor- tation from the great coalandiron centres of the Rhine-Westphalian country, to all of northeastern Germany. The railways had reached the limit of their freight-carrying ca- pacity, and the building of new ones would be very expensive through the highly devel- oped country traversed bythem. Thecanal, however, met with the stoutest, most deter- mined opposition from the powerful Agra- rian element in the Diet. Their chief ar- guments against it were two: first, its great
cost, and second, what they pressed still more earnestly—the possibility that it would facilitate the importation of foreign grain into parts of Germany not now accessible to the foreign shippers. These were their ostensible arguments; a still more powerful one was not mentioned aloud in the debates: the conviction that the canal would pro- mote the development of the manufactur- ing and commercial interests of the country and must inevitably tend toward increasing the political and social influence of the pop- ulation engaged in those pursuits, while the
power and influence of the Agrarian and aristocratic classes must necessarily be di- minished.
The first canal bill was thus voted down, after its enemies had come forward with many other schemes of a more or less local character, which they sought to have incor- porated into it as “compensations” to their
at La Vi
llette, Paris.
localities for whatever damage the great canal might inflict upon them. Neverthe- less, the Government did not give up its plan. Herr Thielen, at that time Prussian Minister of Public Works, announced la- conically: ‘‘ Built it shall be, for all that”
and this “ gebaut wird er doch” has become a part of the political jargon of the time.
After waiting two years the Government again came forward with its canal bill, but with great additions to it. Not only was the Midland Canal provided for, but also the eastern connections and river improve- ments mentioned above. The Govern- ment had adopted the policy of giving “ com- pensations”’; but even that did not placate the Agrarians. They were about to pass an emasculated bill—taking the eastern im- provements, so as to get their agricultural produce shipped cheaply to Berlin and other markets, but killing the Midland Canal en- tirely—when the Government, in May, rgor, put an end to the wrangle by withdrawing its bill and proroguing the Diet.
Last year another canal bill was intro- duced in the Diet. This provided only for an instalment of the Midland Canal, name- ly, from Bevergern to Hanover, and for the eastern improvements already described. The Government is evidently on the down- grade in the matter of making-concessions to the Agrarians. Its plea for the passage of the original canal bill of 1899 had been based partly on military considerations, like facilitating the transportation of sup- plies and munitions of war to the west—
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