1890, and 234 (214 in Austria and 20 in Hungary) in 1808, and the annual output increased from 845,000 tons of sugar in 1890 to nearly 935,000 tons in 1898, which not only covers the entire domestic demand, but also furnishes a considerable surplus for export. The sugar industry gives employment to from 85,000 to 90,000 people, of which about one-sixth are employed in Hungary.
The glass industry is especially developed in Bohemia, whose products enjoy great fame and constitute a very important article of export from Austria-Hungary. The pottery products are also of importance, and include the most artistic and expensive porcelain and china ware. The chemical industry thrives especially in Bohemia, Silesia, Lower Austria, and Hungary, and its most important products are potash, sulphuric and hydrochloric acids, pharmaceutical goods, and dyestuffs and explosives. The manufacture of paper, carried on extensively, is rapidly growing throughout the monarchy, and furnishes large quantities for export, giving employment to some 25,000 people. The manufacture of friction matches is carried on extensively in Austria.
The leather industry sprang up at an early date, as a natural outgrowth of the country's enormous stock-raising, and has developed to such an extent as to require the importation of considerable quantities of hides from abroad; and yet it is unable to supply the domestic demand for leather, which also has to be imported in great quantities.
The manufacture of tobacco has constituted a Government monopoly since 1670. It is carried on in 43 factories, of which 28 are in Austria and 15 in Hungary, giving employment to upward of 50,000 working people, more than 90 per cent. of whom are women. The annual output of the Government factories aggregates about 1,000.000,000 cigars, 2,500,000,000 cigarettes, 88,000,000 pounds of tobacco, and 3,750,000 pounds of snuff, yielding a revenue of about $20,000,000 to the Austrian Government and nearly $12,000,000 to the Hungarian Government. The consumption of tobacco in the monarchy (3.3 pounds) per capita is behind that of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland, and is about the same as in Germany.
Transportation. Railways.—The first steam railway in Austria, the Kaiser Ferdinand Nordbahn, 8 miles long, was opened in November, 1837, although a horse railway—the first ever built in Europe—had existed since 1825. The first line was built by a private company, and it was not till 1841 that the Government began to construct railways on its own account. In the meantime, the great prosperity of the country in the early forties, with its consequent abundance of idle capital seeking investment, stimulated the construction of many private lines, and sent up the prices of railway shares on the exchanges. The poor crops of 1845, however, and the commercial panic of 1846 which followed, made short work of this optimism, and prices tumbled, bringing ruin to many and leaving the railways in a pitiful plight. It was under these circumstances that the Government determined upon the policy of nationalizing the railways, and appropriated over $10,000,000—soon increased to $25,000,000—for buying up the shares of private railway companies; and in less than a year (September, 1847) the Government owned a controlling interest in four of the largest railways of the country—the Hungarian, the Lombardo-Venetian, the Gloggnitz, and the Oedenburg railways. The financial straits in which these railways found themselves forced the Government to pursue to an end the policy it had once begun, and to buy out the roads entirely. By September, 1854, the Government found itself in possession of 1100 miles of railways, or practically the entire mileage of Austria. In the following year, however, the Government suddenly reversed its policy, and began to dispose of its acquired lines, and by 1858 the total length of the State lines dwindled down to some 8 miles. This radical change in the railway policy of the Austrian Government, while partly due to official mismanagement under State control, was mainly caused by the fact that the Government needed a large amount of ready cash, in order to effect a change in its monetary standard. The following decade was marked by feverish activity in construction, due largely to indiscriminate grants of subventions by the Government to private companies. From 1860 to 1870 the length of private lines increased from 1815 miles to 3800 miles, while the proportion of subsidized roads increased from 20 per cent, at the close of the fifties to 75 per cent. in 1866. In 1873 the Austrian Government, partly influenced by the great drain upon its finances caused by the granting of subventions, and partly stimulated by the success of State railway ownership in Germany and in France, made an attempt to return to its former policy. As an initial step in that direction, a law was passed in 1877 conferring on the Government the right to take over, with a few exceptions, all the lines which had been receiving a subvention from the Government, or whose payment of interest had been guaranteed by it. The total amount paid out by the Government in the form of subventions and guarantees up to 1876 was about $49,000,000. Since 1877 the State has steadily increased its railways, both by construction and by purchase, so that at the close of 1898 it owned and controlled over 56 per cent, of the total railway mileage of Austria. The experience of Hungary with its railways has been, in the main, the same as that of Austria, with the difference that the Hungarian Government, since the Ausgleich of 1867, has pursued the policy of State ownership and control
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Austria HtlNOABT Year State (Milee) Private (Miles) State (Milee) Private (Miles) 1850 516 8 8 1221 4129 6780 326 1817 3781 6867 6369 4976 120 17 1002 1870 221 • 1935 1890 3633 4855 3440* 1899 57671
- Includinp: -000 milee operated bj the State.
+ Including 4000 miles operated by the State.
with greater energy. The first steam railway in Hungary was opened in July, 1846, a line 21 miles long, from Budapest to Waitzen. At the end of 1899 the total length of the railway lines of Hungary was about 10,500 miles, of which
