In dealing with the problems created by the new mass politics, liberal governments often followed policies that undermined the basic tenets of liberalism. This was particularly true in Great Britain and Italy.
GREAT BRITAIN In Britain, the demands of the working-class movement caused Liberals to move away from their ideals. Liberals were forced to adopt significant social reforms due to the pressure of two new working-class organizations: trade unions and the Labour Party. Frustrated by the government’s failure to enact social reform, trade unions began to advocate more radical change of the economic system, calling for “collective ownership and control over production, distribution, and exchange.” This “new unionism” also led to the union organization of many steel factory workers and to new confrontations in the streets of London as British workers struck for a minimum wage and other benefits.
At the same time, a movement for laborers emerged among a group of intellectuals known as the Fabian Socialists who stressed the need for the workers to use their right to vote to capture the House of Commons and pass legislation that would benefit the laboring class. Neither the Fabian Socialists nor the British trade unions were Marxist. They did not advocate class struggle and revolution but instead favored evolution toward a socialist state by democratic means. In 1900, representatives of the trade unions and Fabian Socialists coalesced to form the Labour Party. Although the new party won only one seat in 1900, it managed to elect twenty-nine members to the House of Commons in 1906.
The Liberals, who gained control of the House of Commons in that year and held the government from 1906 to 1914, perceived that they would have to enact a program of social welfare or lose the support of the workers. The policy of reform was especially advanced by David Lloyd George (1863-1945), a brilliant orator from Wales who had been deeply moved by the misery of Welsh coal miners and served as chancellor of the Exchequer from 1908 to 1915. The Liberals abandoned the classic principles of laissez-faire and voted for a series of social reforms. The National Insurance Act of 1911 provided benefits for workers in case of sickness and unemployment, to be paid for by compulsory contributions from workers, employers, and the state. Additional legislation provided a small pension for retirees over seventy and compensation for workers injured on the job. To pay for the new program, Lloyd George increased the tax burden on the wealthy classes. Though both the benefits of the program and the tax increases were modest, they were the first hesitant steps toward the future British welfare state. Liberalism, which had been based on the principle that the government that governs least governs best, had been transformed.
In the effort to achieve social reform, Lloyd George was also forced to confront the power of the House of Lords. Composed of hereditary aristocrats, the House of Lords took a strong stance against Lloyd George’s effort to pay for social reform measures by taxes, however modest, on the wealthy. In 1911, the Liberals pushed through a law that restricted the ability of the House of Lords to impede legislation enacted by the House of Commons. After 1911, the House of Lords became largely a debating society.
The Liberals also tried to solve the Irish problem (see Chapter 23). Parliament finally granted home rule in 1914, but the explosive situation in Ireland itself created more problems. Irish Protestants in northern Ireland, especially in the province of Ulster, wanted no part of an Irish Catholic state. The outbreak of World War I enabled the British government to sidestep the potentially explosive issue and to suspend Irish home rule for the duration of the war. Failure to deal decisively with the issue simply led to more problems later.
ITALY Liberals had even greater problems in Italy. A certain amount of stability was achieved from 1903 to 1914 when the liberal leader Giovanni Giolitti (joh-VAHN-nee joh-LEE-tee) served intermittently as prime minister. Giolitti was a master of using trasformismo, or transformism, a system in which old political groups were transformed into new government coalitions by political and economic bribery. In the long run, however, Giolitti’s devious methods made Italian politics even more corrupt and unmanageable. When urban workers turned to violence to protest their living and working conditions, Giolitti tried to appease them with social welfare legislation and universal male suffrage in 1912. To strengthen his popularity, he also aroused nationalistic passions by conquering Libya. Despite his efforts, however, worker unrest continued, and in 1914 government troops had to be used to quell rioting workers.
In the 1890s, the fragile Third Republic experienced yet another crisis, which was also evidence of the renewed anti-Semitism in Europe in the late nineteenth century. Early in 1895, Alfred Dreyfus (DRY-fuss), a Jew and a captain in the French general staff, was found guilty by a secret military court of selling army secrets and condemned to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Evidence soon emerged that pointed to his innocence. Another officer, a Catholic aristocrat, was more obviously the traitor, but the army, a stronghold of aristocratic and Catholic officers, refused a new trial. Some rightwing journalists even used the case to push their own anti-Semitic views. After a wave of intense public outrage, however, the Republic’s leaders insisted on a new trial. Although the new trial failed to set aside the guilty verdict, the government pardoned Dreyfus in 1899, and in 1906, he was finally fully exonerated.
The impact of the Dreyfus affair extended beyond France. It convinced Theodor Herzl, who covered the trial for a Viennese newspaper, that assimilation did not protect Jews from anti-Semitism. As a result, as we have seen, he came to advocate that Jews needed a country of their own, leading to the Zionist movement.
In France itself, the Dreyfus affair led to a change in government. Moderate republicans lost control to radical republicans who were determined to make greater progress toward a more democratic society by breaking the power of the Republic’s enemies, especially the army and the Catholic Church. The army was purged of all high-ranking officers who had antirepublican reputations. Most of the Catholic religious orders that had controlled many French schools were forced to leave France. Moreover, church and state were officially separated in 1905, and during the next two years, the government seized church property and stopped paying clerical salaries.
These changes ended the political threat from the right to the Third Republic, which by now commanded the loyalty of most French people. Nevertheless, problems remained. As a nation of small businessmen and farmers, the French lagged far behind Great Britain, Germany, and the United States in industrial activity. Moreover, a surge of industrialization after 1896 left the nation with the realization that little had been done to appease the discontent of the French working classes and their abysmal working conditions. Since only a quarter of French wage earners worked in industry, the French parliament felt little pressure to enact labor legislation. This made the use of strikes more appealing to the working classes. The brutal government repression of labor walkouts in 1911 only further alienated the working classes.
The new imperial Germany begun by Bismarck in 1871 continued as an “authoritarian, conservative, military-bureaucratic power state” during the reign of Emperor William II (1888-1918). Unstable and aggressive, the emperor was inclined to tactless remarks, as when he told the soldiers of a Berlin regiment that they must be prepared to shoot their fathers and mothers if he ordered them to do so. A small group of about twenty powerful men joined William in setting government policy.
By 1914, Germany had become the strongest military and industrial power on the Continent. New social configurations had emerged as more than 50 percent of German workers had jobs in industry while only 30 percent of the workforce was still in agriculture. Urban centers had mushroomed in number and size. The rapid changes in William’s Germany helped produce a society torn between modernization and traditionalism.
The growth of industrialization led to even greater expansion for the Social Democratic Party. Despite the enactment of new welfare legislation to favor the working classes, William II was no more successful than Bismarck at slowing the growth of the Social Democrats. By 1912, it had become the largest single party in the Reichstag. At the same time, the party increasingly became less revolutionary and more revisionist in its outlook. Nevertheless, its growth frightened the middle and upper classes, who blamed labor for their own problems.
With the expansion of industry and cities came demands for more political participation and growing sentiment for reforms that would produce greater democratization. Conservative forces, especially the landowning nobility and representatives of heavy industry, two of the powerful ruling groups in Germany, tried to block it by supporting William II’s activist foreign policy (see “New Directions and New Crises” later in this chapter). Expansionism, they believed, would divert people from further democratization.
The tensions in German society created by the conflict between modernization and traditionalism were also manifested in a new, radicalized, right-wing politics. A number of pressure groups arose to support nationalistic goals. Groups such as the Pan-German League stressed strong German nationalism and advocated imperialism as a tool to overcome social divisions and unite all classes. They were also anti-Semitic and denounced Jews as the destroyers of the national community.
At the beginning of the 1890s, Austria-Hungary was still troubled by the problem of its numerous nationalities (see Chapter 23). The granting of universal male suffrage in 1907 served only to exacerbate the problem because nationalities that had played no role in the government now agitated in the parliament for autonomy. This led prime ministers after 1900 to ignore the parliament and rely increasingly on imperial emergency decrees to govern. Parliament itself became a bizarre forum in which, in the words of one incredulous observer, “about a score of men, all decently clad, were seated or standing, each at his little desk. Some made an infernal noise violently opening and shutting the lids of their desks. Others emitted a blaring sound from little toy trumpets; ... still others beat snare drums.”
The threat the nationalities posed to the position of the dominant German minority in Austria also produced a backlash in the form of virulent German nationalism. As Austria industrialized in the 1870s and 1880s, two working-class parties came into existence, both strongly influenced by nationalism. The Social Democrats, although a Marxist party, supported the Austrian government, fearful that the autonomy of the different nationalities would hinder industrial development and prevent improvements for workers. Even more nationalistic, however, were the Christian Socialists, who, as we have seen, combined agitation for workers with a virulent anti-Semitism.
While subjugating their nationalities, the ruling Magyars in Hungary developed a movement for complete separation from Austria. In 1903, when they demanded that the Hungarian army be separated from the imperial army, Emperor Francis Joseph (as king of Hungary) responded quickly and forcefully. He threatened to impose universal male suffrage on Hungary, a move that would challenge Magyar domination of the minorities. Hungarian leaders fell into line, and the new Hungarian parliamentary leader, Count Istvan Tisza (ISHT-vun TISS-ah), cooperated in maintaining the Dual Monarchy. Magyar rule in Hungary, he realized, was inextricably bound up with the Dual Monarchy; its death would only harm the rule of the Magyar landowning class.
Starting in the 1890s, Russia experienced a massive surge of state-sponsored industrialism under the guiding hand of Sergei Witte (syir-GYAY VIT-uh) (1849-1915), the minister for finance from 1892 to 1903. Count Witte saw industrial growth as crucial to Russia’s national strength. Believing that railroads were a powerful weapon in economic development, Witte pushed the government toward a program of massive railroad construction. By 1900, some 35,000 miles of railroads had been built, including large parts of the 5,000-mile trans-Siberian line between Moscow and Vladivostok, on the Pacific Ocean. Witte also encouraged a system of protective tariffs to help Russian industry and persuaded Tsar Nicholas II (1894-1917) that foreign capital was essential for rapid industrial development. Witte’s program made possible the rapid growth of a modern steel and coal industry in Ukraine, making Russia by 1900 the fourth-largest producer of steel behind the United States, Germany, and Great Britain.
With industrialization came factories, an industrial working class, industrial suburbs around Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and the pitiful working and living conditions that accompanied the beginnings of industrialization everywhere. Socialist thought and socialist parties developed, although repression in Russia soon forced them to go underground and become revolutionary. The Marxist Social Democratic Party, for example, held its first congress in Minsk in 1898, but the arrest of its leaders caused the next one to be held in Brussels in 1903, attended by Russian émigrés. The Social Revolutionaries worked to overthrow the tsarist autocracy and establish peasant socialism. Having no other outlet for their opposition to the regime, they advocated political terrorism and attempted to assassinate government officials and members of the ruling dynasty. The growing opposition to the tsarist regime finally exploded into revolution in 1905.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1905 As had happened elsewhere in Europe in the nineteenth century, defeat in war led to political upheaval at home. Russia’s territorial expansion to the south and east, especially its designs on northern Korea, led to a confrontation with Japan. Japan made a surprise attack on the Russian eastern fleet at Port Arthur on February 8, 1904. In response, Russia sent its Baltic fleet halfway around the world to the East, only to be defeated by the new Japanese navy at Tsushima (TSOO-shee-mah) Strait off the coast of Japan. Much to the astonishment of many Europeans, who could not believe that an Asian state was militarily superior to a great European power, the Russians admitted defeat and sued for peace in 1905.
In the midst of the war, the growing discontent of increased numbers of Russians rapidly led to upheaval. A middle class of business and professional people longed for liberal institutions and a liberal political system. Nationalities were dissatisfied with their domination by an ethnic Russian population that constituted only 40 percent of the empire’s total population. Peasants were still suffering from lack of land, and laborers felt oppressed by their working and living conditions in Russia’s large cities. The breakdown of the transport system caused by the Russo-Japanese War led to food shortages in the major cities of Russia. As a result, on January 9, 1905, a massive procession of workers went to the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg to present a petition of grievances to the tsar. Troops foolishly opened fire on the peaceful demonstration, killing hundreds and launching a revolution (see the box on p. 744). This “ Bloody Sunday” incited workers to call strikes and form unions; meanwhile, zemstvos demanded parliamentary government, ethnic groups revolted, and peasants burned the houses of landowners. After a general strike in October 1905, the government capitulated. Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, in which he granted civil liberties and agreed to create a legislative assembly known as the Duma (DOO-muh), elected directly by a broad franchise. This satisfied the middle-class moderates, who now supported the government’s repression of a workers’ uprising in Moscow at the end of 1905.
FAILURE OF THE REVOLUTION But real constitutional monarchy proved short-lived. Under Peter Stolypin (stuh-LI pyin), who served as the tsar’s chief adviser from late 1906 until his assassination in 1911, important agrarian reforms dissolved the village ownership of land and opened the door to private ownership by enterprising peasants. Nicholas II, however, was no friend of reform. Already by 1907, the tsar had curtailed the power of the Duma, and after Stolypin’s murder, he fell back on the army and bureaucracy to rule Russia.
Between 1860 and 1914, the United States made the shift from an agrarian to a mighty industrial nation. American heavy industry stood unchallenged in 1900. In that year, the Carnegie Steel Company alone produced more steel than Great Britain’s entire steel industry. Industrialization also led to urbanization. While established cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, grew even larger, other moderate-size cities, such as Pittsburgh, grew by leaps and bounds because of industrialization. Whereas 20 percent of Americans lived in cities in 1860, over 40 percent did in 1900. Four-fifths of the population growth in cities came from migration. Eight to 10 million Americans moved from rural areas into the cities, and 14 million foreigners came from abroad.
The United States had become the world’s richest nation and greatest industrial power. Yet serious questions remained about the quality of American life. In 1890, the richest 9 percent of Americans owned an incredible 71 percent of all the wealth. Labor unrest over unsafe working conditions, strict work discipline, and periodic cycles of devastating unemployment led workers to organize. By the turn of the century, one national organization, the American Federation of Labor, emerged as labor’s dominant voice. Its lack of real power, however, was reflected in its membership figures. In 1900, it included only 8.4 percent of the American industrial labor force.
During the so-called Progressive Era after 1900, an age of reform swept across the United States. State governments enacted economic and social legislation, such as laws that governed hours, wages, and working conditions, especially for women and children. The realization that state laws were ineffective in dealing with nationwide problems, however, led to a Progressive movement at the national level. The Meat Inspection Act (1906) and Pure Food and Drug Act (1905) provided for a limited degree of federal regulation of corrupt industrial practices. The presidency of Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) witnessed the enactment of a graduated federal income tax and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, which permitted the federal government to play a role in important economic decisions formerly made by bankers. Like European nations, the United States was slowly adopting policies that extended the functions of the state.
Canada faced problems of national unity at end of the nineteenth century. In 1870, the Dominion of Canada had four provinces: Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. With the addition of two more – Manitoba and British Columbia – the following year, Canada stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Real unity was difficult to achieve, however, because of the distrust between the English-speaking majority and the French-speaking Canadians, living primarily in Quebec. Wilfred Laurier (LOR-ee-ay) (1841-1919), who became the first French Canadian prime minister in 1896, was able to reconcile the two groups. During his administration, industrialization boomed, especially the production of textiles, furniture, and railway equipment. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, primarily from Europe, also flowed into Canada. Many settled on lands in the west, thus helping populate Canada’s vast territories.