The fight was, in fact, hardest of all for the occupants of the marginal Alpine farms, whose costs were increased by bad local communications and other difficulties, including the irrational siting and shape of many of their holdings.67 If they did not subdivide so much as the Bohemian peasants, this was partly because they had, as a rule, fewer children, but even more, because their children did not want to stay on the land at all. These holdings were not divided; they simply vanished altogether. After 1869, Drage writes,68 ‘the sale of small farms began on a large scale. In one District (Bezirk) of Styria 700 small farms were put up for sale, and in one commune the peasant proprietors had diminished by 33 within a very few years’. In some mountainous areas, the population was decreasing by the end of the 1870s.
Some of these farms were bought up by valley peasants, who used them as adjuncts to their own farms, but more often, they passed out of peasant hands altogether, the purchasers being either big landlords or nouveaux riches industrialists, who sometimes exploited their agricultural or forestal resources (this happened where the process took place, as it did on a smaller scale, in Bohemia), or turned them down to deer forest. Even these purchasers often got the farms only at second-hand: they were first bought up by unscrupulous middle-men, who dazzled the simple peasants by dangling before their eyes sums of ready money which seemed to them enormous, but melted in their hands once they took it into the town.69
Some of the peasants, and some Catholic associations which took up their cause, began to agitate against these abuses in the 1870s, but got little satisfaction out of the legislature. A blanket law allowing the re-establishment of the indivisible Bauernhof was, after years of debate, adopted by the Reichsrat in 1889, but the Landtage, who were left to apply it with such modifications as seemed desirable in the light of local conditions, simply left it lying on their tables, and the same fate seems to have attended a law of the same year on Güterschlachterei (buying up peasant holdings, or parts of them, for profit); I have, at least, failed to find any reference to them in the Parliamentary debates of the 1890s.70
The Knecht, especially, perhaps, on a peasant farm, existed under conditions of great squalor. He usually slept in the stables, along with the horses and cows, ate miserably and was paid a pittance. He enjoyed no protective legislation at all, and his working day often began at 4 a.m., and lasted till dark. ‘It is a subject of wonder,’ wrote Tiefen, ‘that there are grown people who would give a whole day’s work for such pay,’71 and by the 1880s they were beginning to refuse to do so, and to migrate into the towns, or overseas. Landlords were complaining of the wages which agricultural labour was demanding. It is rather difficult to reconcile these complaints with the figures recorded by observers of the wages actually paid, but it seems a fact that these were often more than the masters could easily afford to pay. Tiefen, writing of the year 1892, put the number of this class at over two millions72 but it is not clear how they are defined. At harvest time, the bigger landlords relied chiefly on gangs of seasonal labour, who sometimes came from a long distance, or help from local dwarf-holders.73 For this work the payment was, traditionally, chiefly in kind, in the form of an agreed proportion of the crop harvested.
Up to 1890 the richer peasants voted strictly Conservative, usually Clerical, as did most of the men enfranchised under Taaffe’s reform. Almost the only stirrings of oppositional life among these classes, up to this date, were at least half national – Czech peasants against German landlords, or Ruthene against Polish. The dwarf-holders and landless men, not possessing the vote, were politically inarticulate, although the next years were to see them driven to other ways of venting their grievances.
An important social factor which began to operate towards the end of the period was that of emigration.74 Before about 1880 emigration from the Monarchy had been almost negligible, and where it occurred, had been chiefly the product of local and special causes,75 but about that date a stream of emigration to the New World had set in, which had then increased steadily in volume, the annual figure rising from some 20,000 in 1880 to nearly 40,000 in 1890. The nett loss of population to the Monarchy was about 80% of this, for on an average, about 20% of the emigrants returned after a few years, either because they had made abroad what seemed to them a sufficient fortune, or because they had despaired of ever doing so.
Except for the special case that a large number of Jews, some of whom were well-to-do and came from urban centres, including Vienna, left Austria,76 nearly all the emigrants were from the land, the great majority of them landless men or dwarf-holders. Far the biggest number came from Galicia-Bukovina, with smaller contingents from other Lands, such as Dalmatia, in which the rural population was reaching saturation point.77 There was also a considerable seasonal migration of harvest workers, chiefly to Germany, although some went as far afield as France and Belgium. Most of these, again, came from Galicia.
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The other important phenomenon at the lower end of the social scale had been the emergence of a really big industrial proletariat – a change which had been larger than the mere figures of increased industrialization would indicate, for thanks in part to the deliberate policy of the men who had governed Austria from 1849 to 1880, the growth had been almost entirely in the factories, at the expense of the handicraftsmen and artisans. By 1890 some twenty per cent of the entire working population of Austria (including workers in industry proper, miners and home-workers) constituted an industrial proletariat in the true sense of the term. Most of these were now employed by large or medium-sized concerns, for among the factories themselves, the tendency had been towards concentration.
The harsh conditions reimposed under absolutism had not thereafter improved for many years. Only child labour still enjoyed the modest protection enacted for its benefit by Joseph II. Adult labour, male and female (and female labour, excluded by the old guilds, was extensively used in the factories), was quite unprotected. Hours of work were back on their old level; housing and sanitary conditions, miserable; wages, at least for the unskilled worker, as low as the masters could make them – nor is it true (as was frequently alleged) that here was a new tyranny imposed by unscrupulous Jewish blood-suckers and replacing the milder rule of Christian masters, for the latter were no better than the former.78 The conditions simply reflected the exploitation by the strong of the weaker party which was powerless to defend itself.
Until the advent of Parliamentary Government, the workers had not even been able to make their voices heard in their own defence, since they, like all other classes of Austrian society, had been forbidden to associate even for non-political purposes.79 In 1867, however, a change did come about in this respect, for the workers profited by the general right of association enacted in that year by the Reichsrat, although that did not include a right to combine for trade purposes. Nevertheless, a large number of associations sprang into being, including the important Arbeiterbildungverein (Workers’ Educational Association). The movement, however, promptly divided into two camps, one representing the ‘self-help’ doctrines of Schulze-Delitsch, the other, whose programme linked up with that of the International Labour movement, and was promoted in Austria by Lassalle’s pupil, Heinrich Oberwinder, the far more radical tenets of Lassalle. This was strongly political: the programme included State intervention to protect the workers, and to reform society as a whole; complete freedom of association and combination, and of the Press; State help for the workers’ co-operative societies; direct and general suffrage; abolition of the standing army and its replacement by a ‘people’s militia’; and separation of Church and State. That the more extreme current gained the upper hand was largely due to the hostility to any workers’ movement shown by the Liberals. Dr Giskra, who is credited with the aphorism that ‘the social question stopped at Bodenbach’, told a deputation which waited on him in 1868 with a petition for universal suffrage: ‘Don’t think that we in Austria are going to introduce a mob rule under which the proletariat will storm the House, cap in hand�
��.80
The disheartened self-helpers left the leadership of the workers’ movement to their rivals, who, on 13 December 1869, organized a great demonstration: 20,000 workers filed past Parliament to demonstrate in favour of general suffrage, complete freedom of association and assembly, and the right of combination. Actually, the Government had been better than its word: it had already, five months before, referred ‘the reform of the Gewerbeordnung’ to a Committee which, while pronouncing on principle against the legal limitation of hours of work for male adults (on the ground that it would deprive them of the chance to earn more money), recommended protective legislation for women and children and many other reforms (including a large part of those introduced a decade later), with legalization of the right of combination.81 The Government now sanctioned the last-named right with unexpected speed82 (again on grounds of principle) thereby legalizing strikes, although revenging itself by arresting fifteen of the workers’ leaders for high treason83 and dissolving all their associations, except those which were specifically non-political, and it was preparing further legislation, but then came its fall. The Hohenwart-Schäffle Government amnestied the imprisoned men, but had no time to deal constructively with the labour question, and the Liberals’ second term of office proved as barren in this field as in most others. Austrian and Hungarian delegates met their German opposite numbers at a conference in Berlin, in November 1872,84 and in the following years the Reichsrat frequently discussed the labour question, but their minds soon became too preoccupied with higher things for them even to carry into effect the good intentions entertained by some of them.
Meanwhile the workers’ conditions had become worse than ever. The boom had produced an influx into the factories, causing in particular a great housing shortage in the industrial centres. Workers who had formerly received free accommodation in the factories (and dismal as this was,85 it was yet regarded as a benefit) now had to find it elsewhere, and landlords of the Rachman type were driving the rents sky-high. Then the Krach caused unemployment on an unprecedented scale. This, however, rather weakened, than strengthened, the workers’ movement. The workers were disillusioned with their leaders: moreover, they had no money to pay subscriptions, and dared not complain for fear of dismissal. The membership of the Trade Unions sank to a very low figure. A small Social Democrat Party survived, but was rendered impotent by personal rivalries, and when these had been bridged over (in 1877) it split again on a question of theory into the ‘moderates’ and the ‘extremists’, who, embittered by the attitude of the Government, declared even the fight for the vote useless. ‘We can hope for no more reforms from the ruling classes’, wrote its organ … ‘we want no milk and water alleviation of conditions; we want total liberation.’
Meanwhile, a parallel movement which had begun in Prague in 1867 had met with a similar fate. Beginning on Schulze-Delitsch lines, it had been driven to the Left in the 1870s, and then to near-disintegration. Although refounded (this time on a Marxist basis) in 1878, it led no more than a shadow existence.
In the 1880s, so-called anarchist tendencies developed. Political crimes were perpetrated, and workers and police came into bloody conflict. The Taaffe Government reacted very strongly against the violence. After 1884 a state of emergency was proclaimed in Vienna and its environs, including Wiener Neustadt, and three hundred workers were expelled from them.86 In 1886 an ‘anarchist law’ was enacted which suspended trial by jury anywhere in Austria for offences which had ‘anarchist and subversive motives’. This was employed very freely against workers.
Nevertheless, a certain change of heart was coming about in wide circles, although this was perhaps occasioned rather by antipathy towards the Liberals, and especially towards the Jewish element among them, than by sympathy for the workers. The early 1880s saw the birth, in close mutual connection, of two movements, both favourable to the workers. One was the ‘socialist’ German national movement, the most prominent figure in which was Georg von Schönerer. This is described more fully elsewhere,87 but it may be emphasized here that all the early agitation developed by Schönerer and his then associates was for social reform, its anti-Semitism being adduced as a social necessity. The second movement represented a revival, in new form, of Christian Socialism. Its spiritual rector, Freiherr von Vogelsang, was a recruit both to Austria and to Catholicism, for he came of a family of Prussian Protestants, and settled in Vienna only in the 1860s. There, however, this remarkable man, who absolutely loathed the capitalist system,88 began to preach a doctrine of social reform on Christian Social lines through a corporative society. His ideas harmonized well enough with those of a group of high Austrian aristocrats, headed by Prince Alois Liechtenstein, who were particularly concerned with the plight of the old craftsmanship and its practitioners under the competition from the sweated labour of the factories. Under their influence, representatives of employers and workers met in Parliament in 1883 for a conference on hours of work. No agreement could be reached, but a valuable precedent had been set. The Gewerbeordnung was amended to extend the list of trades which could be practised only by qualified men, and the Government instituted an inquiry into the conditions of factory labour. In 1885–7 a whole series of reforms,89 most of them modelled on the German legislation, were introduced. Hours of work were limited to eleven daily in factories, ten in mines, with compulsory Sunday rest. The employment of children under twelve was prohibited altogether, and the working day for women and young persons limited to eight hours. Factory inspectors were appointed (at first, indeed, only a handful).90 Accident insurance was introduced for miners and factory workers, then sickness assurance for many workers, and invalidity, widows’ and orphans’ insurance discussed, although not enacted, as was a proposal for the establishment of Chambers of Workers, with representation in the Reichsrat. Large as were the gaps which still remained, the Socialist leader, Adler, himself told the Brussels Conference of the International in 1895 that Austria possessed the best social legislation on the Continent, after Germany and Switzerland.
Unfortunately, these laws were very widely evaded, or flatly disregarded,91 and most of them did not apply at all to home workers, who still constituted a substantial proportion of the labour force. Thus the conditions of the workers were still profoundly unsatisfactory, but at least a considerable improvement upon those of twenty years earlier.
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Meanwhile, Social Democracy as a political movement had, after touching a nadir in 1886, begun a recovery which it owed almost entirely to a single man. This was Dr Viktor Adler, scion of a prosperous bourgeois family of Jewish origin, and a medical man by profession. Adler had entered politics as a German nationalist and had even been a co-author of the ‘Linz Programme’ described below, but had been repelled by the violence of German nationalism as it developed under Schönerer’s influence, and had been unable to accept its anti-Semitism. He had turned to the workers, prompted, it would appear, by sheer goodness of heart, and had become a convert to Marxism. He soon acquired an extraordinary influence over the workers’ movement. He saw that to be strong, this must be united, and began by taking on himself the task of reuniting the various factions – as he insisted, in the moderate sense, for Socialism must be a regulated movement, working in the open and aiming first at achieving universal suffrage, after which it could force through its demands by regular methods and weight of numbers. After three years of labour he succeeded, in a Congress held at Hainfeld in December 1888–January 1889, in uniting the party on a programme drawn up by himself and Karl Kautsky, of orthodox Social Democracy, based on the programme of the German party and in conformity with the doctrine of the Second International, to which the party then adhered. It condemned private ownership of the means of production and stood for the dictatorship of the proletariat; as immediate aims it called for universal suffrage, the separation of Church and State, the abolition of the standing army and an advanced system of social reform.
The emergence of Social Democracy as a real force of which
the last years of the Taaffe regime were thus witness practically coincided with the appearance of another party of the ‘little men’, in this case, of the craftsmen, small shopkeepers,92 etc., particularly those of Vienna. The ‘Viennese Radicals’, etc., of the early elections belonged to this group, which, under various titles, all had the same objective, which was that of arresting the economic decline of the very worthy class which they were championing, and all, generally speaking, had the same panacea, a more or less unadulterated anti-Semitism.
The 1882 extension of the franchise gave the vote to a large number of members of this class, many of whom at first showed a disposition to follow the rebel German nationalist, Schönerer. But while Schönerer’s anti-Semitism was entirely satisfactory to them, they were repelled by the hostility developed by him towards the Dynasty and the Church, while his national programme passed over their heads. Doctrinally, they were more attracted by the Christian Socialism being preached by Vogelsang and his circle.
Their divisions and their inexperience, however, left them ineffectual until they suddenly found an inspired mouthpiece and leader in Dr Karl Lueger, a young advocate of humble origin (which gave him a natural understanding of the ‘little man’s’ feelings), great ambition, and a charm and an eloquence to match it, who in 1875 had secured election to the Municipal Council of Vienna. Originally a Liberal, Lueger transferred his allegiance to the Democrats, and soon made himself a big name by his attacks on corruption and vested interests – attacks which seldom failed to point out the Jewish element in their objects. In 1885 he was elected to the Reichsrat, and soon after came into contact with Prince Alois Liechtenstein, and through him, with a ‘Christian Social Union’ which two disciples of Vogelsang’s, Psenner and Latchka, founded in 1887.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 100
