We have watched the foundation, upon a stubborn soil, of an industry which reached at last a high degree of technical excellence; and this by the use of all the measures that a consistent mercantile policy could prompt. In scarcely any other case have like measures been applied with so wide a sweep and such steady persistency. In scarcely any other case have they been so carefully, step by step, adapted to the concrete conditions. What we have had under our consideration has been a domestic industry, which had already partially gone over to the factory form, but yet in which the workpeople were protected by gild regulation, state control, and governmental inspection. We have had to do with an industry producing for a great inter-state and foreign market, and with undertakers (Unternehmer) and factors (Verleger) occupying the most difficult position conceivable. In spite of all the state support and protection they received, they had to contend with a stern competition, with the shifting chances of the market, and with a task, both in the matter of manufacture and in the matter of trade, of the utmost severity.
The attempt on the whole succeeded. Berlin in 1780-1806 stood almost on a level with all the other places where the silk industry was carried on. It was mainly through the silk industry that Berlin became an important factory town, and the town whose inhabitants were distinguished by the best taste in Germany. Of course people in Berlin could not yet produce quite so cheaply as the manufactures of Lyons which were three centuries older; in many of the finer wares they were behind Krefeld, Switzerland and Holland; but they had caught up with Hamburg and Saxony. They had not yet got so far in 1806 as to be able to meet with unconcern the fluctuations produced by the great war - a period of long and terrible impoverishment, together with the sudden abolition of the gild system, of the old regulations and of all state support, as well as the removal of the prohibition of importation. But since, in the province of Brandenburg, 1503 looms were again at work in 1831, and as many as 3000 in 1840-1860, it is clear, after all, that most of the business concerns that had taken root before 1806 were able to maintain themselves for at least a couple of generations even in the current of free international competition. And the fact that in the sixties and seventies, as living became dearer in Berlin, and the competition of Krefeld and of foreign countries became more intense, most of the Berlin men of business, capitalists and workmen, turned to other occupations, - while some parts of the old industry, like the business of dyeing, maintained themselves in an even more flourishing state, - this fact is no proof that the Berlin silk industry of the eighteenth century was not in its place.
The task set before the men of that time was to secure for the real centre of the Prussian state a share in the industries, and in the forms of industry, that constituted the essential features of the higher civilisation of western Europe. The prosperity of the silk manufacture in a distant and isolated fragment of the state, close to the Dutch frontier, namely Krefeld, could not make up for its absence in the east. Again and again did Frederick the Great endeavour to induce the von der Leyen brothers to move eastward with a part of their business;but all in vain. And so he had to make an effort to reach the same end in another way. In the course of his reign he spent some two million thalers over the silk industry, more indeed than for any other branch of manufacture. And what did he obtain therewith? That he had an industry which every year produced wares worth two million thalers or more, says the mercantilist; -no! that he created an industry which in the nineteenth century disappeared, says the free-trader. I say, the two million thalers are to be looked upon as an expenditure for schooling, as money spent on education, which engrafted on Berlin and the eastern provinces those powers and aptitudes, those manners and customs, without which an industrial state cannot endure. In these feudal territories with their impoverished country towns and craftsmen, both the undertakers and the workmen were altogether wanting who were indispensable for the finer manufactures aiming at the world-market. The introduction of foreigners and the laborious training of natives could be the work only of a political art which realised both its object and its materials. It is significant that at first we are met by Frenchmen and Jews among the factors, and by foreigners, chiefly Lyonese and Italians, among the workpeople; while in 1800, natives prevail in both classes. It might with truth be said, that by their services to the silk industry the French and the Jews repaid the Prussian state for its magnanimous toleration. It was in this way that the best Jewish families of Berlin, the Mendelssohns and Friedlanders, the Veits and the Marcuses, gained their reputation and social position, and at the same time turned the purely mercantile Hebrew body into an industrial one: they themselves changed in character in the process, and grew side by side with the state and society. Most important of all, Berlin in 1800 had a working class of great technical skill, and a body of business men possessed of capital and ability; and this fact remained the great result of the policy of Frederick, whether or no the silk industry survived.
