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184 which should yield a great production at home. The Railways were bought by the State, and preferential rates granted. The Banks were brought under the control of the State by a system of interlocked shareholding, and credit was organised for industry. Cartels and Combines reduced the cost of production and distribution. The result was that about the year 1900 German emigration, which had been steadily falling, ceased altogether, except in so far as balanced by immigration.

The economic offensive was increased by methods of penetration abroad. Shipping lines were subsidised, and banks were used as trade outposts in foreign cities. International Combines were organised under German control, very largely with the help of the Jews of Frankfurt. Finally, in 1905, Germany imposed such a system of commercial treaties on seven adjoining nations as meant their economic subjection. One of these nations was Russia, then weak from war and revolution. Those treaties are said to have taken ten years to think out—a characteristic efflorescence of Kultur!

The rapid German growth was a triumph of organisation, or, in other words, of the strategical, the 'ways and means' mentality. The fundamental scientific ideas were, most