This brief official commission speaking turn concerns the meaning of productive capacity (Leistungsfähigkeit) in the potash industry. Lederer’s intervention is a request for conceptual clarification: before figures can establish the industry’s productive potential, the commission must specify what those figures measure.
Ich möchte ersuchen, uns den Begriff der Leistungsfähigkeit etwas klarer zu machen.
English translation: I would like to ask that the concept of productive capacity be made somewhat clearer to us.
Lederer develops this request by distinguishing several ways of increasing output. Greater production might come from fuller utilization of existing labour, changes to shaft installations, the introduction of new methods, or the expansion and construction of works. These possibilities involve different relations between existing resources and additional investment; they cannot simply be treated as equivalent expressions of capacity.
Es ist die Möglichkeit vorhanden, daß mit derselben Arbeiterzahl bei Unterbeschäftigung mehr geleistet wird, ferner die Möglichkeit, daß mit einem geringeren Ausbau der Schachtanlagen die Leistung erhöht wird.
English translation: There is the possibility that, under conditions of underemployment, more is produced with the same number of workers; furthermore, there is the possibility that output is increased with a smaller expansion of the shaft installations.
The enumeration also separates technical possibility from profitability. Lederer includes methods that could raise capacity but are not yet profitable because they require a higher organizational composition of capital. His question therefore reaches beyond current output: does “capacity” describe what existing works can produce, or does it already incorporate changes in methods, facilities, and investment?
Wenn bloße Zahlen einander gegenübergestellt werden, so ist das sehr mißverständlich.
English translation: If bare figures are compared with one another, this is very misleading.
The contribution moves from a demand for definition, through alternative mechanisms of increased production, to a warning about numerical comparison. Its significance lies in this methodological insistence: industrial statistics become meaningful only when their underlying assumptions are explicit. Lederer offers no estimate or policy programme here; he asks for the distinctions necessary to assess either responsibly.
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