Emil Lederer: Review of Lujo Brentano, Die deutschen Getreidezölle. Eine Denkschrift (1910)

Emil Lederer’s short review presents Brentano’s memorandum for the international free-trade congress as an empirically compelling indictment of German grain tariffs. It follows the pamphlet from the history of protection under Bismarck through subsequent tariff changes to their consequences for consumers, public revenue, and agricultural land values. Lederer reserves a fuller discussion for a later critical literature survey, but his judgment is unequivocal:

Das Buch behandelt die Geschichte der deutschen Getreidezölle und entwickelt ihre Wirkungen nach jeder Richtung hin in unübertrefflicher Klarheit.

English translation: The book treats the history of the German grain tariffs and develops their effects in every direction with unsurpassable clarity.

The review’s central distinction is between protection ostensibly granted to agriculture as a whole and benefits concentrated among a small minority of agricultural enterprises, especially large landowners east of the Elbe. Reporting Brentano’s statistical evidence, Lederer notes that only 23.25 percent of agricultural enterprises had an interest in the tariffs. Meanwhile, protection failed to eliminate import dependence: Germany still relied on foreign grain for an annual average of 52.6 days in 1899–1909. Although exceptional circumstances could force exporters to absorb duties, Lederer endorses Brentano’s rejection of Bismarck’s general claim that foreign countries paid them.

The argument shifts from tariff incidence to the social costs of dearer food. For a working-class family at the specified income level, the burden represented eight to eighteen working days annually, depending on the tariff rate. Lederer also reports Brentano’s connections between tariffs, reduced consumption of other goods, overcrowded housing, and rising crime. The defense of protection on military grounds receives a pointed reversal: agriculture supplied only a third of recruits, while its dependence on foreign labor would make wartime cultivation particularly vulnerable.

Gerade dann wäre Deutschland auf Getreideinfuhr in höherem Maße noch angewiesen als in Friedenszeiten (S. 24).

English translation: Precisely then Germany would be dependent upon grain imports to a still higher degree than in times of peace (p. 24).

The second part traces how changes in customs administration and agrarian political organization sustained protection. Abolition of the requirement to establish the identity of imported and exported grain prevented lower tariff rates from bringing lower prices. Lederer then recounts the formation of the Bund der Landwirte, Caprivi’s fall, and the higher tariffs effective from March 1906. The resulting price increases were not offset by wage and salary gains; factories near the Dutch border even built workers’ housing in the Netherlands, where living was cheaper. Export incentives also reduced customs receipts, undermining the fiscal justification for protection. The review thus presents tariffs as a transfer to private beneficiaries that simultaneously strained household budgets and public finances.

Its culminating conceptual move concerns the capitalization of protection into land prices:

Die wichtigste Wirkung jedoch erblickt der Verfasser in der Preisbildung der Bodenwerte.

English translation: The most important effect, however, the author discerns in the formation of the prices of land values.

Rising land values encouraged sales and mounting indebtedness, making agriculture increasingly vulnerable to the eventual removal of the policy supporting those values. Lederer reports Brentano’s conviction that growing burdens on the majority, together with the fiscal needs of the Reich and individual states, would force a change. Delay would not secure agriculture’s future but enlarge the eventual crisis.

The closing assessment explains the memorandum’s political force through its evidentiary method: the orderly presentation of material substantiates earlier criticisms and warnings about grain tariffs. Lederer treats empirical demonstration itself as an instrument of agitation, and anticipates greater public influence as the approaching Reichstag elections bring tariff policy to the foreground. The review’s relevance lies in this connection between distributive analysis and political urgency: protection’s concentrated gains conceal broad social costs while generating asset values and debts that make reform progressively more hazardous.