The Depopulation of Pomerania by Emigration

[…] Many of the peasants' houses are either empty or being pulled down [...] let for twenty per cent [...] in order to sell as quickly as possible [...]

A Pomeranian village which had lost only a very little of its most able labor [...] in a neighborhood had lost [...] a few years [...]

[...] one man goes by the agent's help, and almost the whole village, perhaps a whole district, hears the account he sends home in a couple of years, which will draw all his family and half his acquaintances after him.

The argument which will readily suggest itself to the political economist is that if the landowner wishes to keep his laborers he must improve their position by giving them better wages. But facts are directly opposed to this theory: it is precisely from those parts of the country in which laborers are the most liberally paid that the tide of emigration is the strongest. The reason is that the higher the wage, the sooner the laborer has the sum required for his passage and first settlement in his new home, and when that is accomplished he emigrates. In this manner it has actually become the landlord's private interest not to treat his men too well, lest he should furnish them with the means for their flight. Such a motive for keeping wages down is, of course, a very low and immoral one; but it cannot fail to exert some force. On the other hand, it cuts two ways, as it makes the contrast greater between the laborer's own position and the picture sent back to him of that of his old friends who have already crossed the Atlantic.

If, again, the political economist should urge that there must be a certain limit, or rather amount of improvement, in the laborer's position which would induce him to remain at home, the answer is that to reach that limit would involve the payment of such wages as would ruin the land holder.

This brings us to a third [aspect] of the evil, so far as it can be considered [...] the price of land [...] A buyer of estates [...] and the same [...] result [is] not to leave the farmer any margin for working capital. This is all the more unfortunate because, for the greater part, the land is held by small proprietors; little ready [capital], and many have been obliged to mortgage heavily in the first instance; and thus a comparatively slight depreciation in the value of landed property involves for them the loss of their all.

Unless, however, some unforeseen circumstance should check the present westward current, land must fall in the depopulated districts, and then, perhaps, the new-comers, who will have bought cheaply, may be able to pay the next generation wages sufficiently attractive to keep it at home; but in the mean time the small landed proprietors will have suffered severely. Some, indeed, are already following the example of their men, and emigrating too.

The Pomeranian Agricultural Society, at a recent meeting held at Stettin, passed two resolutions from which it hopes for some relief. In the first place, to petition the Chancellor to instruct the German consuls at American ports to inquire how many able-bodied emigrants are staying there and willing to return to their native country, on the condition of a free passage; and, secondly, to recommend that emigration be placed under more stringent police regulations than it is at present.

It would be incorrect, however, to suppose that the entire loss of population to the Pomeranian villages is due entirely to the fascination of a backwoods life in America; a very different sort of life in the towns is also a great temptation. The peasant's daughter takes a housemaid's place in Breslau or Berlin, and writes home flaming accounts of concerts and theatres. The brother reads them, and straightway throws down his spade or leaves his plough to try his fortunes in the same great world that has made his sister such a fine lady. Railways and the universality of a certain amount of education render such an ambitious step far easier now than formerly.