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j. Next was the widespread demand from every section of thepopulace for regimentation and control of the economic system,including the principle that control should be exercised by producersin the interest of producers. This led to a widespread belief in, ortolerance for, the idea of corporativism.6. Along with this went the rising loss of faith in the parliamentarygovernment. This did not comprehend the whole mass ofthe people but infected large and influential portions of them.As the years 1913 and 1914 came down on the empire, it wasfacing the consequences of these policies and opinions—the debts hadrisen to critical proportions, the demands of the poorer groups werebecoming louder, the need for more conservative spending policieswas evident, yet this was impossible because the necessity for a greatmilitary establishment had been embedded in the popular mind bypropaganda, while any cut in military expenditures would havemeant an increase in unemployment. The gathering difficulties ofindustry were pushing the country in the direction of still moreextensive efforts at control. `War in the Balkans had unsettled affairsin Europe. Great shortages of capital resulted in a disastrous decreasein new enterprises. Government bonds could find no buyers.Bavarian and ¯Westphalian manufacturers were discharging theirworkmen, unemployment was spreading, and living costs were rising.All the problems of forty years—debt, the capital-labor struggle,the demands of the indigent, unemployment, the cost ofmilitarism, and the ambitions of the imperialists were at climacticlevels. Into this disorder—which could have been paralleled in everycontinental country—a Serbian patriot fired a revolver and set inmotion a series of swift events which ended with the Great War andthe final defeat of Germany in November 1918.The war over, a republican government succeeded the imperialone. Thereafter the same forces went to work—the old debts, thestruggle between labor and capital, the unemployment, poverty—allmany times multiplied by the war. And then the republican governmentproceeded to do what the old imperial government had done—continued in debt until the vast bubble burst, after which, startingout free of internal debts, it proceeded to create more deficitsand debts to create national income, to install more extensive social-126

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