German Poland, from Upper Silesia to the Gulf of Danzig, contains about 4,000,000 Poles. In Upper Silesia, they constitute 61 per cent of the population and number about 1,300,000. This majority has been maintained, in the face of aggressive Germanization, since the first half of the fourteenth century. The city of Posen contains 170,000 inhabitants, of whom 58 per cent are Poles. The farming districts of the province contain only about 10 per cent of Germans. Over 900,000 Poles live in East and West Prussia. In this section of Germany, they form a sufficiently compact body to be able to send representatives chosen from their own people to the Landstag and Reichstag. The western coast of the Gulf of Danzig and the banks of the lower Vistula are almost exclusively Polish. A solid wedge of Polish humanity is here interposed between the Germans of Pomerania and of East Prussia. This thorough isolation of an important body of Germans may become a thorny problem in any eventual settlement of Polish boundaries. Upper Silesia is the best endowed section of Polish territory. The grayish soil which forms the surface of the Oder valley is eminently fitted for cereal and beet cultivation and the farmers of this soil are generally Poles. They often represent 90 per cent of the rural population.[115] In the cities and generally speaking in the industrial field they are laborers. Capital and the management of factories and of mines are in German hands. The most interesting feature of the clash between Germans and Poles in Upper Silesia is found in the failure of the Germans in their efforts to force their language upon an alien people. Forty years ago, Polish noblemen were apt to blush at the thought of their Slavic origin in the presence of the German rulers of their land. But the vexations inflicted on them by Prussian administration, since the formation of the German Empire, have bred a spirit of defiance and revolt. As a result Silesian Poles were never so conscious of nationality as they are today. They band together in order to resist Germanization more effectively. Small tradesmen, petty farmers and professional men organize themselves into bodies to which individual interests are intrusted whenever German methods become intolerable. But the greatest asset of Polish nationality in this fight against annihilation is its high birth rate. This has also led to the emigration of Poles to the industrial districts of Westphalia, the coal districts of the Lens basin in France and to America. This flow of Poles comes mainly from the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, where sandy inert soils cannot accommodate rapidly increasing numbers.