Among the Germans the background of industrial development was very different from that which we have noted in Britain. Where the river valleys leave the hills for the northern plain are old cities of great dignity and fame, and though they were somewhat decadent after the decay of the Hanse, they were strong enough to keep their common lands and their tradition of city government from the Middle Ages. Coal was found along this zone, and it became industrialized, but the new movement had to respect the cities, which grew often on public land. The old city of Nürnberg developed industrial refinements on the basis of craftsmanship, which owed a great deal to the old business of distributing goods from the East brought up from Venice to its {102} mart. There was thus neither on the one hand the same general growth of slums as in Britain, nor on the other the accumulation of immense profits from slum development to be used as liquid capital for speculative purposes. Moreover, the industrial effort in Germany was contemporaneous with the effort to make Germany a real nation-state, and each movement influenced the other. Much thought was given to the question of the national balance-sheet, and industry was made to help agriculture by conversion of waste products into fertilizers. Thus, though Germany was experiencing the same cityward drift of people as Britain, her agriculture remained in a far stronger position than ours, and with that went the probability of better maintenance of the quality of the people. The wasting of resources on war, the distrust created by aggressive intrigues, the loss of territory and minerals, and the loss of health of the people through the blockade, all imply changes in the situation of the German people, the consequences of which it is difficult to foresee. German industry utilized Polish labour in large quantities, and was much concerned with the westward-flowing Slavonic stream which was said to be altering the character of the German people. On the other hand, a German stream of organization flowed eastward and south-eastward, and the industrial fever made great strides in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Bohemia, in Austria proper, in Upper Silesia, and in Poland. In Bohemia it emphasized the differences between German and Slavonic elements of the people; in Upper Silesia and in Poland the Germans were mainly found in the towns, especially in the leader class, and often difference of language and sentiment between masters and men was a very undesirable feature. Polish industrial centres were correspondingly notorious for their bad social conditions before the war.