For the proofs see Offenbacher, “Konfession und soziale Schichtung,” p. 54, and the tables at the end of his study. ↩
Especially well illustrated by passages in the works of Sir William Petty, to be referred to later. ↩
Petty’s reference to the case of Ireland is very simply explained by the fact that the Protestants were only involved in the capacity of absentee landlords. If he had meant to maintain more he would have been wrong, as the situation of the Scotch-Irish shows. The typical relationship between Protestantism and capitalism existed in Ireland as well as elsewhere. (On the Scotch-Irish see C. A. Hanna, The Scotch-Irish, two vols.; Putnam, New York.) ↩
This is not, of course, to deny that the latter facts have had exceedingly important consequences. As I shall show later, the fact that many Protestant sects were small and hence homogeneous minorities, as were all the strict Calvinists outside of Geneva and New England, even where they were in possession of political power, was of fundamental significance for the development of their whole character, including their manner of participation in economic life. The migration of exiles of all the religions of the earth, Indian, Arabian, Chinese, Syrian, Phoenician, Greek, Lombard, to other countries as bearers of the commercial lore of highly developed areas, has been of universal occurrence and has nothing to do with our problem. Brentano, in the essay to which I shall often refer, Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus, calls to witness his own family. But bankers of foreign extraction have existed at all times and in all countries as the representatives of commercial experience and connections. They are not peculiar to modern capitalism, and were looked upon with ethical mistrust by the Protestants (see below). The case of the Protestant families, such as the Muralts, Pestalozzi, etc., who migrated to Zurich from Locarno, was different. They very soon became identified with a specifically modern (industrial) type of capitalistic development. ↩
Offenbacher, “Konfession und soziale Schichtung,” p. 58. ↩
Unusually good observations on the characteristic peculiarities of the different religions in Germany and France, and the relation of these differences to other cultural elements in the conflict of nationalities in Alsace are to be found in the fine study of W. Wittich, “Deutsche und französische Kultur im Elsass,” Illustrierte Elsässische Rundschau (1900, also published separately). ↩
This, of course, was true only when some possibility of capitalistic development in the area in question was present. ↩
On this point see, for instance, Dupin de St. André, “L’ancienne église réformée de Tours. Les membres de l’église,” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme., 4, p. 10. Here again one might, especially from the Catholic point of view, look upon the desire for emancipation from monastic or ecclesiastical control as the dominant motive. But against that view stands not only the judgment of contemporaries (including Rabelais), but also, for instance, the qualms of conscience of the first national synods of the Huguenots (for instance 1st Synod, C. partic. qu. 10 in Aymon, Synodes Nationaux, p. 10), as to whether a banker might become an elder of the Church; and in spite of Calvin’s own definite stand, the repeated discussions in the same bodies of the permissibility of taking interest occasioned by the questions of ultra-scrupulous members. It is partly explained by the number of persons having a direct interest in the question, but at the same time the wish to practise usuraria pravitas without the necessity of confession could not have been alone decisive. The same, see below, is true of Holland. Let it be said explicitly that the prohibition of interest in the canon law will play no part in this investigation. ↩
Gothein, Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Schwarzwaldes, I, p. 67. ↩
In connection with this see Sombart’s brief comments (Der moderne Kapitalismus, first edition, p. 380). Later, under the influence of a study of F. Keller (Unternehmung und Mehrwert, Publications of the Goerres-Gesellschaft, XII), which, in spite of many good observations (which in this connection, however, are not new), falls below the standard of other recent works of Catholic apologetics, Sombart, in what is in these parts in my opinion by far the weakest of his larger works (Der Bourgeois), has unfortunately maintained a completely untenable thesis, to which I shall refer in the proper place. ↩
That the simple fact of a change of residence is among the most effective means of intensifying labour is thoroughly established (compare note 34 above). The same Polish girl who at home was not to be shaken loose from her traditional laziness by any chance of earning money, however tempting, seems to change her entire nature and become capable of unlimited accomplishment when she is a migratory worker in a foreign country. The same is true of migratory Italian labourers. That this is by no means entirely explicable in terms of the educative influence of the entrance into a higher cultural environment, although this naturally plays a part, is shown by the fact that the same thing happens where the type of occupation, as in agricultural labour, is exactly the same as at home. Furthermore, accommodation in labour barracks, etc., may involve a degradation to a standard of living which would never be tolerated at home. The simple fact of working in quite different surroundings from those to which one is accustomed breaks through the tradition and
