The empire was founded toward the end of two decades of rapid economic expansion, during which the German states surpassed France in steel production and railway building. By 1914 Germany was an industrial giant second only to the United States. After the establishment of the North German Confederation (1867), the impediments to economic growth were quickly removed. The usury laws and fetters on internal migration disappeared. A uniform currency based on gold was adopted by Bismarck and his National Liberal allies. An imperial central bank was created, and the tough regulations hindering the formation of joint-stock corporations fell by the wayside. Combined with the euphoria over unification, these changes led to an unprecedented boom between 1870 and 1873. The Gründerjahre (“founders’ years”), as the years after unification were called, saw 857 new companies founded with a capital of 1.4 billion talers—more new companies and investment in the private sector than in the previous 20 years. Dividends reached an astounding 12.4 percent. The railway system almost doubled in size between 1865 and 1875. Tens of thousands of Germans invested in stock for the first time to demonstrate both their patriotism and their faith in the future of the new German Empire.

These halcyon years came to an abrupt end with the onset of a worldwide depression in 1873. The prices for agricultural and industrial goods fell precipitously; for six successive years the net national product declined. A sharp decline in profits and investment opportunities persisted until the mid-1890s. About 20 percent of the recently founded corporations went bankrupt.

In agriculture, the deeply indebted Junker elite now faced severe competition as surplus American and Russian grain flooded the German market. Among the more immediate consequences of the crash was a burst of emigration from the depressed provinces of rural Prussia. During the 1870s some 600,000 people departed for North and South America; this number more than doubled in the 1880s. As a result of the depression, social and economic questions increasingly preoccupied the Reichstag, while constitutional and political issues were put on the back burner.

It would be incorrect to draw the conclusion that the economy remained in the doldrums for an entire generation. While the 1870s and early 1890s were depressed periods, the 1880s saw significant recovery in industry, if not in agriculture. The British, who had paid scant attention to Germany’s emergence as an industrial power, began to respect their competitor during this decade.

In adjusting to the depression of the 1870s, Germany’s leaders chose to return to a regulated economy after a generation of increasingly free trade. The hallmark of the new age was concentration; Germany became the land of big industry, big agriculture, big banks, and big government. The two areas in which the trend toward a controlled economy was most evident were tariff policy and the formation of cartels. Cartel agreements, which were sanctioned by the state, apportioned markets, set standards for manufactured goods, and fixed prices. It is not coincidental that Germany, where the guild system prevailed into the 19th century, should have given birth to the cartel. Cartels arose rapidly in the steel, coal, glass, cement, potash, and chemical industries. Between 1882 and 1895 the total number of business enterprises grew by 4.6 percent, but the number employing more than 50 workers grew by 90 percent.

In 1878–79 Bismarck initiated a significant change in German economic policy in conjunction with his new alliance with the two conservative parties at the expense of the National Liberals. Protective import tariffs were introduced on iron and the major agricultural grains; the latter were raised in 1885 and again in 1887. This departure from liberal economic policy addressed complaints from industrialists, estate owners, and peasants about the terrible impact the depression was having on their respective incomes. Only Britain held out against the protectionist tide that swept Europe in the 1880s. Bismarck’s shift, nevertheless, had serious political implications. It signified his opposition to any further evolution in the direction of political democracy. The grain tariffs provided the Junker estate owners of Prussia, who constituted the main opposition to full political emancipation, with subventions that insulated them somewhat from the international market. Thus, the landed elite, major industrialists, the military, and the higher civil service formed an alliance to forestall the rise of social democracy, prevent further political liberalization, and make sure that the uncertainties of the market did not weaken the elites.