ABSTRACT
There were modest increases in productivity. The labour force in breweries grew by some 37.6 per cent in the quarter century after 1882, consumption of beer (see Table 4.2, production being roughly in line) by 88.1 per cent between 1880/81 and 1912/13. It was the acceleration of the mechanisation of the end phase of the brewing process which led to the extensive replacement of manual labour. A brewer utilising advanced technology was in a position to exert pressure on the workforce and thus counter intensive contemporary moves to improve pay and wage conditions. In addition a social aspect of industrial development in Germany, which furthered beer consumption towards the end of the century, should be taken into account. It was the German workers-their emergence as a social class cannot be separated from the industrialisation process-who became the chief consumers of beer. Thus in 1909 a leading writer on brewing matters maintained that no less than nine-tenths of all beer drunk in Germany was consumed by the German working population, that is by those earning less than 2,000 marks annually (Struve 1909:206).
