ABSTRACT
With Bismarck’s social reforms in the 1880s, Germany became the first country in the world to introduce a public system of social insurance. Industry largely supported these reforms. Looking back, Henry Axel Bueck, executive director of the powerful Central Association of German Industry (CDI), praised the reforms as “a work of civilization of the highest order, which, as a model for all times, will bring [the Empire] honor” (Bueck 1905: 792). Why did the powerful industrialists organized in the CDI decide to back social reform? As we have seen in Chapter 3, the CDI adamantly refused to cooperate with organized labor and considered social democracy a revolutionary movement, dangerous to industry. The CDI’s motivation was thus not to forge an alliance with organized labor. Why did the CDI thus decide to support a policy that apparently aided the economic independence of the working class?
