ABSTRACT
The Czech Lands were as well-endowed and as well-situated to profit from the circumstances as they had been in earlier decades. By 1900 more than a third of the railway track in the Empire was to be found there, a remarkable proportion considering the long distances involved in other provinces. The Czech Lands also boasted the most complete network of roads. In the twenty years between 1880 and 1900 the production of anthracite almost doubled and of lignite almost trebled; the output of pig-iron increased fivefold. Economic and social changes of this far-reaching kind would have produced tensions in any European country. It took Britain long enough to come to terms with its working class; Russia failed. There were German workers as well as Czech, and Czech businessmen and bankers as well as German. The social condition of the Czech Lands was not unrelievedly gloomy. Industrialisation and urbanisation produced poor factory and housing conditions.
