ABSTRACT
The period between the elections of 1870-1871 and those of 1873-1874 coincided almost exactly with that remarkable economic boom known as the Grunderjahre. Virtually every branch of production and exchange was caught in the upswing. Coal, the bread and potatoes of nineteenth century industry, is as good an indicator of the trend as any. The available sources are not very explicit about the extent to which worker incomes had declined by the time of the Reichstag election, but it is unlikely that they had fallen very far. The impact of the crash was more serious in Barmen. There, both large and small investors lost a great deal of money. In March 1872 Prussia enacted a law placing all public and private schools under state supervision and giving the state the power to appoint all school superintendents. Most liberals evidently did not bother to analyse the laws in such terms.
