The Organization of Saxon Business

Abstract

Although Bueck had shown industry the way to cope with the economic bogey posed by organized labor, particular conditions in Saxony impelled businessmen there to detach the socioeconomic question of work stoppages from the political specter of Social Democracy. Bueck speaking for big business said the two should not be separated; the Centralverband should lead the struggle against both. Stresemann speaking for small business disagreed. Finding Bueck’s political tactics highhanded and old-fashioned, he expressed the twentieth-century view of the new lobby that to be effective an economic pressure group had to muster both interests and opinions. The purpose of an employer association was not just to organize management; it must rally public sentiment, then drifting towards strikers, back to manufacturers who in Saxony were not strong enough to pursue the fire-eating tactics (Scharfmacherei) Bueck’s name conjured up. Stresemann reasoned that Bueck’s do-or-die attitude was sharpening class feeling and provoking political unrest in the proletariat. Implacable management was tightening the grip radical socialism had on the workers. Last-ditch tactics dismayed small businessmen.