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Content: He desired instead the continued existence of the loosely organized
German Confederation with its forty-odd members, none equal to Austria in
strength. Prussia's kings and its conservative elite sometimes objected to
Austria's primacy in the confederation, but they had little desire for German
unification, which they regarded as a potential threat to Prussia's existence. Germany's lower classes--farmers, artisans, and factory workers--were not
included in the discussions about political and economic reform. Germany's
farmers had been freed to some degree from many obligations and dues owed to the
landowning aristocracy, but they were often desperately poor, earning barely
enough to survive. Farmers west of the Elbe River usually had properties too
small to yield any kind of prosperity. Farmers east of the Elbe often were
landless laborers hired to work on large estates. Artisans, that is, skilled
workers in handicrafts and trades belonging to the traditional guilds, saw their
economic position worsen as a result of the industrialization that had begun to
appear in Germany after 1815. The guilds attempted to stop factory construction
and unrestricted commerce, but strong economic trends ran counter to their
wishes. Factory workers, in contrast, were doing well compared with these other
groups and were generally content with their lot when the economy as a whole
prospered. The Revolutions of 1848
Europe endured hard times during much of the 1840s.