MY STUDIES AND STRUGGLES IN VIENNA IN Vienna amazing riches and degrading poverty were mixed together in violent contrast. In the central parts of the city one felt the pulse of the Empire, with its 25 millions, with all the dangerous charm of that State of many nationalities. The dazzling bril¬ liancy of the Court attracted the wealth and intelligence of the rest of the Empire like a magnet, to which was added the strong centralizing policy of the Habsburg Monarchy.
This offered the only possibility of holding that hash of nations together. The result was an extraordinary concentration of all authority in the Capital.
Moreover, Vienna was not only politically and intellectually the centre of the old Danube Monarchy, but it was also the centre of administration. Besides the host of high officers, State officials, artists and pro¬ fessors, there was a still greater host of workers, and crushing poverty side by side with the wealth of the aristocracy and merchant class. Thousands of unem¬ ployed hung about the palaces of the Ringstrasse, and below that via triumphalis those who had no homes crowded in the dinginess and filth of the canals.
Social questions could hardly be studied in any German town better than in Vienna. But let there be no mistake. This studying cannot be done from above. No one who is not caught up in the coils of this poisonous snake can get to know its poison fangs ; the others exhibit nothing but superficial chatter and false senti¬ mentality. Both do harm. The first because it can never penetrate to the kernal of the question, the second because it misses it. I do not know which is the more desolating : to ignore the social needs, as do most of the lucky ones and those who