The partisans of representation by chambers of commerce pointed out that these chambers are, according to existing legislation, the only representatives of industry and of commerce in public law; that they embrace all the industrial and commercial circles, considered vocationally as well as regionally, and that they constitute an electoral body more complete than the organizations on a purely professional basis; and that, in contrast to the associations, the chambers of commerce are elected by all the manufacturers and merchants inscribed on the register of commerce.
The supporters of the associations replied that, great as was the service rendered by the Chambers of Commerce as local and regional corporations, they play almost no rôle whatever in the public economy of Germany. Their influence on economic management is practically nil; and they are limited in the matter of projects for new laws, to the voting of resolutions that have no outcome whatever. The special business associations, however, although without official standing in public law, are acquiring more and more importance in the public economy of Germany. What is most important is to make up the Economic Council of “heads”--of the most eminent men from each industry, whether of the North or the South, the West or the East.
The solution adopted does not seem to have been a particularly happy one. Of the sixty-eight industrial delegates, forty-eight represent vocational divisions and twenty represent regional groups. Of the first, forty-two are designated by the _Arbeitsgemeinschaft_ of the employers and industrial workers of Germany (twenty-one employers and twenty-one workers); six others represent the Council of Coal and the Council of Potash. Of the regional representatives, twenty employers are named by the Chambers of Commerce and of Agriculture but twenty workers are named by the labour element of the Central _Arbeitsgemeinschaft_.
III.--The authority of the Provisional Economic Council is not quite the same as that of the final Economic Council, provided by the Constitution.
It must, and that was its essential mission, construct the framework on which the future Economic Council is to be erected, and determine how it shall be elected. This necessitates its organizing in advance Workers Councils, aside from Factory Workers Councils, and Economic Councils for each locality, which, according to the Constitution, must contribute to the formation of the National Economic Council.