[10] Bismarck justified his social welfare programs by stating that "[w]hoever has pensions for his old age is far more easy to handle than one who has no such prospect.
[12] The changes can be characterised by a transition from small-scale production in manufactures to a lots of goods providing large-scale industry.
Reacting to these conditions, parties, unions and communities like the ADAV General German Workers' Association were found.
According to William Harbutt Dawson, despite being labeled socialist by his opponents, Bismarck's social legislation sought to preserve the existing economic order and state in Germany.
[9] The Prussian welfare state was developed by the German academic Sozialpolitiker (Social Policy Supporter) group, intellectually associated with the historical school of economics.
At the time, the historical school of economics influenced social democracy in the United Kingdom and progressivism in the United States as well as the current post-World War II German economy (the social market economy) which is a continuation of similar policies.
[19] Bismarck opened debate on the subject on 17 November 1881 in the Imperial Message to the Reichstag, using the term practical Christianity to describe his program.
After Bismarck left office in 1890, further social legislation regulated working time and conditions and sought to protect more vulnerable workers (women and children) and establish a system to allow redress for employer abuse.
If he falls into poverty, even if only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, left to his own devices, and society does not currently recognize any real obligation toward him beyond the usual help for the poor, even if he has been working all the time ever so faithfully and diligently.
The individual local health bureaus were administered by a committee elected by the members of each bureau and this move had the unintended effect of establishing a majority representation for the workers on account of their large financial contribution.
This worked to the advantage of the Social Democrats, who through heavy worker membership achieved their first small foothold in public administration.
Bismarck had originally proposed that the federal government should pay a portion of the accident insurance contribution to show the willingness of the German government to lessen the hardship experienced by the German workers as a means of weaning them away from the various left-wing parties, most importantly the Social Democrats.
The Centre Party was afraid of the expansion of federal power at the expense of states' rights.
To facilitate this, Bismarck arranged for the administration of this program to be placed in the hands of "the organization of employers in occupational corporations".
This organization established central and bureaucratic insurance offices on the federal and in some cases the state level to perform the actual administration.
It paid for medical treatment and a pension of up to two-thirds of earned wages if the worker was fully disabled.