However the successfulness of these industries brought new people to the cities, which led to severe over-crowding and poor living conditions. Soon the working class turned to socialism, a socialist government would help them by giving the public more control over the industries and financial institutions, thus allowing them to work out fairer wages, better factory discipline and housing. The working class first formed the Socialist Workers Party of Germany and then changed its name in 1890 to the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The SPD was the best developed and organised socialist party in Europe by 1914 with a great influence over the Germany government.
The SPD made Germany very unstable because it showed a great split between the capitalist ruling class and the working class. The capitalist ruling class mainly consisted of industrial tycoons and leaders of the Protestant church who saw it as unpatriotic due to its links with foreign socialist parties and therefore wanted it gone, but due to the strength of the SPD is just kept growing in population.
The Protestant Church was also suffering due to the rise in Catholics after German was united as an empire in 1871. New states such as the Rhineland & Bavaria were heavily Catholic compared to the states such as Prussia which were almost completely Protestant. The leaders of the Protestant church feared that the Catholic community would be more patriotic to the Pope than to Germany. These suspicions led to the Catholic community forming their own political party called the Centre Party (Zentrum) in order to gain some more political influence. The Catholic party, just like the SPD, created an unstable government.
The formation of the German Empire had also created cracks due to the terms in which the 4 states had been united. Prussia was the largest and most dominant state/kingdom, and most of the countries rulers had come from there. Due to this it had the most influential hand in the uniting of the kingdoms, which is used to its advantage. This caused problems in the smaller states, where revolutionists dreamt of regaining their freedom, making the future of Germany seem unstable and possibly prone to strikes and revolutions.
However, on the face of it, Germany now looked like a more confident and stronger country with a very large strong military that had been formed from the different states. This made Germany seem more stable than it actually was. Its leading war Officers were mainly from a capitalist and Protestant background which would have strengthened the army in case of trouble from the SPD or Centre Party.