KRUPF'S

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2308, 16 November 1914, Page 7

KRUPF'S

GERMANY'S ARMY AND NAVY STORES

A GIGANTIC FACTORY,

The present Ivar has as yet brought forth no great figure anions the German armies in the field. Yon Moltke has jet to prove himself the peer of his famous ancestor. ,Von Kluck and Von Bindenburg, efficient generals though they niay b&, have displayed ho pre-eminent qualities, such as would range them beside their great forbear's, Blumenthal or Von der Tann. . .Yet thore is one German name, that, since the outbreak of the war—and for many War's pafct whenever the German Army has been mentioned—has been constantly oil. men's lips. That is Kriipp'S. Over-sanguine as men are in the first flush of relief after a period of acute fuspense, people are already wondering how far the world-famous Krupp works at Essen are distant from tne lin& <5f advance of the Allied armies. > If airmen could sally out and. destroy'the vast hive of.industry.which has given Germany her mighty 6iege guns, her deadly field-pieces, her innumerable quickfirers!. ... ; Krupp's has been called the Arfriy and. Navy Stores of the nations. Essen is Krupp's; KrUpp'sis Esseh. Ihe erstwhile little westphaliah town haß become one gigantic factory, dominated by the genius of this oile family whose three generations built lip the greatest cannon and arril'dli'r industry the world has ever 'seen. Looking down on th 6 town from one of the pleasaiit Wooded heights oil which Alfred Krupp planted the colonies for aged or disabled, voteraha of industry one sdee a forest of tall chinrildys and dozens oI huge, lofty workshops marshalled like forts all irotad tni habitations of mih. On a hearer approach one discovers that tome siity factories' make* tip this gigantic organisation, forty miles of standard railway link 'them together and oawy their products abroad to the great world, and thirty miles of narrow linafe late required as auxiliary, for the etops. Prom the .distance resounds the dull boom of the gilns from the testing ranges at Meppeh, where artillerymen, year in, year out, Aire trying new weapons ot experimenting with the resistance of armour plate.

Army Corps of Workmen. Forty thousand mehj With 4000 officials, make up the fetaffl of this Diaze of factories aid workshops in normal times. , One can well believe how the staff has ■ been increased in ( thesd 6ftguishing days of war, When ev6ry German, grfiat and sniallj realises th&t the future of . his Empire largely depends oil the poiver and number of giifis Which Khipp'a can. place'at the disposal of tbe armies of Germany and her Austrian ally.. Besides .this army corps of workmen at-Essen, Krupp's have 10,000 miners digging the earth for coal in the firm's German collieries; 15,000 hands' at the rolling-mills of Annen aid Gruson and the. blast-furnaces of Rheinhausen,. Duisburg, Neuwied, and Engers; about 7000 .workmen at the firm's shipbuilding / -yard, the' Germania, at Kiel; and 6000 ore hiinerS in Spain. It is symptomatic of .the iittriiehse importance attached by tho Germaii General Staff, to the; continuance p'f work at the highest pressure that the General/oommanding the Rhine district has Expressly irefrain'ed from. calling up ithe Lattdsturm. in 'order that the great national work..ihajr_ proceed unimpeded in the Rheinish illdustnal region ,wher6 Krupp's is the leading concern. ■

The private, hotel maintained by the . firm at Essen for the accommodation of its foreign,visitors is characteristic of the international,character of the business done by Krupp's. Here, in of peace,. one met representative's of every . civilised nation sent by their Governments to this international arsenal, to purchase, the anna of' wir :or the implements of peace. For half the Krupj) works at_ Essen are,'devoted to what in normal times seems -to be peaceful work of coinmerce, but what in war time is an iiidispeiftsible- adjjiinct to the armies in the field. All that can be

made of for railways is constructed hero—wheels, axles, engine parts, and rails. At Essen the German liners, now tie murderous commerce destroyers of the Atlantic and Pacific and Indian Oceans, receive the hug© castings for sternpost and stem and crankshafts) and are. furnished with . plates and frames. Fine steel''for tools, the spades and picks of troops entrenching themselves, and a dozen other varieties proceed from Essen. ■ . ' The Veil of Secrecy. But the foreigner, however impeccable his recommendations and references, only sees as much of Kfupp's as the firm will lot him; Foreign military attaohes, entranced at the oxquisito

courtesy which is the rule of . this famous house, have seen the high hopes built up on the warmth .of their welcome dashed to the ground when it has come to seeing over . the workshops. They are hurried past here and hurried past there; • and "finally leave with a vague sense of jastncss and method, but conscious of having signally failed to penetrate into the secrets of the concern. A good example of the secreoy wherewith Krupp's manage to envelop their affairs is seen in the huge siege guns, the calibre, of which rumour puts as high as 16in., with which the Germans battered down the forts of Liege and Namur. ... It was to make, a finer steel that Peter Frietlrich Krupp, the founder of the firm, a penniless inventor, experimented so painstakingly and so long a oentury ago. He discovered. the secret of the crucible, , but could not find how to cast steel blocks. ..At his death his boy Alfred,' then fourteen years of ago, took- up the work with faith and pertinacity, and on the development of thci principle bnilt lip the present vast organisation. It was intellect and science applied to business that won him the victory. When all the money was swallowed up in .experiments with crucible steel lie hit upon a new principle for a roller ujliich brought him in money for further exr periments, and in time the secret was discovered. In the 'forties he wanted to make cannon of cast steel, but failed Then his inventiveness came to his help again, and patented a moneymaking process for turning out weldless railway tyres. It made the-mil-lions which were spent in developing the works and in making the cannon which eventually '.came into their own in the Franco-Prussian War.

Though it is a joint-stock company in which practically all the shares are owned by Frau Krupp von Bohlen und Hal-, bach, the only child of tho late Alfred Krupp, the third proprietor, and her husband, the present managing director of the works, Krupp's is regarded by every patriotic German as a national possession. While Krupp's exists Germany will stand. That is the firm belief of every member of this nation inarms. ,