KRUPP'S FACTORY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 243, 13 April 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

KRUPP'S FACTORY.

A YAST ORGANISATION. A recent visit to London of the eldest daughter and heiress of the late Herr Krupp called attention again to the size and ramifications of the great business which she inherited . The Krupp concerns probably constitute, with the exception of Standard Oil, the largest business in the world. Perhaps, if one had complete statistics, the American company would be found to occupy second place. Fran Krupp von Bohlcn and Halback owns Essen and its ■quarter of a million inhabitants. Her direct employees there number 40,000, and she controls some hundreds of iron mines, coalfields in Westphalia, many quarries, and a fleet of steamers which bring her iron ore from Spain. There are 50 miles of railway inside the Essen Works, 100 miles of telegraph and 200 miles of telephone wives. The tentacles of the Krupp firm stretch across Europe, and its interests are world-wide. The intelligence department is so important that it is controlled 'by a general manager and ten assistants, each of whom has a .special department of engineering to watch. There the newspapers of the world are read, compared, sifted and commented upon, and every month the department issues a little newspaper of its own. "for private circulation," indicating all the new ideas, suggestions, and inventions in engineering, chemistry, physics and the allied sciences. The workman who takes service with Krupp's has many advantages. . The wage of the average workman is low, but as against that there is an elaborate organisation for his well-being. He rents a model cottage from the firm, or is lent the money to build one. The ■firm banks his savings up to £SOOO and pays him 5 per cent. The firm runs a co-operative store, which supplies him with food and goods at very cheap rates, and pays Mm an annual dividend. The firm provides him with doctor, hospital, medicine, a club, a fencing master, a library, concerts, schools and the means for outdoor recreation; the firm, in fact, orders his entire existence. He has all the moderate comforts and conveniences of life, but few of its liberties. "One might as well be in a barrack yard as in Krupp's," says a London paper. Even the number of glasses of beer a man drinks is reported upon, the inference for undue lavishness being that he is obtaining money from some suspicious source. This vast, organisation began a hundred years ago with a village blacksmith.