Germany and the Germans from an American Point of ViewCollier, Price
History
Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View
Collier, Price
Germany; National characteristics, German
From 1904 to 1910 the Krupps spent, for beneficial institutions of all
kinds, $14,250,000, or 56 per cent. of the dividends during that time.
I have passed many hours at Essen, and seen thoroughly, from cellar to
attic, this truly noble institution for the comfortable and safe
guardianship of men, women, and children who are at the same time
factors in a huge and successful industrial enterprise. There are
schools, technical schools, hospitals, convalescent homes, a library
with 71,000 volumes, theatre, orchestra, band, lectures, concerts,
pension and insurance funds, lodgings for bachelors, tenements and
dwellings for married people, separate cottages for widows and
widowers too old for work, and every opportunity, with a high rate of
interest, for saving. There is in existence a co-operative store, as
well managed as the co-operative stores at Tuxedo Park, and with much
the same system of rebates. There are bathing facilities, gymnasium, a
boat club, a system of providing hot meals from a central kitchen,
reading-rooms and smoking-rooms. There is invested, not including the
value of the land, which has risen enormously in value, over
$12,500,000 in houses for the working-people, the return on the money
being about 2 3/4 per cent. It would require volumes -- indeed, two
bulky volumes were issued last year by the company to celebrate the
hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Krupp works -- to
describe merely the machinery for making the people comfortable.
In 1851 the Krupps exhibited at the exposition in London the first
cannon made of cast steel; now they turn out more shells and shrapnel
in a week than were used at the whole battle of Koeniggraetz (Sadowa),
which lasted from eight o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in
the afternoon on July 3, 1866. The queen of this, the greatest factory
of destructive agencies in the world, is a gentle Madonna-faced lady
who might well pose for a statue of peace, and whose loveliness is a
mirror of the countless and untiring benefactions with which the
people who work here are surrounded. Both the powers and the people of
Germany may well be proud of the Krupps, for if sane beneficence were
to be raised to the rank of statehood this great colony would well
deserve the honor. The gross profits for the last year were
$9,000,000, half of which was written off and the rest devoted to the
reserve, to dividends, and to contributions to the invalid and pension
funds of the employees, which now amount to $9,500,000. The employees
also have on deposit with the management $8,700,000. The contribution
of the Krupps to the workmen's state-insurance fund amounted, in 1910,
to $1,320,000. The Krupp family is rich, but what would their wealth
have been had they practised the gobbling and juggling financial
methods of ----; but I will not pillory my own countrymen by name, for,
after all, our political methods have made them, and not they
themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account