Dr. Albert was informed on March 10, 1915, by a German lawyer, S. Walter Kaufmann of 60 Wall Street, that his clients, the Orenstein-Arthur Keppel Company, had an order for 9,000 tons of steel rails to be shipped to Russia, despite instructions from the company's home office in Berlin that "no orders should be accepted for shipment to any country at war with Germany, because of Paragraph 89 of the Gesetz Buch." The Gesetz Buch is the German Penal Code. (One of Kaufmann's law partners was Norvin R. Lindheim, legal adviser to Germany's agents in the United States.) The manufacturers begged the permission of the Embassy to accept the order and pass the actual manufacture on to the United States Steel Company, in order to evade the letter of Paragraph 89, and in order "to delay the order, if that would in any way be desirable." The matter was neglected in the Embassy, and on July 13 the Orenstein-Arthur Keppel Company wrote from Keppel, Pa., to the German consul, Philadelphia, Dr. George Stobbe, again asking permission to accept the order. The consul replied, denying permission, on the ground that the shipment would facilitate the Russian transport of troops, and that such action would be within the meaning of Paragraph 89 of the Gesetz Buch. "That you are in position to delay the delivery of the order, to the prejudice of the hostile country ordering, in no way makes you less punishable," he continued. He forwarded a copy of his ruling to the Ambassador for approval, and it in turn was forwarded to Dr. Albert. The order was not taken; the fear of punishment by Germany was greater than the protection afforded by American Law. The foregoing episode reveals the nature of Dr. Albert's chief problem--the financial blocking of supplies for the Allies. Let Boy-Ed destroy the ships, von Papen dynamite the factories and railways, Rintelen run his mad course of indiscriminate violence--the smooth financial agent would undertake only those great business ventures in which his shrewdness and experience could have play. He was receiving reports constantly on the economic status, and the following extract from a report from G. D. Waetzoldt, a trade investigator in the Consulate in New York, will illustrate the German frame of mind about midsummer of 1915: "The large war orders, as the professional journals also print, have become the great means of saving American business institutions from idleness and financial ruin.