The strenuous' effort that goes to the building up of
a new industry is reflected in The Letters of Alfred Krupp, edited by W. Berdrow and translated by E. W. Dickes (Gollancz, i25s.). At fourteen Alfred Krupp, in 1826, had to take charge of his dead father's bankrupt steel works and seek orders for the making of dies and tools. In thirty years his handful of workmen had grown to twelve hundred, and he was making wheels for railway carriages and steel cannon. He found the Prussian Government not merely unsympathetic but positively hostile ; the correspondence shows that for years Essen throve in spite of the Ministers of Commerce and War, who, according to Krupp, favoured English steel makers. Krupp was unquestionably an organizing genius though an autocrat, and he took particular care to develop what is now called " welfare work " for his employees. The letters, ending with his death in 1887, are instructive.
Previous page
