OCR Text |
Show THE KRUPPS. 'IfrlIBB The Krupps should have a monument like the I WfflMU one to Von iloltke. In the rehabilitation of Ger- I irH many the part the great steel wizard bore was as zZ&WM necessary and as great as statesmanship and gen- J.-illBH eralsbip could carry through. Thirty-five years tfHB ago Germany was but a system of disjointed J HH states; not one was powerful save Prussia, and she - &Jpjl was still under the cloud of the first Napoleon's I JPHW conquest sixty years before. ll99H But in five years Germany shone out as the 1 llifSH very greatest of European powers a colossus, TkHIH suddenly, as If from the ground, emerged, and the $ W 1 dictator of the Old World. The chiefest praise for f I fH the change has been given to Bismarck and Von J, JF 9 Moltke. They surely were a wonderful pair. Ger- 1 H many had needed to have her states bound under J fDH one confederation with a ruling head. Bismarck W had planned and built the stately edifice ol Ger- iiSflH man Unity. But the work of Elsmarck would have ISfll been in vain except that Von Moltke had so reor- SnflflH ganized and trained the Prussian army that its IffiHi invincible power drew the states of Germany In- XfllO sensibly toward Prussia as a common center. But IflHI Von Moltke could not have done that except that HIB he was able to so equip his army that any power HB opposed to it would have to fight at a dfsadvant- SIHHm B 1 4 age. Herr Krupp, the elder, was there to perform H 1 jl that part and so well did he do the work that H J every movement In three wars was a triumphal H 'fi'; one. There camo a time when the prestige and H Mil power of Germany rested on her guns and those H ij (r guns never failed. H m ; But the war with France over and the indem- H 41 nl-v collected, something more was needed in or- H m .t der that Germany might be able to support and H ' f maintain her prestige and power. There seemed H m ,1 but one direction for her to take. She had skilled H B ? artisans in plenty. She had more scientists who H m could reduce their knowledge and give it practi- H m , cal application to men's needs, to be worked out H K "I through skilled labor than any other country, but H m 'I she had little commerce and little foreign trade. B m X In the meantime ships had been revolutionized. H m f They had changed from oak to steel, the old-fash- B 'M :$ ioned engines had been discarded; ships had at- R IP tained enormous sizes, and Germany was almost B M p as much bereft of modern ships as was the United g J j States. Krupp's founderies were equal to the task i of turning out keels and knees and beams and t forging shafts, and the work went on until Germany Ger-many became as triumphant on sea as she before i had been on land by supplying the swiftest and MMM m grandest ships that ever sailed the ocean. B - I The elder Krupp, the one who died some . B ! j j teen years ago, was the great genius. He made a Bj , is ) better steel than Bessemer's; he invented the steam B! trip-hammer and overhead moving great cranes; BjE m he began in a little shop with three men; before he h et s wors covered a thousand acres, his cm- Iff r, ployees numbered twenty thousand men and the H m j ''3 wholo great army moved and wrought with abso- 1 S ! A lute precision and order. His executive ability was m $ as exact and comprehensive as was Von Moltke's B M science. 1 ! Te KruPP w died last wsek was so able a 1 ;1 J successor that no jar was felt when the elder lH J Krupp died. The army of scientists, inventors, II 1 skilled and unskilled laborers never lost one step in their great onward march. The Krupps, father and son, were among the foremost of the leaders of those who control the world's great industrial forces; their work exalted labor, like Jove they forged thunderbolts, like Vulcan Vul-can they brought out the poetry as well as the full power of steel. |