Connecticut western news., 1893-03-16
THE KRUPP OF ESSEN.
Something About Town Built Up !
 Kind Hearted Capff alist


 Something About a Town Built Up by .
 Kind Hearted Capitalist
 The last number of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and So- cial Science gives an admirable sum- mary of the work done at the Krupp foundries for the men employed there and their families. The writer. says the Philadelphia Ledger, MT. s. M. Lindsay, furnishes an object lesson that may well be commended to employers of labor in this country. The Krupp works employ 16,000 men, and with their families, numbering over 90, ,000, constituting the bulk of the population of the town of Essen, while over 5000 are located at various branch works, and the total number benefited by their numerous charitable and philanthropic enterprises Is estimated at 25, 200 workmen, and with their families 87 300 persons.
 The Krupp works were started in a very humble way in 1910, and 1t was not until the fifties that cast steel, their spe- cial product, attained such universal use and the works began their rapid growth and steady increase. The Krupps themselves say that their numerous in- stitutions for their workmen and their families are based first on their own business interests. Would there were more such employers whose selishness took the same directioni
 Their successful efforts to raise the condition of their workihen have been made in various ways-the building of dwellings rented at fair rates and sold on easy terms; cooperative stores; ac- commodations for boarding and lodging unmarried workmen; their treatment in sickness and the prevention of disease; insurance against accident and sickness and pension funds, in anticipation and largely in excess of the severe require ments of recent German legislation on the subject; savings banks, common and industrial schools, the education of ap- prentices, the training of young girls in housekeeping, humanitarian rules in fac tory work, liberal help for religious teaching and charity.
 The Krupps have built over 4,00C houses-from frame dwellings of two rooms, renting at fifteen dollars a year, up to six room houses, renting at eighty dollars a year. They have expended over q. .000, 900 on them, earning about per cent on the investment, but this, with much more, has been spent in benefting the working classes in other ways.
 The cooperative stores managed by the Krupps at their own risk include fifteen retail grocery stores, nine branch stores, with one main store for general merchandise, a shoe factory with three stores, hardware store, a mill and bak. cry with six bread stores, slaughter house with seven retail meat stores, two clothing establishments, seven restau- rants, wine store, an ice company, g coffee house, brush factory, laundry, 8 weekly market for fresh vegetables, 6 | coffee roasting establishment-in them nearly 500 persons were employed, wid. ows, or daughters of workmen.
 There is boarding house for the un- married workmen, where lodging and food are supplied at twenty cents day. In 1870 Alfred Krupp built hospital | for sick and wounded soldiers, and since the Franco-German war it has been used | for their workmen and their families they are cared for at the price of thirty eight cents day for men, thirty cents g day for women and twenty-five cents for children. There is large bathing establishment, where 5000 free baths were given last year, and bath tickets are sold for 2i cents apiece. The insur ance funds against accident and deatf and for pensions have been largely sup plemented by the Krupps in addition te the strict requirements of the German laws. Primary and advanced and tech nical schools are maintained, and the churches of all denominations are large ly supported by the Krupps.