The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-04-26

tcopyright, lsoe, by Frank G. carpenter.)
 Essen on the Ruhr.
 am in tSe heart of the Prussian Black Country, where the foundries and facto- ries are as thick as in the Black Coun- try of England or in our own Black Country about Pittsburg. The land is underlaid with coal and iron. and upon It has grown one of the greatest steel centery of the world. rode here through forests of smokestacks. There are cities and villages all about me which have steel and iron mills. Solingen. the Shef- field of Germany. is not far away. and within a hundred-niile radius are towns making almost everything under the sun. There are woolen and cotton factories. silk mills and velvet mills. There are glass works, steel works, and great shops for the equipment of railroads. steam- ships and every other steel thing under the sun.
 The City of the Krupps.
 The heart of this region is Essen and the soul of it is the Krupps. The chief Krupp is dead but his spirit remains and Essen goes on as though he were alive. The town was practically founded by a Krupp, it was built up by a Krupp. and the Krupp estate supports it today. When the first KrIrp began work in his little foundry 1t was a village. Along in the sos, when the second Krupp had begun to make steel cannon, it had only ten thousand: but today 1t has more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. and ninety-nine hundredths of these are supported by the Krupps.
 I despair of giving you an adequate conception of the extent of this steel business wtich has been managed by one man and is now owned by one family | The word Krupp in Germany has much | the same place that Carnegie" or the words "The United States Steel Com pany'' have in America. The Krupps have vast properties of many kinds. They own five hundred different mines in Ger many and other mines in Spain. They dig their own coal. and they transport much of their goods on their own steam CTS. They have ships on the rivers, wharves at Rotterdam, miles of rail- roads and thousands of railroad cars. | They have their own telephone and tele- graph stations numbered by hundreds. and they have great factories at several places in Germany. Here at Essen their employees are more in number than was our army at the beginning of the Span- ish war. They have other thousands in their shipbuilding yards at Kiel and their workmen altogether approximate fifty thousand men, the greatest industrial brigade that has ever been commanded by private individual.
 It is All Krupp's.
 Essen practically belongs to the Krupps. As you come here from the Rhine you pass a castle on a hill and are told it is Krupps. There is railroad station at the estate and a private entrance where the Emperor passes up to visit the Krupp family. In Essen the hotel belongs to krupp. There are a Krupp hospital, Krupp club houses and krupp schools. The most of the suburbs are made up of Krupp's colonies built by Krupp archi- tects and Krupp worlkmen. and in one quarter you will find the beautiful vil- lage which Krupp has erected for his men who are too old to work. There are scores of Krppp stores. Krupp factories and Krupp playgrounds for the children.
 Germany's Biggest Steel Mills.
 The heart of all this is the steel mills. whose sixty factories and furnaces are ever sending their volumes of smoke into the air. Their buildings cover an area of a dozen good-sized farms. They extend on and on along wide streets, so that 1t wearies you to walk from one end of them to the other. They have many win dows blackened with smoke and the dense clouds of carbonized vapor which hang above them are ever dropping soot.
 Here and there a gate opens into one factory or another; but every gate has it's guard and strangers are not admitted. In- decd, it Is only through my letters from