The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-01-08
KRUPP GUN WORKS AT ESSEN REAL
 BODY OF GERMAN EMPIRE; BIG GUMS NAMED FOR MISTRESS OF HUGE PLANT

The city of Essen is the Krupp munitions and steel works, and the Krupp works arc the very body of the German war power.
 In 1S49 Essen was a small com munfty of S,813 population. In 1878, four years after the Franco-Prussian War and the formation of the Ger man empire its people numbered 54,J9O, By 1905, with Bertha Krupp in control of the company, Essen was a city of FPS, 9,27O, and by 1910 of 294, 653, the 18th largest city in Ger many and the eighth largest in Prus- sia-
 What Essen means today in terms of population or production is known probably only to the German staff commanders and perhaps a few men in the intelligence departments of Germany's allies. But the growth of Bethlehem and Bridgeport and all the other steel and munitions centers in this country has certainly been equal ed by the German city.
 Reports at various times have told of the herding of many thousands of workmen into the houses of Essen, that the Krupp output might ever go on increasingly. Hollanders, attract ed by the wages, have there jostled Belgians in forced labor and, ac- cording to rumor, prisoners from the armies of France and Russia, as well as native Germans.
 In 1912 there was celebrated the centenary of the founding of the Kru. liant At that time the equip ment of the section of it was said to include I99 steam hammers, aggre- gating about 214,OoO kilograms, and 16o hydraulic presses, with a total of about 10000 tons power.
 During the preceding year, 1911, the firm had consumed about 32,O0O tons of pig iron; 1,390,e00 tons of coal, coke and briquets to a coal value of about 1,660O0O tons, 2,318,0O0 tons of ore, of which some 1,568,00O tons came from foreign mines; 49O,OoO tons of Aux, 54,61S,0 900 cubic meters of water and 107,225, 900 kilowatts of electric current. All these figures have probably been greatly ircreas- ed since that time.
 Friedrich Krupp, born in 17S7, bought a small forge in Essen in 1911 or 1872 flor tho production of English cast steel and all other pro- ducts resulting therefrom" He put his product on, the market about 1915, but the market hardly seemed to know it, and his business was of the slightest.
 He died in 1926, leaving the b,1si- ness to his widow and her son, Alfred Krupp, born April 26, 1872. The lat ter left school and devoted himself to the forge. which, as late as 1S45, only employed 122 workmen and did little more than pay its way.
 In 1S47 his three-pounder muzz1e- loading cannon of cast steel attracted attention, and in 1851 he exhibited at London a solid, f1awless two-ton ingot of cast steel Then the Essen Works came into fame, which the manufacture of weldless steel tires for railway cars enhanced.
 The plant began to grow and +o develop as it's speciality the produc- ton of artillery. Like our own in- dustrfes, it sought possession of the raw materials and acquired iron and coal mines. In 1871 Alfred Krupp wrote:
 The cast steel works, grown from small grain of seed, fn which orig inally no one had any confidence. has now the h ea1th and vigor of q. SO year-old oak tree. and as an oak it has the ability and the purpose to de- TeBoo itself more and more vigor- ously for many ages yet to come The soil in which it is planted is good; see that you protect the root" , The soil proved very good. Alfred "the cannon king" died in 1s77 but his son. Friedrich Alfred Krupp. took up the reins. and his financial skin resulted in huge expansion. One phase of this was the leasing in 1896 and complete acquisition fin 1902 of the "Germania" shipbuilding yard at Kiel
 When he died. Nov p, 1902. the to- tai number of men employed at Es- sen and other Krupp centers was 10000. and his fortune was reputed to @ s15o, 900. .0oo
 He left no son. but two daughters. Bertha and Barbara, of whom the former. born in 1886. became the di- recting head Of the company in 1904 on her 18th birthday. Much publicity was given to her marriage, Oct. IS. 1916. to Dr. Gustav von Bolen und Halbach of the German Diplomatic Service
 The Krupps had played great part in supplying the ordnance used In the Russo -Japanese war, and pre- Vtously had supplied even Britain with artillery for the Boer war Many of the large and virtually all the Enah nations of the world drew from