LATE HERR BALLIN

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 139, 9 December 1918, Page 2

LATE HERR BALLIN

GERMANY'S SHIPPING KING

A STRIKING PERSONALITY. LONDON, 11th November. Herr Albert Ballin, " Germany's Shipping King," and managing director of the Hamburg-Amerika line, whose death was reported from Hamburg, was in his 62nd year, and earned fame in shipping circles by the extraordinary ability he displayed in the management of the great Hamburg-Amerika shipping line. He was regarded as one of the great men of Germany, and is said to have been in cloae association with the Kaiser. Recently, however. Ballin fell from- grace because of his criticism about twelve months ago of the German Government's policy, which, he said, was calculated to diminish German prestige abroad. In August last Ballin caused a sensation in Germany by resigning from the "Economic Council of Mittel Europa" because he regarded the scheme as a hindrance to the peace which Germany needed.

In his book "Men Around the Kaiser," issued prior to the outbreak of war, Mr. F. \V. Wile, the British journalist, thus refers to Herr Ballin :— "Over the portal of a massive granite office building on the shores of Hamburg's placid Alster rests a tablet inscribed 'My Field is the Wot M.' It is the fitting emblem of the HamburgAmerican'line, a private corporation almost hs dear to the heart of the Kaiser and his people as their navy itself. It is, indeed, a national institution, the 'Hapag,' as current custom in Germany abbreviates the title of the HamburgAmerikanische Paketfahrt-Aktien-Ges-ellschaft, which was founded in the wooden-ship era of Milestones. With its great confrere of Bremen, the Sorth German Lloyd, it has blazed the way for German, trade and commerce to the uttermost corners; of the earth. What Yon Tirpitz has done for the German fleet, Albert Ballin,. director-general of the Hamburg-American line, has done for the German mercantile marine. He has made it. Historians of the German Empire of to^ay, when they write of the race which gloried in battalions, battleships and. business, will give high place, if they have read the signs of the times aright, to the unassuming Hamburg Jew, who has renounced titles, honours and office, but not his creed.

"No other man in the country, Kins or has a .strftjig6l' claim, to mfinib'ership of the immortals of Emperor William's day. He is on 6of the real makers of modern Germany.

"Ballin is a thoroughly self-made him. He was bom to the trade in which he was one day 'to be a world figure, m the son of a humble Hamburg emigrant agent. Following the practice still in vogue among ambitious young Germans, Ballin went to England as a lad to serve his commercial apprenticeship. The irrepressible Hamburg 'volunteer' went in to master ,the most infinitesimal details of the navigation business, and specialised in-emigrant traffic, the gold mine from which trans-Atlantic lines extract their "richest gains. On his return to Germany Ballin entered the employ oi the Carr line, and was presently entrusted with the minor duty of conducting emigrant cargoes from Galicia, Poland, and Hungary to Hamburg, and embarking them for the Land of Promise oversea. His eminent organising talent and sleepless zeal speedily made his superiors see that he was fittod for far more important work. They appointed him manager ,of their ,entire emigrant service. -He was barely 25 when, these, the first honours of his chosen career, come to him. It was not very long beforethe Hamburg-American, line began to fake...notice that for. some, mysterious reason the Carrs .were getting the cream of the emigration business. Somebody, or something, was causing tTve pilgrims from Southern and Eastern Europe to flock.to the smaller rival's jsteanlers. It was discovered that a certain Ballin was the culprit. The only ,way, t° 'suppress him, it appeared, and to annihilate the competition, was to buy out. the Carr line bodily., In. 1886 it passed into Hapag's possession, and Ballin with it.-The history of th'o Hamburg-American's development dates from the hour it, annexed the young, man who had cornered the emigrant market. In 188^, ..when Ballin joined the Hapag, its capital was £750,000. To-day it is £7,500,000. Its gross profits were £125,000. In lMfi they were £2.825,000. . In 1886, 26 oceangoing steamships flew the coirapany'6 blue-and-whits pennant. To-day it fluttera from the peaks of 180. In the anteBallin era. the' Hapag'a total tonnage was 60,000. This summer a single vessel of 50,000, tons, the peerless Imperator, is in her maiden season. With a sister ship and other leviathans under construction, the Hamburg^Vmerican's groas tonnage will aggregate roundly 1,500,000 —a total which dwarfs the merchant fleets of half-a-dozen European States.

The'secret of Ballin's greatness lies in his card-index mind. When he was a shipping clerk in England, at nothing a week, he -worked overtime absorbing the quips and tricks of the business.; He developed a fabulous memory. As. soon as ho learned a thing, he ■ numbered, labelled, and filed it away in a wellordered archive .which serves him as. a brain. When he meets the shipping magnates of Britain, 'America, Prance, Holland, and Scandinavia in conference nowadays, he staggers them with his first-hand knowledge of what others mistakenly consider tne bagatelles of the game. When the Hamburg-American line acquired Baffin, along with some minor assets, in the shape of emigrant steamers and goodwill, he brought to them, ready made, the ■ far-reaching plans which were to make the German merchant flag familiar and formidable on the high seas. "The new director, not yet out of the impetuous twenties, did not find it.easy to impose his progressive ideas on- the Hanseatic patricians in control of the Hapag. His demand for twin-screw steamers shocked them. His insistence that the day had come to give ocean travellers luxuries instead of mere comforts sent cold chills down 4heir conservative spines. Seven-day boats seemed to them as visionary as flying machines. Ballin anticipated all that. He bided his time. By degrees, almost before they knew it, the greybeards of the directorate found themselves succumbing enthusiastically to the indomitable will and inexhaustible initiative of their -, colleague of the fiery spirit, restless energy, and overweening- self-confidence. They saw he was predestined-to lead. Gradually they gave him full sway. In 1900 ho' was appointedl director-general of the entire .organisation. Since them his power has-been autocratic.

• "In his private life Ballia is modest to the point of shyness and seolueion. Small of stature, his bearing and ways are *lways . unobtrusive. fie is at bis office punctually every morning at 9, and presides daily over a noon-hour conference of his managerial board. He is a managing-director who manages and directs. He is usually the last to leave after a full day's work. > Audiences of the Shipping King are granted reluctantly. More peopls fail thin sneceed in seeing him.' The Kaiser seldom cornea to Hamburg without visiting Ballin'a unpretentious suburban villa and showing some fresh mark of his esteem. AU doors are now open to Baffin—some, were onco elammsd and barred—but bji. happiest houri are igent at work : f>?. j» W

bosom of hi* home. Herr and Frau Ballin have only an adopted daughter, married to an ex-naval officer, now in the Hapag service. He is a devout, but not a bigoted Jew. None of his coreligionists has a position of consequence in his organisation. He does not beli.eve ill religious nepotism. He has resolutuly refused to follow the fashion of plutocratic German brethren who embrace Christianity for social revenue. It annoys many German aristocrats that the Kaiser consorts so freely with a man who is proud of his origin."