KRUPPS TO-DAY

Evening Star, Issue 19841, 14 April 1928, Page 10

KRUPPS TO-DAY

INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITIES MAKING STAINLESS STEEL Krupps and Christmas will soon be synonymous terms in Germany if the glittering shop window of the great firm’s Berlin show rooms is any index of what Krupps is able to supply, writes the Berlin correspondent of the ‘Observer.’ An attempt to probe a myth that started in America, and was reported back to an interested and, in part, sympathetic Europe, was the reason for a closer inspection of what Krupps is now able to offer Germans in the works, in the factory, the business profession, or the home. “There is no truth whatever iu the absurd and impossible rumor that we are leaving Essen,” Krupps’ Berlin representative informed me. “On the contrary, tor the purpose of cheaper production, we have just begun the erection of a big blast furnace on the Rhine-Hcrne canal at Essen. An item almost as absurd contained in the same report was that we were confining our attention in future to our works at Rheinhauseu. This would be quite impossible in any case. Rheinhausen is onr centre for structural work' of all kinds—for railways (steam and electric), mines, shipyards, and hydraulic engineering. At Essen arc our cast steel works for manufactured and, above all, semi-manufactured goods. One cannot transfer one branch to another like that.” It seemed not to strike the outside world before the war, he continued, that Krupps was pre-eminently a steel works, and that in peace time 90 per cent, of its business was done, not in armaments, but in supplying German industry. The trouble after the war was to find work for the men who had been working at top speed to supply the army. That was when Krupps began to finish goods in the works, which had hitherto always been sent out as semi-finished products to the different factories erected specially for them. “ Several of these attempts of ours did not pay, and we closed them down again as conditions changed. But today, apart from machinery and locomotives, Krupps is still supplying the German industry with what it needs—with everything for the great chemical dye trust, for the brewers, for the sugar beet refineries. Actually the agricultural machines, which so admirably illustrate the pacifist axiom of swords turned into ploughshares, forms a very small part of our output. But the secret of Krupps to-day and of Krupps’ future is to be expressed in two words, which themselves have revolutionised our industry—stainless steel.” At the show rooms brilliant electric lights flashed upon mirrors used for fittings at sea and for use in film work, upon rows of giant saucepans lor hotel kitchens, on miniature pots and pans for smart suppers, on cases of surgical instruments, table cutlery, manicure sets, dental plates, dainty accessories for the home that used to bo made of silver, on enormous containers for shipping beer for export instead of in breakable bottles, on screws and taps for engine rooms, cuff links, and scarf pins. “The new steel that does not rust, not matter to what amount of boiling in the usual bacteria media or .dipping into acids it is subjected, is likely to render instruments formerly used iu medical and dental surgery old-tash-ioned before their time,” 1 was informed. “It is possible that this means as much to the world in general ns the information that the artificial silk industry is profiting by boiling its dyes in the new stainless vats. An improved process in Germany has clone away with the hhuitness of the stainless knife complained of in so many quarters. .And of course the dentist of the future will work as naturally in steel as lie does to-day in gold. “Krupps arc manufacturing artificial sets of steel teeth to order at the rate of 11,000 a month. Sixty thousand se ts have already been supplied to the various dental clinics all over the country. The dentist himself, of course, cannot make them any more than he makes gold teeth. Krupps allow no dental laboratory. to make steel teeth until the responsible member of it has worked a month under our supervision.” , Before the war Krupps was a household word in every German home. In the most literal sense it is a household word to-day. It is bewildering to be told that cash registers (but not typewriters), motor lorries, and the special patent dust cart used in Germany (but not automobiles) are now made at Essen. But the chief fact about the present state of affairs is not the scintillating window among all the other festively decorated shops along the Leipziegstrasse, nor the subtle differences between making a dust cart and a motor car. It is the news that Krupps supplied in some form or other every great branch of German industry, and while this industry looks up Krupps cannot look down.