WEALTHY AMERICAN

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 August 1932, Page 9

WEALTHY AMERICAN

EUROPE’S KING OF POWER. Every time tho lights are switched on in Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Vienna, or any other European capital, one inconspicuous American residing in Brussels grows hundreds of dollars t richer by the minute, says a writer in the “Chicago Tribune.” I Few know this American personally. Most people liave never heard his j name. He is not spectacular, like! Kreguer or Loewenstein. He does not represent Wall street, like Morgan or Kahn. Ho is a “second mystery man of Europe,” another Sir Basil Zaharoff by his silent, shadowy life. His name is Dannie N. Heineman, and he hails from Charlotte, North Carolina. He is virtually the “king” of all European electricity. Dannie N. Heineman, like Sir Basil Zaharoff, has never given a single interview in his life. The day a famous Belgian accused him of working for the Germans as a spy he kept mum. More recently, when his greatest enemy, Alfred Loewenstein, dropped from. his aeroplane into the English Channel, he said not a word for the Press.

A couple of years ago, Mr Heineman granted mo an “interview.” I came with a beautiful line of questions about his plans to control every European country’s electricity, and to switch tho power generated by cataracts in tho Swiss Alps over' to all Central Europe and the .Balkans, Mr. Heineman chatted for half an hour. As a result he knows all about my home life and I know that he believes in “a soul” and is something of a poet. You. won’t find Heineman in any American “Who’s Who.” He mixes little with the American colony of Brussels, although ho is president of the Belgian-American Chamber of Commerce. He has no court of Belgian aristocrats fluttering around him, like Alfred Loewenstein did. He isn’t spectacular about having his, own aeroplane fleet or owning palaces at Biarritz and Deauville. This American, multimillionaire who is “king” of the old world’s white coal •industry, lives in the sort of house an American college professor would aspire to. His one hobby is collecting books of the French romantic period. Ho practises ski-ing to keep fit in a solitary nook of Switzerland. His wife is an English woman and his young son goes to school in England. His very shy little daughter gets private lessons at home.

“NEVER MADE A BLUNDER.” How Heineman persuaded German, French, Swiss, Spanish, Belgian, and ether business men into letting him control theix’ powei- plants is tho story of some thirty years of patient work. A famous Belgian banker once said: “Air. Heineman never L commits a blunder.”

That must be the secret of his sue- j‘ cess. There is no daring bluff in his ■ career. And he wasn’t backed by a• ; powerful empire. Millions have rolled , into Heineman’s pockets, and still are •' rolling in, because he is too painstakingly careful ever to make a mistake. In 1900, Heinemcn went to Belgium as agent of the powerful German A. E. , G. electricity trust. was practically penniless, having earned his way i through college in Germany after a! primary and high school education in l America. His father had gone to the) United States from Germany, and Heineman still has German relatives. In less than ten years’ work, Heineman. captured the Belgian efoci ricity industry for the A. li)' G. firrt—and later ,for himself. lie founded what is now the strongest electricity trust in Europe, the “Soflna.” Like an octopus, the “Soflna” stretches its ten-

taeles into every power enterprise of Europe—and some of South America. It is an international company, with German, Belgian, and some British and American money in it. But Heineman’s money controls it. The greatest battle Heineman ever fought to rise to the “power throne” of Europe was when he ousted Alfred Loewenstein, the Belgian magnate, from the Spanish electricity business. A duel which no Brussels financier will ever forget took place between the two men at a stockholders’ meeting of the “Danqus de Bruxelles.”

Loewenstein had tried to buy up the majority of the shares of this bank to control Spanish electricity via this Brussels. But Heineman, having forseen the move, prevented Loewenstein from buying as much as he needed to control the bank. At the stockholders’ meeting the two put their cards down; Loewenstein lost Ho was hissed and booed. A few months later, he fell from his private aeroplane into the channel in what some people consider the most spectacular suicide the' modern world has witnessed. Heineman has a great many enemies but few friends. Among those friends aro a. young dentist, an inconspicuous Brussels lawyer, an economist, and a few musiciyms. Because those friends talk at times, Heineman’s plans for the future of Europejs power industry are fairly well known now. Ho dreams .of a United States of Europe where, all power production will be linked. The surplus powex- of the Swiss Alps cataracts undex- his plan would be used on the backward plains of Hungary or tho Balkans. Each big European stream would be harnessed to supply electric current for.those solitary spots of the old world which electricity has not yet touched. To bring about that United States lof Europe, Heineman recommends • that Europe copy two American instijtutions—the Inter-State Commerce I Commission, which keeps the Federat|ed States from hampering the free exj change of merchandise, and th Federal Reserve banks, which regulate the I flux and reflux of capital. Europe, he I says, has 1 by now embryos of those two I organisations—the Bank of International Settlements and the plan of economic co-operation between the big European Powers.