THE KRUPP BOOM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18768, 23 January 1923, Page 10

THE KRUPP BOOM

HOW ESSEN GREW. HALE A MILLION IN HALF A CENTURY. "Boom” towns of mushroom growth are not peculiar to America, as the startling rise of Essen plainly proves (writes Erederick Scmpich in the National Geographic Magazine). Though founded away back in the ninth century, it slumbered along for hundreds of years, an obscure, unimportant hamlet. Even as late as 1850 it had hardly more than 10,000 people. Then the Krupp boom—the rise of the greatest machineshop the world has even seen —•struck it, and to-day the city houses half a million. Set in the heart of the coalfields, crowded with endless industrial plants, whose tall chimneys belch eternal smoke and fumes, the great workshop fairly throbs with power and energy. The roar and rattle of ceaseless wheels, and the din of giant hammers pounding on metal, seem to keep the whole town a tremble. Hero every form of iron and steel article ia made* from boys’ skates to gigantic marine engine shafts. Curiously enough, some of tile smoke, or the fumes from tlie smoke-stacks, is caught and converted into a gas that furnishes more power to run the mills! And to the 80,000 or more men on his pay-roll the name of Krupp is above that of kings. And indeed no industrial enterprise anywhere has ever shown a more astonishing development, reflected more dramatically tho result of human concentration, or achieved a wider notoriety among tho nations of tho world. More than 100 years ago the first Krupp set up his small, crude shop and began to make by hand the tools, the drills and chisels used by tanners, blacksmiths, and carpenters, along the Ruhr and the Rhine. He also made dies for use in the mints of tho Government. Within 30 years, due to the old ambition for expansion, Krupp tools wore known and used as far away a& Greece and India. Then came tho great area of muss-pro-duction in stoam engines, hammers, steel tires for railway cars, cast steel shafts for river and ocean steamers, and finally that astonishing output of guns and armourplatc which brought the militaristic nations of the world to buy at Essen. Ihe daily roar of artillery at the proving grounds, where each new gun was tested, added to the din of whistles, rushing tioins, and rattling gears, made pre-war Itulir probably the noisiest place on earth. It is noisy enough now, but the great guns are silent; Krupp makes them no more. The big lathes that once made guns lor every nation, from China to Peru, now turn out shafting for marine and other engines. Box-cars for Belgium, car wheels for South America, and whole tram-line systems for the Dutch East Indies were some of the orders being filled when I saw these giant works a few months ago. You can picture the size and scopo of this colossal plant when 1 tell you that literaby the coal and iron ccrao in at one end of the factory and emerge at tho other in tho form of finished locomotives, with steam up for testing, or as ploughs all painted and ready for the farm, or as tho finest nickellcd instruments and tools. But amid all this mad drama of frenzied production, nothing can compare in sheer tinman interest and excitement with the adventurous life of the masked men who battle with red-hot iron in the heat, fumes, and dust of tho furnaces and mills. Think of one block of red-hot metal weighing 85 tons tossed about with cranes and hooks like baggage on a dock! Then from between giant roller's, with a deafening boom and a hiss like cannon fire, the long rails and strips shoot out white hot And crawling like fiery serpents. Let a workman but stumble then or lake a single false step and ho pays with his life. Its famous crucible steel is the oldest specialty of Essen. To obtain it raw materials specially chosen are melted in separate crucibles and then poured together to form the ingot. This particular steel is said to excel all others in purity and uniform quality. < Lately, too, a new stainless and rustless steel has been made at Essen. It is claimed that not oven boiling nitric acid can affect it, and it is well adapted as a substitute for nickel-plate in tho manufacture of surgical and other instruments. Aside from its truly amazing industrial aspects, with its singularly adequate welfare institutions for aged and crippled workmen, Essen is only an overgrown German factory town —sombre and smoky. It is the sort of place you like to see—once.