MISTRESS OF MILLIONS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 34, 26 September 1914, Page 7

MISTRESS OF MILLIONS.

ROMANCE OF THE KRUPP WAR FACTORY.

Bertha Krupp, mistress of the world’s greatest war-factory, is the world’s richest woman. Her income, p’.ior to the outbreak of war, was estimated at one and a half millions sterling. When Friedrich Krupp cued, leaving no sou to carry on the management of this vast business, he directed in his will that the property should pas i into the possession of his eldest daughter Bertha, to be managed a, 5 a joint stock company by a board oi ax. in number, and it w'as thus that Bertha Krupp became the world’s greatest heiress. In 1906 Franlein Krupp married, and her husband, who also assumed the name of Krupp, became president of the hoard.

The story of the growth of this gigantic enterprise is interesting. The oiigiual little Krupp workshop is still preserved at Essen, where, 104 years ago Friedrich Krupp, great-grand-father of Bertha Krupp, tried to make cast steel, the secret of which was guarded in England. His experiments at first were a failure. Persevering, however, he managed to produce an inferior quality of cast steel, hut found that the demand was not sufficient to keep the Works going.

A SECRET AND A FORTUNE,

(Friedrich Krupp died in 1826, a disappointed man, but before he died he confided to his fourteen-year-old -son, Alfred, the secret of making cast steel. The boy left school and worked at the crucibles, and the attention of the world was firsjt drawn to his work at the great exhibition of 1851, when he showed a huge cast steel ingot and a 6-pounder cannon of cast steel. This secured fame, and in 1861 Prussia adopted Krupp’s breach-loading cannon guns, which were largely used in the Frimco-Prus-sian war of 1870.

But although it was Alfred Knipp who thus laid the foundation of this great firm, it was his son Friedrich who developed it on modern lines, and who extended it until it became the world’s greatest war-factory. Some idea of the manner in which ho developed the works may be gathered from the fact that during his management the number of men employed rose from about 20,000 to 47,000 in 1901, a year before he died.

WHAT ONE WOMAN CONTROLS

The works to-day employ something like 70,000 people. It is somewhat difficult to estimate their extent, for apart from the steel works and coal mines at Essen, there ate iron ore mines, foundries, shipbuilding yards, and steel works in other parts of Germany. Little did Friedrich Krupp dream, when telling his son the secret of making cast steel, that his little forge would grow into the giant works of to-day; still less did he dream that this groat enterprise, which has a share capital of nine millions sterling, would come under the control -of one woman!