Essen an der Ruhr' announces 'all kinds of objects in cast iron.'

Friedrich Krupp served his apprenticeship as technician and workman in his grandmother's foundry. His son Alfred did likewise, under the tutelage of his mother, of whom he was reputed to have said, 'I learned more from my mother than I did from my father.' Helene Amalie and Teresa were the two guardian angels of the great enterprise.

In developing his steel foundry Friedrich Krupp obeyed an impulse to liberate this industry from British monopoly. The new plant was founded in 1812, though formal inauguration is dated 1811. It was during these years that Napoleon and his followers dreamed of isolating England. But the beginning was difficult and full of obstacles. In 1848, at the age of thirtyseven, Friedrich employed only seventy workers in his establishment, and there was nothing to indicate his brilliant future. But the epoch of great railroad construction had begun, and its appetite for steel was voracious. Artillery development followed- and Alfred Krupp received the American nickname of 'Cannon King.'

Even then progress was slow and exhausting. Alfred Krupp was the first to think of constructing a cast-steel cannon in a single piece. The Prussian Government, to whom he had offered a unique type of steel to be used for the barrels of both rifles and cannon, did not approve of the innovation, and a trial was agreed upon only on condition that Krupp should manufacture the cannon at his own expense. He worked on the first of these guns with his own hands. It was a piece of sixty-five centimetres, which was tried with good results; but the Prussian military authorities suspended judgment. An identical gun sent by Krupp to the London Exposition of 1851 excited the admiration of experts. This piece was

afterward donated to the King of Prussia and placed in Potsdam. The future Emperor Wilhelm, then the Crown Prince, exclaimed on seeing it: 'I must know that genius, that Herr Krupp!'

And the war of 1870, which brought Wilhelm's triumph, also witnessed the triumph of Krupp guns. France and Egypt, from whom the first order for a group of batteries came, showed more interest than Prussia. It was not until 1859 that the Prussian Government gave its first big order for three hundred cannon; and the war of 1870 was the vindication of Krupp.

Artillery developed steadily under Wilhelm I. In the nineties Wilhelm II created a formidable navy, increased his artillery, and manufactured armor plate. Nine shops grew up like mushrooms, and soon a noisy, smoky town came into existence, crowded with buildings of metal and glass, and surmounted with chimneys. Here a tireless battle for supremacy between armor and cannon was waged. New and more resistent steels required new technical processes, new hosts of engineers and chemists.

From the seventy employees of 1848, Krupp's forces grew to eight thousand in 1866, and to twelve thousand in 1874. In 1922 they numbered more than a hundred thousand, and Essen, which was a town of some four thousand inhabitants when the factory was established, is now a city of half a million.

In 1887 Friedrich Alfred Krupp, the third of the dynasty, succeeded Alfred. He was more gifted technically than financially, and after 1870 rashly tried to profit by the enormous credit his name commanded. The business crisis of 1874 placed him in a very dangerous situation. The Government abandoned its protectionist policy and the Krupp enterprise suffered from foreign competition. Fortunately the rapidly growing

American railroads demanded enormous quantities of rails, and exports helped Krupp out of his difficulties. The crisis passed, and in the period of militarism under Wilhelm II the great works reached their maximum development. Mines were bought, new furnaces were built, and the undertaking outgrew the limits of the Essen works.

For the industrial population, which had by that time increased tenfold into a little world by itself, Friedrich Krupp provided assistance and insurance of every kind; with great intelligence he organized savings banks, pension funds, stores, houses, dormitories, old people's homes, girls' schools, lecture courses, libraries, music, and sports. Bismarck is known to have said that Krupp initiative served him as a model for his social laws.

The death of the third Krupp in 1902 was a dangerous crisis in the history of the house. The only heir was a young girl, Berta Krupp. The time when women did their weaving at home had passed forever, and with it the period when a Helene Amalie or a Teresa could carry on her frail shoulders the burden of the Krupp enterprise. It seemed that the tradition that always demanded a Krupp at the head of the famous works was to be broken. In his will Berta's father provided for the formation of a Krupp corporation in which his daughter was almost the only holder. And then, in accordance with Salic law, the dynasty revived and the name continued on a side branch grafted to the trunk. Berta married the young diplomat von Bohlen und Halbach, who passed from the leisurely office of a legation councilor at the Holy See to the responsible post of president of the Krupp Company. However, even in Wilhelm II's Germany the scale tipped unexpectedly between the petty nobility of the von Bohlens and the more illustrious

bourgeois Krupps. It was not Berta Krupp who became a noblewoman by hiding her maiden name behind that of von Bohlen und Halbach; it was the latter family who supplied a prince consort and stepped up into a prominent match. The Kaiser was graciously pleased to order the husband to take the name of the Essen foundries as his own, and thereafter, as before, the head of the house was a KruppKrupp von Bohlen und Halbach, to give him his full official name. The public announcement of this marriage solemnly declared that the family enterprise would be carried on as before. Unser alte Gott blessed the union, and a year later there was an heir apparent, Alfried Krupp.

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These were years of frantic activity in the shops. Every branch of the enterprise developed incessantly, and new ones were created too. The central works, the grandiose FriedrichAlfried-Hütte, became the last word in modern technical perfection. Ten blast furnaces, with two groups of sixty coke ovens to feed them, consumed about two hundred thousand tons of fuel a year. There were shops where single moulds two hundred yards long and ninety yards wide were cast. Combustion by-products were utilized in special plants to provide motive power; and thanks to miraculous organization, huge steel ingots were worked into smaller units without reheating, for a locomotive took each ingot, as soon as it was ready, into a subterranean chamber whence its heat could not escape. In 1911-12 the FriedrichAlfried-Hütte produced one million tons of ingot steel, though running at only four fifths of its full capacity.

This feverish activity was the prelude to the World War the apogee and catastrophe of the Krupp enterprise. The 1919-1920 balance sheet of the firm of Friedr. Krupp contains the

following memorable words: 'During the reported year, and for the first time in two generations, the Krupp works, according to the dispositions of the Treaty of Versailles, have produced no war materials.' Under the vigilant eye of the Interallied Commission this great militarist enterprise had been transformed and readapted. In five years sixty thousand tons of machinery were destroyed, as well as arms, munitions, and furnaces, the total value of which was a hundred and four million gold marks. To-day the heirs of the Cannon King are permitted to manufacture no more than four 17centimetre pieces a year and what little armor is necessary for the upkeep of the tiny German Navy.

The Krupp works now include, besides the mother establishment at Essen, numerous branches constituted as separate companies, but all under the presidency of Krupp von Bohlen. They turn out, not only raw steel, but also railway material, locomotives, motors, agricultural and textile machinery, surgeons' tools, cash registers, and cinema apparatus. Not until it had survived the grave crisis of 1924 did the Friedrich-Alfried-Hütte return to its pre-war volume of production. The value of the enterprise is estimated at a hundred and eighty-eight million gold marks. During one of the recent fiscal years it paid sixteen million gold marks in taxes, six and one-half million in insurance of the employees, and five and one-third million in salaries.

But fate was not content with inflicting upon the warlike Krupps the task of manufacturing cinema ma

chines and cash registers instead of the Big Berthas; the Ruhr conflict woke strange echoes in the Essen citadel where machinery to inflict death upon millions of people had been manufactured. Death had, in a sense, been made an article of exportation. During the passive resistance of 1923 Krupp von Bohlen was arrested with other members of his concern. Some were imprisoned, but all bore their trials with dignity.

To-day Krupp is the only concern to remain aloof from the huge blocs into which the other metal industries of Germany have consolidated. Krupp prefers splendid isolation. The firm has not grown in the American fashion, at a single stroke of fortune; it has ripened slowly for generations, and is more venerable than the Thyssen enterprise, whose history is spanned by the lifetime of the recently deceased steel magnate. There is something noble noble or, in to-day's language, something sporting about that attitude of isolation; it is a survival of a personal or family character that is trying to resist the wave of anonymous combinations.

Whoever visits the infernal region of Essen- the Krupp works - cannot help noticing, dwarfed by its modern surroundings, a diminutive structure with a slanting roof, small windows, and battered walls. This is the old office of the founder, Friedrich Krupp. The house, fragile as a plaything among the young giants about it, is a respected shrine, and the only tangible evidence to evoke the tradition of a mighty name.

[THESE two popular ballads were written down by Leonid Soloviov in remote corners of Russian Turkestan. Since the collection was printed in a Soviet publication, it does not contain any epics that are not laudatory.]

Noted at Kishlak Mahram, Fergana, as told by Mahmud Zaidjan.

As the heavy bear destroys the ant heap, carrying off thousands of ants with his tongue, so warfare was shattering the world and carrying thousands of lives away.

Wars were made by princes and rich men eager to grab still more money; but their peasants had to do the killing. When the cup of heavenly patience was filled, and Allah's raiment was soaked in blood, and when the smoke of burning villages and the stench from the corpses made it hard for Him to breathe in the heavens, Allah called his servants together and asked:

'Who will make the earth happy? Who will descend to this abyss of grief and blood and stop the murder and the robbery?'

Allah then began to choose the strongest and wisest, who could go down and make the earth happy. Producing a stone weighing sixty poods, he said:

'Whoever can overturn this stone, him I shall send down to earth.'

He then asked three riddles: 'Who is the happiest man in the world? Who is the strongest? Who is the

1 From Krasnaia Nov (Moscow literary and current-affairs monthly), June

weakest and the most unhappy?'

Many tried to overturn the stone, but none could even move it. Many attempted answers to the questions, but their answers were mere flattery, devoid of sense.

They said that Allah was the strongest man and the happiest of all, and that the unhappiest and weakest was the Shaitan; but Allah's heart was deaf to flattery, and the shadow of sadness. hung over His eyes. They said that the murdered Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, was the strongest, that rich men are the happiest, that the hired man is the weakest and still Allah could not find the worthy servant for whom He was seeking.

Then Allah put on a dervish's coat and descended to the bleeding and exhausted earth to seek a redeemer among the people. The first man He saw was throwing bags of grain like little balls. He approached him, saying, 'Come with me.' Then He led him to a large stone, which he asked him to turn over. The man grasped the edge of the stone, strained at it, and fell dead.

Allah tried many others so many that the stone bore five imprints from the hands that had tried to raise it; but He did not find His man.

At last, grieving and distressed, He stopped and tried to think where His chosen one could be found. At this moment, seeing a man with a high forehead, he said to himself: 'I will try this one.'

He led the man to the stone and said: "Try to turn it over.'

When the man took off his shirt Allah wept, for the man had thin arms, not the kind that could turn over the stone.

The stranger, however, did not touch the stone. Instead he fetched two logs, and the first log he pushed under the stone and the other he put under the first. He then bore down on the protruding log and easily overturned the stone without strain. When the stone was turned over, blood flowed from under it, and Allah saw beneath it a crushed poisonous arrow-snake who had been holding the stone down with a force of one hundred poods, so that the men could not turn it over - for there is no man on earth who can lift a stone weighing sixty poods that is held down with a hundred poods of an arrow-snake's strength. And Allah was amazed at the wisdom of His man who, without any strength, had turned over one hundred and sixty poods, and He asked him the three riddles, and received answers that were worthy of a great wizard:

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"The unhappiest is the man whom nobody loves.'

Allah saw that the man's wisdom was great, and knew that in his hands the work of liberation would be safe. He raised him to His abode and kept him there fifty nights and fifty days, and gave him part of His own wisdom before sending him back to the earth. The chosen one's name was Lenin, and he went down to the earth in the aura of his wisdom and stopped bloodshed and made people happy. Finally he went to Allah's palace to rest, leaving the earth free and happy behind him. And his name will live as long as the word 'happiness' endures.

A Tadjik story, told at Kanibadam, in a tea house, by a blind old ‘maddah,' or story-teller, who said he had no family

name.

This was not long ago, and people are still alive who remember those hard days. The earth was shrouded in sorrow and calamity, and we moaned under the yoke of rich men, weeping and complaining to the steppe, the sun, and the stars.

Then came Lenin, and the steppe announced to the sun and the stars:

'Here is the man whose hand shall make a new world.'

Lenin said nothing, and did nothing, but the rich men knew that a fiery avenger was on his way, and their hearts turned to ice when they heard of him. They gathered in council, and their vile tongues whispered poison:

'We must kill Lenin.'

There dwelt on the earth a vicious wizard named Kuchuk-Adam (the little man), whose heart had long been encrusted in malice and dishonor, but the rich men called him, saying:

'Kuchuk-Adam! Thou hast helped us to rule, and we have rewarded thee. Help us destroy Lenin, and we will build thee a golden castle, studded with gems and peopled with forty-four maidens of entrancing beauty, whom thou shalt take for wives.'

Kuchuk-Adam replied:

'Give me a hundred such palaces, four thousand, four hundred wives, ten thousand slaves, fill my cellars with diamonds, fill my fields with cattle, give me a hundred thousand tanaps of vineyard, and I will kill him.'

The rich men gave Kuchuk-Adam all this, and one of them added a ringthe one given by Kara-Adam (the black man), having the marvelous property of making its wearer invisible.

Kuchuk-Adam left the council and went home. There he opened his magic books, burned enchanted herbs, and