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IMPERIALISM
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of mechanical for manual labour. With this end in view, it bought all the patents bearing on the preparation of tobacco and spent enormous sums. There were many patents of no use as they stood, which the engineers of the trust had to study and modify. At the end of 1906, two subsidiary companies were constituted solely to acquire patents. With the same object in view, the trust built its machine shops, casting shops and repair shops. One of these establishments, that at Brooklyn, employs 300 workmen; there experiments are carried out on machines for making cigarettes, cheroots, smoking tobacco, tin sheets for packing, boxes, etc. Inventions are perfected there."12

"Other trusts employ engineers specially charged with the continued development of technique ("developing engineers"). They invent and experiment with technical improvements and new methods of production. The steel trust grants to its workmen and engineers high bonuses on all inventions suitable for improving machinery or for lessening waste in production."13

The improvement of machinery in big German industry, e.g., in the chemical industry, which has enormously developed during these last few decades, has been assured by the same means. In 1908, the concentration of production had caused to emerge in this industry two groups which tended to monopoly. First, there were the "dual alliances" of two pairs of big factories, each having a capital of from 20 to 21 million marks: on the one hand, the former Meister factory at Holst and the Kassele factory at Frankfort-on-Main; and on the other hand the aniline and soda factory at Ludwigshafen and the former Bayer factory at