himself the owner of several mines and extended his business to the manufacture of different kinds of fuel such as briquettes. He also began to purchase sea-going vessels as well as river steamers and barges, the latter, especially on the Rhine, on a constantly increasing scale. He next organized an extensive international business in coal, and had 13 steamers trading to and from North Sea, Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Sea ports. They carried coal, wood and grain, also iron-ore, Stinnes having begun to manufacture iron and steel. He also imported great quantities of English coal and had an agency at Newcastle as well as an interest in some English mines. This led to his estab- lishing branches of his business at Hamburg and at Rotterdam. Before the World War he was the possessor of a fortune which was vaguely estimated at several millions of pounds. He was a director of many of the greatest industrial and mining com- panies of Westphalia, the Rhineland and Luxemburg. Business interests of this magnitude were constantly expanding, and he became interested in numerous subsidiary enterprises, such as tramways and the supply of electric power and light. He was always engaged in founding new concerns or amalgamating existing ones. Stinnes managed to maintain an extensive and even a detailed knowledge of the working of all the concerns in which he was engaged, and in all of them to exact zealous and conscientious work from his business subordinates. The secret of his success was essential unity of direction and co- ordination of aims in all branches of his enterprises.
When the World War broke out he secured an enormous share in the war profits which flowed into the coffers of the great industrialists. In enemy countries, it is true, his enter- prises were sequestrated, and his firm at Rotterdam placed on the Allies' " black list." But he was richly compensated, apart from the regular indemnification paid by the German Government, when he was called in by Ludendorff as the most competent expert to give advice, to organize the coal and the industrial production of occupied Belgium and to help to set in motion the gigantic production of war material which the Ger- man G.H.Q. demanded from the homeland. His connexion with Ludendorff led to his becoming an influence behind the scenes in German politics, and, after the revolution, to his enter- ing the Reichstag, as well as to his debut as a newspaper pro- prietor on a grand scale. During the war he had extended his activities in Hamburg and had bought up in 1916 the Woer- mann and the E. African lines. In these fresh undertakings he became associated with the two greatest German shipping concerns, the Hamburg-American line and the North German Lloyd. His Hamburg interests continued from that date on- wards to multiply in something Eke geometrical progression. Half a dozen landed estates were purchased in Saxony to supply timber for pit props. At Flensburg in Schleswig he secured control of the largest Baltic shipping concern, and proceeded to build a new fleet of ships, christening one of them the " Hin- denburg." In the elections of June 1920 he secured a seat in the Reichstag as a member of the Deutsche Volkspartei, the new electioneering name of the former National Liberal party. He had about the same time begun to buy up leading German newspapers, one of his main objects being to organize a solid and powerful bloc of opinion in Germany in support.of law and order and the promotion of the highest industrial and com- mercial efficiency. His newspaper purchases included the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung in Berlin, formerly the organ of Bismarck and then of all succeeding German Governments, the Miinchener Neueste Nachrichten and the Miinchen-Augs- burger Zeitung, the last-named being one of the oldest news- papers in Germany. Both of the South German journals were previously exponents of a very much more democratic trend of opinion than that which came to characterize them under the new proprietorship. Ancillary to these acquisitions large interests were secured by Stinnes in paper-works in order to make his newspapers independent of the paper market.
In the autumn of 1921 he was reported to be contemplating some still vaster venture in the nature of a super trust to control every industry in Germany, so that the whole might ultimately
be coordinated like one gigantic concern regulating production, transport and the supply of the German markets and those of the whole world. It might thus be possible to avoid waste, sudden crises, ruinous competition and foreign commercial dic- tation. He was reported to have already expended the equiv- alent of about 250,000,000 on these aims and to be continuing to sink further millions in them. The Social Democrats were believed not to be averse from Stinnes' vaster scheme, as it corresponded in certain aspects with their own plans, when they were in power, for 'coordinating all German industries, pending the possibility of socializing them. An instrument for super- intending this coordination in the social and economic aspects was ready to hand in the Economic Council of the German Reich, set up by the new Republican constitution of 1919.
The only public check which Stinnes was known to have received in the course of his career was at the Spa Conference in 1920, when he attempted to address that assembly in peremptory language concerning the impossibility of the coal deliveries demanded by the Allies and was summarily silenced by the president.
STOCK EXCHANGE (see 25.930). Before the outbreak of
the World War in Aug. 1914 the London Stock Exchange
had for several years experienced two remarkable periods of
activity, both being the outcome of industrial development
which caused a rapid intensifying of the demand for two com-
modities namely, oil and rubber. This was the sequel to the
discovery of the internal-combustion engine, and its increasing
adoption in mechanical road transport.
Pre-war Rubber and Oil Booms. The rubber boom came first. It began in 1909, and lasted until about 1912. The demand for rubber applied a great stimulus to the rubber plantation industry in the Malay States, the Dutch East Indies, Ceylon and India. The price of rubber rose at one time to over 123. per lb., and an enormous number of new companies were formed, mostly with capitals of moderate size. In order to popularize rubber as an investment the resourceful company promoter introduced shares of the denomination of as. each. The innova- tion was extraordinarily successful, and a very large number of companies were floated with capital divided into 2s. shares, while others formed prior to the boom sub-divided their shares into the smaller and more popular denomination. Prices of shares rose to extraordinary heights. Premiums of thousands per cent were common, the shares of the Patalung and Selangor companies, two of the earliest plantation companies, rising to premiums in excess of 3,000 per cent. In Stock Exchange parlance the public " got the bit between its teeth," and the boom persisted for a long time. Large fortunes were made by people who participated in the boom in the early period. A reaction in the price of rubber, which ultimately fell below is. per lb. in 1921, had already put an end to the boom before the war began. Although the extravagant prices paid during the boom were at no time justified, the companies paid very satisfactory dividends for years; and it was not until the post-war depression, which was unparalleled in its severity, swept over the commodity markets in the latter part of 1920 and the first part of 1921 that the industry was faced with real difficulties: The tremendous stimulus applied to planting in 1910, 1911 and 1912 led to the inevitable overproduction, and in 1919 and 1921 schemes for limiting output were put into force.
The oil boom began shortly after the activity in rubber had been well spread. It persisted for a longer period, for the reason that the price of oil rose steadily from the introduction of the motor-car. It eventually reached its maximum height in 1920, but a reaction began in 1921, and this produced a corresponding movement in the share market. There was an enormous demand for petroleum spirit in the war period, and the price rose steeply. After the cessation of hostilities the price rose further, a circumstance which was partly due to the conversion of locomotives and ships' engines from coal to oil, partly to the great extension of mechanical transport on the road and in the air, and partly to the fact that the refinement and distribution of oil was in the hands chiefly of two vast organizations. The boom was accom-
