What happens is what the German writer, Eschwege, a contributor to Die Bank, who has made a special study of real estate business and the transactions connected with it, calls the formation of a "bog." Frantic speculation in land in the suburbs of large towns; collapse of building undertakings (like that of the Berlin firm of Boswau and Knauer, who had actually made 100,000,000 marks with the help of the Deutsche Bank, "the most secure and strongest of the German banks"—the latter acting, of course, discreetly behind the scenes through the participation system and only losing 12,000,000 marks)—the ruin of small holders and of workers deluded by the firms doing building work on a large scale, criminal agreements with the 'honest' Berlin police and the Berlin officials with the aim of getting the right of issuing information about the land, building licences, etc.55
"American methods," strongly condemned by European professors and well-intentioned bourgeois have become in the age of finance-capital, those of every great town, no matter what country it is in.
At the beginning of 1914, there was talk in Berlin of a transport trust to combine three Berlin transport undertakings: Metropolitan, Tramway Company and Omnibus Company. "We know," wrote Die Bank, "that this plan has come to a head since the majority of the shares in the bus company has been acquired by the other two transport companies. We can believe those who, in following this course, hope by a re-organisation of the transport services to secure enough economies to allow the public to benefit in the end. But the question is complicated by the fact that behind the trust being formed are the banks, who, if they
