THE KRUPP WORKS AT ESSEN.
Standing in the main square before the town hall of Essen is a large bronze monument, representing not a king, nor yet a hero, but a man clad in a simple citizen's coat. His right hand rests on an anvil, and his penetrating eyes are overhung by a thinker's brow. The granite pedestal bears the name of "Alfred Krupp."
Long ago England knew the process of making cast steel, but she carefully kept it a secret. In 1800 Friedrich Krupp, the father of Alfred, began to experiment. He worked early and late. His friends told him that he was wasting his time, but Friedrich worked on. After eleven years he discovered the precious secret, and in 1818, on the present site of the Essen works, he built eight furnaces, each with one crucible. He employed only two laborers. And that was the beginning of the great Krupp works at Essen.
Bertha Krupp, Her Husband and Children.
His son Alfred was born in 1812, just one year after the great discovery was made, and in 1842 Alfred assumed entire charge of the works. His father had been able to cast steel only in small masses. In 1855 Alfred Krupp sent a block of steel weighing 4500 pounds to the London Exhibition, and he was able to cast steel in one mass weighing more than 100,000 pounds. Alfred Krupp died in 1887, and it was under him that the Krupp works grew, to such enormous proportions.
A Large Community House.
Alfred Friedrich Krupp, the third in line, was born in 1854 and died in 1902. He was known as the cannon king. When he died nearly all his wealth went to his daughter Bertha. In 1906, at the age of twenty years, Bertha Krupp was married to a plain German gentleman with only a "von" to his name, Herr von Bohlen and Halbach. They have four children living and one child dead, and they live very quietly at "Villa Hügel" in Essen, a lovely villa built on the hills above the town. In 1900, before his marriage, Herr von Bohlen was an attaché at the German embassy at Washington. Bertha Krupp is the second richest person in the German empire, running the Kaiser a close second, and when this war is over her wealth may surpass his.
