Another View of the Krupp Works.
The tenant on the first floor must clean the pavement every day before nine A. M., except Sundays and holidays when it must be done on the preceding day between three and four P. M. The rent of the houses runs from $15 a year for two rooms, to $85 for five or six rooms with a cellar.
The Essener Hof is a hotel run by the Krupps, and it is intended for the guests of the Krupps who are doing business with the firm. Then there is a boarding-house for bachelors and widowers. This boarding-house was started in 1855 with two hundred men and now it has over a thousand.
For the community of workers there are many stores, twenty-five grocery stores, two slaughter-houses, a bakery, a flour mill, an ice plant, a brush factory, two tailors, two shoemakers, a laundry, a hotel, eleven restaurants, three cafés, nine beerhalls and two clubhouses.
A Street in Essen at the Entrance of the Krupp Works.
There is a whole staff of doctors to look after the workmen and their families, and the strict medical treatment prevents contagious diseases. The laws of the German empire require certain classes of workmen to be insured against old age and broken-down constitutions. This came through the efforts of Bismarck, and it applies to all workmen with a salary not exceeding $500 a year. Alfred Krupp gave $250,000 to the workmen, the interest of which is used as a fund to encourage them to build their own houses and as a help for the needy. It is loaned to the workmen at a very small rate of interest.
Besides these benefits he established private schools the purpose of which is to qualify the children of the workmen to earn honest profitable livings. A fee of five cents a month is charged to each pupil, but if the child remains fifteen months, seventy-five cents is placed in the savings bank to his credit.
Krupp realized that a contented body of workmen brings about better results than unhappy ones, and he felt that his scheme was not only a philanthropic one but also a good business investment.