Stinnes' Oil

It was inevitable that Hugo Stinnes should enter the oil game.

Herr Stinnes recently completed an oil trust, developed in the last year, based on concessions in Mexico and Argentina, wells in Mesopotamia and the Balkans, and on the Deutschen Redoil, which derives oil from brown coal by means of a German process.

This organization was quietly accomplished through banks controlled by the coal baron, five more of which he has recently "penetrated." The first fight in Stinnes' oil war will be waged on the neutral soil of Denmark. He has spent several days in Copenhagen preparing for an attack on the Danish-American Petroleum Company.

To increase the liquid value of his holdings, Stinnes, in conjunction with the other industrials, compelled the Reichsbank to abandon its attempt to stabilize the mark by "official" quotations. The dollar started its climb from the official 283,000 marks "to a probable 1,000,000 by the end of the month." This process will enable Stinnes to pay practically nothing for his recently acquired properties and thus releases his resources for his next step. His income is not affected by this depreciation, for he regulates prices strictly on the basis of dollar exchange values, putting the capital thus obtained into new investments and repeating the process ad infinitum. Thus coal costs 69,000 times its pre-War cost. Wages paid by Stinnes before the War were 17 cents an hour. Under the present scale wages are between seven and ten cents per hour, thus halving his pre-War costs of production.