Stinnes the Second

In Berlin, a man well known in Germany but little known abroad, a man feared, hated, despised, as was the sombre, inscrutable, all-powerful, Hugo Stinnes--this man was arrested on the suspicion of having defrauded the Prussian State Bank and on a charge of usury. Subsequent inves- tigation failed to substantiate the charges and the man was discharged last week.

This man is a successful banker, owner of vast metallurgical interests, a shipping magnate, proprietor of vast estates and city property, a chemical producer, a tsar of finance. German newspapers call him "King of the Borse;" he is accused "of holding the paramount money power in his hands."

Unlike the late Herr Hugo Stinnes, who was a Rhinelander, this indus- trial potentate hails from Frankfort, home of the Rothschilds. Unlike the dead "King of Coke," the "King of the Borse" is a Jew; his great predecessor in wealth was a Lutheran. Unlike the bluff, hard, scowling Stinnes, the Jew is suave, handsome, crafty. Unlike the once omnipotent Ruhr industrialist, who inherited his father's fortune, the newcomer began with the modest sum of 15,000 marks and made his enormous fortune unaided. But the latter aims to be like Stinnes; he is copying the methods of Stinnes; and, while he is not so rich, so powerful, so dominating as was Stinnes, he has been marked as "Stinnes the Second."

His name is Jakob Michael and he is only 32 years of age.