Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1919 — HOW HUNS KEPT HOLD ON METALS [ARTICLE]

HOW HUNS KEPT HOLD ON METALS

Vivid Account by Australian Premier of Methods AH Over the World. IT STILL HAS ITS POWER An Whose Tentacles Extend AH Over the World and Worked Unceasingly for Commercial Benefit of Germany. New York.—Attention has been called a number of times to the manner in which the Germans managed to dominate in the control and price of nonferrous metals, line branch of their organization was taken over by A. Mitchell Palmer, the alien property custodian. This concerned itself with handling the metals in this country. But the ramifications of the German octopus were never as graphically described as in an address made by W. M. Hughes, the' Australian prime min ‘ ister, at the Mansion houAJ London, several months ago. He took as his text what he called the great firm of Mertons. as the British end of the German trust was designated. He said it was “a living outward and visible sign of the rottenness within." and an agent of the enemy. Then he went on to say: “It is the English branch of one of the greatest companies the world has ever seen; itis a combination, an octopus whose tentacles extended before the war all over the world, and whose heart was at Frankfort-ou-Main. It is an organization that had a stranglehold on the whole of the world.

“It was a most powerful and a most serviceable instrument in the German policy Of penetration. It served the power of the kaiser—better than —a dozen legions on the field, and Lt is [now here today, as ft "hits iH-tii. with its ramifications in our midst. It still ■ has its power, the profits are being - gathered in—GUs-lirnvwhteh' for three years after rhe war was the London agent, the English agent, of the Amerlean Metal (wttjHiiiy. of which 1 shall gpFak In a inoment. Served Germany Well. “This was the firm from which Britain bought for 12 months after the war the metals necessary for carrying on the war. This firm was founded by Wilhelm Merton of Frankfort, and from the day of its establishment it has spread its tentacles out, and the firm has grown every passing day. It is called Metallgesellschaft, the American Metal company, the Australian Metal company^the African Metal company, Schweizetische Gesellschaft in Switzerland; it has a dual name which is sometimes French and sometimes something else; but it is always German in essence. It pushed out its Tentacles over Europe from place to place. “It pushed another tentacle across the ocean to Australia, calling itself the A nstrnlinn Metal company: it called itself the Australian Metal company, but it was not Australian. It was a company held by Germany; it had German directors, and very naturally, as was their custom, they covered themselves in their methods and de-

vices with the. cloak of naturalization. Bit by bit they beslabbered and entangled the great metal industries..ol Australia in a grip until they had them body and soul, and so it was that when the war broke out there was this grept -metal—industry, the Beer Sondheimet in oneshapeor another, the Metallge* selTschaft, and the Metallurgische GeSPlTschqft, the whnlty ‘centrnlling thechannels from which the metal came, determining how it should be produced and wliat prices it should be soki at all over the“worhlT What they did in Australia they did elsewhere. "In America they pushed out another tentacle; there was a company called the American Metal company. It was a company in which, out of 70,000 called-up shares. 34,000, or 49 per cent, were held by the Metallgesellschaft at Frankfort, 27 per cent by Mertons of this place and the remaining 18 per cent were held mostly by hyphenated Germans, a few being held by bona fide Americans who were put right in the front of the shop window to deceive the credulous. Now I absolutely. acquit here the Engiish shareholders, the Innocent shareholders in Mertons. of all blame. They went Into this in a bona fide way, they did not realize what were the designs of these people; but lam directing my remarks here against the firm. against the Metallurgische Gesellschaft, against the great German octopus which dominated the world, which stayed here for four years after the war. It is difficult to understand how they should have remained here. It is not sufficient to deny them a license; they ought not to be allowed to trade at all. Their company should be wound up and they should disappear from the commercial life of the country.”