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</A> -Cui Bono?-
an excerpt from:
Treason's Peace
Howard Watson Armbruster�1947
A Crossroads Press Book
Beechurst Press
New York, NY
438 pps. -- First/Only Edition -- Out-of Print
--[1]--
DEDICATED TO
CAPTAIN WATSON AMBRUSTER II, U.S.A. AIR FORCE
AND TO HIS CHILDREN,
WATSON III AND MARGARET URSULA,
FOR WHOSE FUTURE SECURITY, WITH
THOSE OF THEIR GENERATION, THIS STORY
HAS BEEN WRITTEN.
PREFACE
The Pattern of Farben
THE HUGE INTERNATIONAL chemical combine and cartel leader that is known
today as I. G. Farben had its beginning some seventy-five years ago, with the
founding in Germany of six small coal-tar dye companies. By 1939 these six
companies had grown into the ominous-sounding INTERESSEN GEMEINSCHAFT
FARBENINDUSTRIE AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT, of FRANKFORT am MAIN, which translated
literally, means "community of interests of the dye manufacturing companies."
I. G. Farben is usually discussed as a huge German cartel which controls
chemical industries throughout the world and from which profits flow back to
the headquarters in Frankfort. Farben, however, is no mere industrial
enterprise conducted by Germans for the extraction of profits at home and
abroad. Rather, it is and must be recognized as a cabalistic organization
which, through foreign subsidiaries and by secret tie-ups, operates a
far-flung and highly efficient espionage machine�he ultimate purpose being
world conquest�and a world super-state directed by Farben.
Perhaps the chief distinguishing characteristic of this vast
organ-ization is the definite pattern to which it holds. From its beginning
the Farben pattern-based upon intensive research wedded to ap-plied science,
plus a cynical disbelief in the existence of social, eco-nomic, or political
morality-has never varied; its rhythm appears changeless.
This book is the story of the Farben pattern�as it has appeared in the United
States, and a glimpse of its extent in Latin America. It is a story of the
shadowy designs that repeatedly have come up through the fabric of our
industrial, social, and political life.
Viewed over a long period of years it appears as an interlocking design of
propaganda, espionage, sabotage, and corruption.
Fragments of this pattern have been revealed to the public from time to time
in press reports of official investigations and court actions here in the
United States. These detached items, however, could mean little to the
public. To understand their significance�as a part of a never ending menace
to world peace�the activities of Farben must be traced from the beginning,
and chronicled in some kind of sequence.
The events in this story are not set forth in chronological order. Rather,
they are grouped according to subject matter-to bring out the many designs of
the pattern, and to make clear each phase of the menace that is Farben. Space
does not permit a history of this nebulous structure, or the part it has
played in German politics-in making Hitler Chancellor, and providing money
and munitions for his armies.
For more than forty years the author, through business, professional and
official contacts, has followed the activities of this colossal cartel
structure and its predecessors, the "Big Six" dyestuff companies. He has
followed the establishment of their chemical cartels in this country prior to
the first World War; the partial destruction of those monopolies during that
war; and the rebuilding, in the next two decades, of a far stronger and more
sinister framework inside our militarily strategic industries, our agencies
of public opinion, and the very fabric of government itself.
He believes that the story told here shows clearly that Farben was largely
responsible for our spiritual and physical disarmament when the present war
began�just as the Big Six was largely responsible for our unarmed condition
at the start of the first World War.
He believes also, that the story shows what we may expect from Farben during
the peace.
It is well to say now that every statement of fact in this book is supported
by irrefutable evidence in the form of official documents, court records, or
private papers. From these the reader may draw his own conclusions regarding
the guilt or gullibility�or both-of some of those American citizens who find
mention in these pages.
Be it admitted that unhappy instances of corruption, double dealing and
cupidity appear and reappear in our history from the earliest days of this
republic and will continue-yet a distinction must be made between ordinary
violations of our criminal statutes and those committed, or secretly
instigated, by an enemy which is obsessed with the lust of enslaving this
nation.
This, then, is the pattern of Farben.
pps, vi-ix
=====
CHAPTER I
Graft-and America Unarmed
ON A STORMY evening early in 1912, a raiding party armed with a search
warrant proceeded to one of the fashionable residential districts of
Philadelphia, broke down the door, and ransacked the apartment of one Alfred
J. Keppelmann.
Mr. Keppelmann was the executive in charge of the Philadelphia office of the
American Bayer Company, owned and directed by one of the leading German
dyestuff manufacturers. The local office of the Bayer company was at 9 North
Water Street, but the young attorney who led the raiding party had been
tipped off that Mr. Keppelmann kept his more important business
correspondence in his home.
The tip was a good one and resulted in a rich yield of evidences of bribery
and fraud engaged in by Mr. Keppelmann over a period of years.
Thus was launched an expose of commercial corruption that is without parallel
in the history of legitimate business in the United States. But that raid was
the first of a long series of ineffectual blows at the German-controlled
chemical cartels that for seventy-five years have operated within our
borders-ineffectual because they have not yet destroyed the corrupt influence
and power of these monopolies, whose purpose, since their inception, has been
to stifle our military effectiveness and to strengthen the resources of the
Fatherland.
The leading German chemical companies before the first World War were known
throughout the world as the Big Six. Direct predecessors of the gigantic I.
G. Farbenindustrie, in which they were later merged, these six companies were:
1. Badische Anilin und Sodafabrik. (known as Badische)
2. Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co. (known as Bayer or Elberfeld)
3. Aktiengesellschaft fur Anilinfabrikation. (known as the Berlin Company)
4. Farbwerke vorm. Meister Lucius und Bruning. (known as the Hoechst Co.)
5. Leopold Cassella G. m. b. H. in Frankfurt. (known as Cassella)
6. Kalle & Company. (known as Kalle)
All of these companies made dyestuffs and the intermediates from which
coal-tar dyes are produced; several of them also produced pharmaceutical
products from coal-tar intermediates and other chemical bases.
There were numerous other smaller German dyestuff producers but these six
concerns, with several hundred million dollars in assets, united early in the
century in two cartels, dominated the coal-tar industry in Germany, and
controlled the world's markets for dye stuffs.
In America, where business was a strictly private affair, and all attempts at
government supervision were fought tooth and nail by our rugged
individualists, the Big Six found fertile ground for their "peaceful
penetration." Here in America with the cooperation of the German government,
they established their agencies, and pursued a ruthless policy of economic
strangulation, with the result that upon our entry Into World War I,
America's organic chemical industry, the very lifeblood of modem warfare,
consisted of little more than a series of small assembly plants.
The completeness with which we failed to develop this militarily strategic
industry attests the determination of purpose and the typical German
thoroughness with which the representatives of Kultur carried out, within our
borders, their coordination of industry with the forces of war.
The early history of these six German companies takes in the birth of the
commercial development of dyes made from coal tar. Three generations ago
these dyes began to replace many of the natural or vegetable dyes. However,
it was not a German, but a young English chemist, William H. Perkin, who
discovered in 1856 that a usable purple, or mauve color, could be produced
from aniline, the oil-like product distilled from coal tar, which had been
produced originally in 1826.
History records that young Perkin was not attempting to make a dyestuff at
the time, but was experimenting, unsuccessfully, with the aniline in an
attempt to produce synthetic quinine. Some 70 years later, one of Farben's
chemists succeeded in doing what Perkin had set out to do and produced the
coal-tar derivative known as Atabrine which today, as a substitute for
quinine, occupies such a vital place in our control of malaria.
It was the Germans, however, who most industriously followed up Perkin's
discovery of an aniline dye. Intensive research was encouraged at German
universities, and by subsidies from the German government. The late
Congressman Nicholas Longworth told of a conversation he had with a
distinguished American chemist who had graduated from the University of
Heidelberg many years before, and who told Longworth that when he said
goodbye to his head professor he asked why it was that so much of the German
research work in chemistry was in the development of coaltar dyes. The
professors so engaged were receiving higher salaries than their colleagues,
and the industries were receiving government bonuses. The German professor
replied, "Young man, some day this work will save the Fatherland." In light
of more recent events, that professor can hardly be considered a good
prophet, but his remark indicated the early German vision of world supremacy
in science-out of which the Farben pattern of world conquest was to emerge.
The objectives of the original German dye cartels in the United States
were by no means confined to obstructing our development of the dye industry.
It was of utmost importance to forestall the establishment of any primary
phase of the coal-tar industry which might make this country independent of
Germany for coal-tar intermediates, and for other chemical products used in
making dyes during peace, or explosives and munitions during war. In the
early development of the dye industry in Germany, the high cost of individual
dyes was due to the large quantities of certain byproducts which had no value
but which had to be extracted from the coal tar in order to produce the dyes.
And the great variety of colors was due largely to the continuous research
devoted to the profitable utilization of these by-products. Despite this
research, however, the stock piles reached enormous size. Then, early in this
century the Germans realized the military significance of the coaltar
product, trinitrotoluol (TNT) which could readily be made from the
by-products. Thereupon, research to produce certain new colors suddenly
ceased, and the stock piles were allowed to accumulate for the war that was
to come.
The two Big Six cartels appeared perfectly willing that the few American
manufacturers who were trying to make dyes should continue their struggle to
do so, providing they secured the bulk, of their intermediates from Germany.
They laughed at this competition, but they were systematic in their price
cutting and utterly ruthless in their determination that a coal-tar industry
which could quickly be turned from dyes to munitions should not exist in the
United States.
Throughout this period, while our coal-tar industries languished or were
still-born whenever attempts were made to start them, it is estimated that we
were letting a billion dollars worth of coal gas go to waste annually through
the chimneys of the old-fashioned beehive ovens in which substantially all of
our coke was then made. The gas went to waste because we had no coal-tar dye
industry to make it profitable.
At one time, when a group of three of the largest American manufacturers of
heavy chemicals decided to start the production of aniline oil so that our
feeble dye industry would not be totally at the mercy of the Germans, a
special emissary of the Big Six came to the United States with the impudent
demand that production of the oil he stopped, and made the equally impudent
offer that the cartels would repay the Americans for such expenditures as had
been incurred.
To protect the domestic producers from the price slashing on aniline that
followed the refusal of the Americans to shut up shop, Congress placed a 10
percent duty on aniline oil. The Big Six, however, retaliated by dropping the
price on aniline far below any possible cost of production in the United
States.
Originally the German dyes were exported to the United States through houses
which handled a variety of imported products. Later, exclusive selling
agencies or branch houses were established here by each of the Big Six. These
branches and agencies had their main office in New York City, and maintained
branches in New England, Philadelphia and other centers where dyes were
consumed in quantities by textile, leather, paper and printing ink
manufacturers.
The author's first contact with these powerful German firms was in the early
1900s, while working on the original production of rayon, or artificial silk,
as it was then known, in a plant located in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Continuous experimental work was required in order to determine which dyes
were suitable for the new textile yam, and we received much assistance and
many fine samples of dyes from the local agents of the Big Six. Our interest
in dyes was confined to samples and laboratory experiments. The subject of
bulk purchases did not arise, and the matter of graft, of which I, had heard
a great deal in my visits to commercial dyeing establishments, never arose. A
few years later, however, I cornered a textile mill owner, a most forthright
citizen with whom I bad been doing business, and asked him why he tolerated
the graft which the German dyestuff companies were handing out to the boss
dyers who used their products. It was common knowledge, I told this mill
owner, that this bribery was what made it practically impossible for the few
American makers of dyestuffs to compete with the Germans. My friend's reply
was characteristic of the dejected attitude of the men who were paying the
bills for German dyes. Without pretending to quote his exact words, his reply
was: "I know perfectly well that my boss dyer receives bribe money on every
ounce of dyestuff that goes into the products which my mill turns out
However, it happens that we are making money on the work this man is doing.
Now, if I fired him, as I am justified in doing, I would have to get another
boss dyer. I can't dye these fabrics myself, and the new man would also take
bribes from the German companies. Competent dyers are bar I to get, but good
or bad, they all accept the graft. So why make the change? We mill owners all
know that this thing exists, but each of us feels that he is helpless to do
anything about it without risking ruin."
Not long after this conversation, I was invited to have lunch with an
executive of one of the American branches of the Big Six. This man was a
native born American whom I had known when he was engaged in another branch
of the chemical industry. In the past, I had found him a reputable business
man. During that luncheon be offered me a position with the German company he
was representing, and quite casually mentioned that one of my duties would be
to handle the Saturday pay-offs of bribe money to the boss dyers. He
remonstrated with me when I declined. "It's customary," he protested.
"Everyone in the industry does it, everyone knows it is done and no one is
objecting except a few small concerns that don't count-so why be squeamish
about it?"
I have recounted these personal experiences to illustrate the corruption, and
the callous acquiescence to it, through which the Germans maintained their
impregnable monopoly in the American dyestuff market during the two decades
preceding the first World War. Along with the bribery and other dishonest
practices went the legend, then accepted in America, that products derived
from' coal tar did not present an attractive field for exploitation because
American chemical brains were inadequate to fathom the mysteries of coal-tar
dyes.
However, the bribery of the boss dyers had become so notorious that the storm
was bound to break. Late in 1911 the grafting was brought forcibly to the
attention of the top executives of John and James Dobson, the oldest and
largest of the carpet manufacturers in the Philadelphia area. The owners'
investigation which followed, disclosed that an astounding annual excess cost
was being paid by their firm for its supply of colors. Also, that the bribery
bad reached much higher up than the boss dyers of the several mills operated
by the Dobsons. Criminal proceedings of various kinds were started, and a
group of mill owners from Philadelphia, New York and New England formed
themselves into the Textile Alliance, Inc. This group was very bitter at the
revelations of bow its members were being robbed and their employees
corrupted by the German dye companies.
This investigation, which began with the raid on Mr. Keppelmann's apartment,
was conducted by three Philadelphia attorneys under the leadership of the
late Thomas Earl White, and lasted for several years. Hundreds of witnesses
were examined, and much of the sordid story of bribery, corruption and fraud
came tumbling out and became a matter of court record.
It might be pointed out here that the American dyestuff market of that period
was peculiarly susceptible to dishonest manipulations of both quality and
price. The consumers of coal-tar dyes were numerous, and most of them
operated relatively small establishments. Few textile mills or commercial dye
houses had laboratories, so formulas and sample dyeings were frequently
supplied by the Big Six salesmen, through their head-office laboratory. In
many of the dyeing establishments, individual purchases of various colors and
shades, which changed with the fashions, were small, and the constant
variations made it impossible for the owners, who were not dyers, to
determine which dye was best or which should cost the least. Under these
conditions, the owners were compelled to depend on their boss dyers. These
men were usually highly skilled, self-taught artisans, frequently of foreign
birth, who carried in their heads the trade secrets of mixing colors and
blending shades for the peculiar requirements of each fabric. They had
neither union nor guild, each boss dyer was a rugged individualist who
regarded himself as a master craftsman and held his employer in contempt.
As an illustration of the huge extent of the corruption at the time of the
exposure, it was revealed that Bayer claimed an allowance of $700,000 from
its colleagues in the German cartel on the allegation that this sum
represented graft payment in the United States for the preceding year.
Evidence in another case revealed that a mill had been paying eighty-five
cents a pound for a black, the correct price of which was twenty-one cents.
When the graft was stopped at another mill, its yearly bills for dyes dropped
from $265,000 to $125,000.
Elaborate systems of bookkeeping and filsing were maintained In the American
offices of the Big Six companies to keep track of the graft without revealing
more of its details than were necessary. These records identified each color
or blend shipped on each order, with its correct price; the phony name it had
been billed under; whether salt, which adds to the weight, but doesn't affect
the quality of the dye, or any other adulterant bad been added; and, finally,
how much bribe money was paid the boss dyer. These records went to the New
York offices, other copies to the home offices in Germany. All of the records
were in code, except the one set which represented the actual billing. These
last records were always available in case a customer should drop into the
office to discuss a previous purchase.
Alfred J. Keppelmann, the branch-office manager who played an important part
all through this expose, was an upper class German who apparently had no
inhibitions about the peacetime service he owed to the future welfare of the
Fatherland. The boss dyers of Bayer's important customers were paid by
Keppelmann personally, and Keppelmann's chauffeur testified to the frequent
occasions when he drove his employer to call on these susceptible gentlemen.
Usually the car would be parked around the comer from the dyer's home. At
other times, this energetic executive would meet his beneficiaries at a
saloon, or pick them up in his car at some prearranged place, for Keppelmann
had had trouble with salesmen who held out on the dyers and wickedly pocketed
the graft. In one instance he had lost a customer because the dyer only
secured half the graft he was "entitled" to. According to this dyer's own
testimony, Keppelmann finally straightened this out by a special Sunday visit
to the dyer's home, where he gave the latter his promise as a gentleman that
there would be no further trouble about the graft. "This promise be kept,"
testified the dyer. "Two or three times each month Mr. Keppelmann came to my
house and paid me the graft money which was due me."
Another witness, a chemist, who had been employed by the Bayer branch,
testified that Keppelmann had instructed him to experiment in the laboratory
to find a compound which, when put into a dye bath, would ruin the fabric.
This was to be used when Keppelmann deemed it advisable to get rid of a
competitor. The compound to be planted had to be one which would not so
change the dye bath as to be conspicuous, but would be strong enough to spoil
or streak the material. This, the witness said was a common practice and many
different compounds were devised to spoil the various types of dyes in use.
Keppelmann had still another social-business side. He kept a yacht on the
Delaware River near Philadelphia, and his engineer testified to luxurious
yachting parties that were given for employees of the textile mills and, on
occasion, for some of the mill owners themselves: "They served rare food and
champagne, and ladies were frequently present to help entertain the guests."
Keppelmann also had a private stenographer, one of whose duties was to count
out the bribe money and place the correct amounts in envelopes marked with
the code numbers of the boss dyers. The stenographer was, of course, in the
complete confidence of her boss. She even went on the yachting trips at
times. After the expose', this young lady indicated her willingness to talk
freely to the investigators, and so was scheduled to become an important
witness for the prosecution.
Joseph H. Choate, Jr., distinguished New York lawyer, who was one of the
early attorneys for the Textile Alliance, told the following story at a
Congressional hearing in discussing the bribery practices of the Big Six: "A
prosecution was begun against the Philadelphia agent of the Bayer Company,
and I might say that they had the goods on him. The man had a duplicate set
of books which showed what he paid everybody. All the parties were gathered
at the trial, which centered around the testimony of a stenographer. As the
trial was about to be called, somebody burst into the office of the District
Attorney and threw up his hands. 'It's no use, boys, it's all off, the
defendant has married the evidence, and it is not admissible!'"
Keppelmann, the night before, had in fact made his stenographer the second
Mrs. Keppelmann, having divorced his first wife after settlement on her of
$100,000. The Bayer companies' Mr. Keppelmann was no piker!
Criminal prosecution of the individuals involved in the dyestuff graft was
faced with innumerable difficulties, and the attorneys representing the mill
owners finally decided upon another approach to the problem-by invoking
provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act against offenders.
The late Nelson Aldrich, Senator from Rhode Island, had been
ninstrumental in having translated and printed as a Senate Document, a
revealing German publication called, "The Great German Banks and Their
Concentration in Connection with the Economic Development of Germany" by
Professor J. Riesser of the University of Berlin, who described in detail the
then recent cartel alliances of the Big Six dyestuff companies. The profess.'
or also indulged in a little prophecy-which was to come true-when he
indicated that a complete consolidation of all the important aniline
producers was in prospect. (In 1916 this prophecy was fulfilled when the
com-panies comprising the Big Six were combined into the German I. G. Dyes.)
The translation of this German book turned attention to the fact that Germany
permitted combinations which the Sher-man Act forbade. It was also discovered
that the United States branches and agencies of the German companies were
acting under rigid instructions from Germany in dividing the United States
market on sales.
More than thirty separate actions under the Sherman Act were thereupon
instituted in 1913 in the Federal Courts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey
against the members of the Big Six and their agents in the United States;
damages were asked not only for bribery and dishonest commercial practices,
but for combinations in restraint of trade by all concerned. In these actions
the Big Six was represented by a New York attorney, Charles J. Hardy (later
to become president of American Car & Foundry Company), who fought so
vigorously for his clients that the cases were never brought to trial. All
were finally dismissed in 1916, long after the outbreak of the war. Before
the dismissals, however, large cash settlements were made out of court by
several of the defendants.
Twenty-five years later, after Germany had again started a war of conquest,
another series of anti-trust law actions was instituted against the I. G.
Farben affiliates and subsidiaries in the United States. Among them are the
direct successors of the Big Six affiliates; and this time it was not just
dyestuffs, but many other vital national-defense products which were
involved. Again, as will be discussed in other chapters, this second series
of antitrust suits against the Farben pattern of unlawful practices were
ineffectual in providing real punishment for the culprits, and were for the
most part compromised and settled, or remain, at this writing, untried.
One member of the Big Six, the Hoechst Co., was first represented in the
United States by an importing house which went through several changes to
become, in 1902, the H. A. Metz Co., of New York. Brooklyn-born Herman Metz,
president of this company denied on numerous occasions that he or his company
had ever been involved in the bribery of boss dyers. Elected to Congress in
1912, just before the antitrust suits were instituted, Metz said that he knew
he would be "a shining mark for attack." "So," said Metz, "I settled, rather
than fight in Court."
In one of his public statements on the subject, made before a Senate
Committee, Metz declared with some beat that "so much is made of this bribing
of dyers�this tipping business. It is not limited to the dye industry." Metz
also pointed out that with the exception of Keppelmann, all of the dye
company agents involved were Americans. "The Germans were not doing it," said
Metz, "it was their agents here."
Metz's special pleading, characterizing the bribing of dyers as a customary
American way of doing business, constituted a rather contemptible libel upon
his fellow citizens. The author has been active, and behind the scenes, so to
speak, in a great many American industries during the last forty-five years,
especially those connected with or dependent upon chemical products of one
kind or another. Commercial dishonesty and fraud have been encountered here
and there, it has existed and always will exist among a small and shifty
percentage of the human race. But with the exception of one other industry,
never in my experience or in the knowledge of any one with whom I have
discussed the subject has there existed in the United States such systematic
corruption, on a large scale and by a recognized plan, as was engaged in by
the predecessors of I. G. Farben to obstruct the development of our domestic
coal-tar industry during the two decades preceding the first World War. The
one exception mentioned is discussed in a later chapter on patent medicines.
The late Francis P. Garvan, who more than any other prominent American fought
to destroy the German dye cartel's hold in America and to prevent its reentry
after the war, always refused to accept the denials of Metz that his company
was involved in the bribery. Garvan first delved deeply into the affairs of
the Metz company, and all of the other German dye houses, when he was made
Chief Investigator for the Alien Property Custodian in 1917. He based his
allegations about Metz on letters which were taken from Metzs own files in
the New York offices of the Hoechst Co. Metz, said Garvan, was present when
these letters were produced at Congressional hearings and has never
questioned their authenticity. Some of these letters, addressed to Metz by
Dr. Haeuser, president of the German company, are revealing. In one of them
dated July 31, 1913, Dr. Haeuser wrote Metz:
As for what concerns the paying of dyers I inform you confidentially about
the development of matters as follows: The proper assistance has been
explained to the Elberfeld (Bayer) gentlemen, at the establishment of the new
business over there, that they must unconditionally avoid in the future any
graft, else the matter may become very bad for them. Elberfeld has then, the
comprehensible endeavor, that not they alone, but also all other firms,
should cease payments to dyers in future. They immediately came to an
understanding with Ludwigshafen (Badiscbe) and Berlin, and then also secured
the consent of Cassella. After these four firms were agreed, there remained
nothing for us to do but to agree likewise, as Kalle bad also to consent. It
is also to be expected that still other factories will join, and if they
refuse to join this shall be used against them among the customers . . . . .
Aside from the fact that we were in a forced position, we had little cause to
hesitate as you wrote to me repeatedly that the payments to the dyers must
unconditionally stop. We are of the opinion that it must be serious, at least
for the six firms concerned, to discontinue all affairs with the dyers in the
future, and we are furthermore of the opinion that the business will get
along very well without the payments to the dyers, since substantially all
large firms share the same point of view. A certain transition period is very
likely necessary, and therefore the union should first go into effect on
January 1 of next year.
It will not be feasible then any more that you set expenses in the bill; you
will have to get along without the expenses.
Your independence, as far as it is concerned, will not be affected by this
agreement, and at all events, no one, even in America, will wish to reproach
us for an agreement whose purpose it is to further the discontinuance of the
unlawful acts on the part of our customers. If you wish to come over here
this year yet, which would please me very much, I would ask you not to arrive
here in October, as I must go on my vacation in that month after having
endured it here the whole summer long. In case Mr. George Gordon Battle
should come here, I will receive him with pleasure. With best greetings,
yours respectfully,
Dr. Haeuser
Dr. Haeuser was also the president of "The World Society for the Preservation
of German Business." Emphatic as this letter appears to have been on the
matter of stopping the bribing of dyers by January 1, 1914, a later letter
dated February 6, 1914, from the German Hoechst office to Metz indicated
otherwise. This letter read:
Now as far as extras are concerned, I hear with regret that according to your
opinion not much will be changed. I agree with you that you will not be able
with one stroke to wipe out all extras but the striving must be to abolish
this unwholesome condition entirely. The propositions that you now make seem
to me to indicate a practical way in this direction, and we are satisfied
therewith.
Again, on March 30, 1914 Metz received another letter from Hoechst from which
Garvan quoted as follows:
So far as "extras" are concerned, I am of the opinion that this practically
amounts to simply a transition period and that the same will rapidly go
backward. At any rate, all our endeavors must be in that direction. Your idea
that the paying out of extras in future could be done through a third party,
in cash, as for instance through your carpet mill at Worcester, I do not find
sound. You give yourself through this into the hands of such third party, who
could at any moment turn against you . .. . . . Regarding the charging of
your account in your letter of March 3, I have to remark that it is not
entirely clear, as in the past year, besides the $100,000 you also according
to your letter of October 14, 1913, have kept back a further dividend of
$50,000 for extras. As you do not mention this last $50,000 it seems to me
that you have already used this in the previous year for extras. Will you
please confirm this?
Said Garvan, "These I extras' meant graft, pure and simple."
Still another light upon the pattern of bribery of the Big Six, and the
innocent surprise of their executives when exposed, is the report of a later
convention called by members of the cartel at which a resolution was entered
upon the minutes reading as follows: "Resolved, that henceforth bribery shall
be abolished, except in the United States and Russia."
pps 1-14
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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