Dr. Oskar Stillich, Money and Banking, Berlin, 1907.
A super-popular piece.
a Proudhonist fool and banker against money ||| p. 95. Banker Julius Hucke, The Money Problem and the Social Question (5th edition), 1903.
p. 143: “No banking operation brings in such high profit as the issue of securities.”[1] Profits from the issue of securities are higher than anywhere else.... There have been attempts to justify profits from the issue of industrial shares by pleading expenses and anticipated higher returns, but in reality this is economically unearned profit, and according to the Deutsche Oekonomist it amounts, on an average:
| N.B. | || | 1895— | 38.6% | N.B. | || |
idem more fully in Sombart, The German National Economy in the Nineteenth Century (2nd edition, 1909), p. 526, appendix 8 |
| 1896— | 36.1% | |||||
| 1897— | 66.7% | |||||
| 1898— | 67.7% | |||||
| 1899— | 66.9% | |||||
| 1900— | 55.2% |
N.B. “In the ten years, from 1891 to 1900, more than a thousand million marks were ‘earned’ by issuing German industrial stock.”[2]
p. 138. “Reconstructions”.... “Shares are amalgamated and their nominal value decreased. A classic example of such writing down of share capital is the Dortmund Union founded by the Discontogesellschaft. N.B. ||| In the first volume of my Economic Studies in Big Industrial Enterprise (Leipzig, 1904), I examined in detail the financial history of the unfortunate offspring of this bank. In ||| good example !!! the course of thirty years, more than 73,000,000 marks were written off the books of the Union by a series of operations decreasing the nominal value of shares. ||| !!! At the present time the original shareholders of the company possess only 5 per cent of the nominal value of their shares”!! (138)[3]
Current Accounts—a means of exerting influence on industry.
“How great the banks’ influence over their clients is shown, for example, by the following letter, reproduced from the Kuxen-zeitung, sent on November 19, 1901 by the Dresdner Bank to the Board of the German North-West Cement Syndicate. || good example!! The letter states: “As we learn from the notice you published in the newspaper Reichsanzeiger of November 18, we must reckon with the possibility that the next general meeting of your syndicate, to be held on the 30th of this month, ||| !! may decide on measures which are likely to effect changes in your enterprise which are unacceptable to us. We deeply regret that, for these reasons, we are obliged henceforth to withdraw the credit which has hitherto been allowed you. Accordingly, we ask you to cease requests for money from our bank and at the same time we respect fully ask you to return not later than the end of the current month the sums owing to us. But if the said next general meeting does not decide upon measures which are unacceptable to us, and if we receive suitable guarantees on this matter for the future, we shall he quite willing to open negotiations with you on the grant of a new credit”[4] (146–47).
good example | !!! ||| ...“The daily occupation of a number of employees in our big banks consists solely of calculating the interest on current accounts. !! ||| In the course of time they achieve real virtuosity in this matter.... They are an example of how capital suppresses personality and turns the individual into a machine” (148)....
N.B. || “‘Every bank is a Stock Exchange’, and the bigger the bank, and the more successful the concentration of banking, the truer does this modern aphorism ring” (169).[5]
ha-ha!! (cf. K. Kautsky) |||| “Through their subsidiary banks the Pereires” (founders of Crédit Mobilier) “wanted to entangle various nations financially and in this way promote world peace” (180)....
“Spheres of operation” “for bank capital”
in the seventies—German railways (nationalised at the close of the seventies)
in the eighties—Rhine-Westphalian heavy industry
in the nineties—electrical industry (and engineering).
attitude to employees || “In 1906 the four Berlin “D” banks (Deutsche Bank, Discontogesellschaft, Dresdner Bank, Darmst\"adter Bank) concluded an agreement not to engage an employee of any of these banks who had not been freed from his post!” (203). The opposition of the employees compelled a “substantial” (??) “modification” (??) of this agreement ((in what respect? how????)).
N.B.: H. Withers, Money and Credit in England, 1911.
Philippovich
Sombart
Principles of Social Economics (B\"ucher, Schulze-Gaevernitz,
etc., etc.).
[1] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 234.—Ed.
[2] Ibid., p. 234.—Ed.
[3] Ibid., p. 235.—Ed.
[4] Ibid., pp. 223–24.—Ed.
[5] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 215.—Ed.
| | |
| | | | | | |