Europe's Biggest

The air into which Merseburg's church thrusts its spire is much like the air over any other Central German village. Somewhere in it, no doubt, could be found the traces of that pious carbon dioxide exhaled by Martin Luther when he preached in Merseburg some 400 years ago. More evident is the carbon monoxide belched daily by Opel cars speeding through wheat and coal lands on the high road to Berlin. But for the most part, Merseburg's air is undistinguished -healthy, fragrant, and with its conventional share of oxygen and nitrogen.

This is fortunate, for Merseburg's air is important. Upon it, last year, was levied a tax of 770,000,000 cubic metres, from which 18,000 men drew the nitrogen. Thus the Leunawerk* branch of Europe's mightiest chemical company produced 700,000 tons of the gas, and confirmed its right to be called the largest nitrogen-fixation plant in the world. Thus German chemists, trained in the art of making explosives, proved they could make fertilizers as well.

Statistics at Leunawerk are indigestible. Eleven chimneys climb a tenth of a mile toward the sky, and at their base a mile-long row of boiler-houses make up the world's greatest steam-generating unit. Leunawerk's silo, piled with white fertilizer, could enclose and hide a Roman amphitheatre. Like Manhattan disembowled, the plant's ganglia of pipes and conduits (some of them ten feet in diameter) make hideous lacework overhead.

To a few men only is Leunawerk's full significance clear. One of them, of course, is kindly Dr. Karl Dueysberg, "Father of Students," Chairman of the Board of I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G., of which Leunawerk is only a part. Another is I.G. Farben's President, Chemist Carl Bosch. It was he who adapted the Haber synthetic nitrogen process to commercial use, and made it the Haber-Bosch process. In a sense, Leunawerk would have been impossible without him.

Last week, Herr Chairman Dueysberg and Herr President-Chemist Bosch came to Manhattan. With the great Bosch, came a lesser Bosch, a young man with a keen and wise interest in his father's vast designs. Like the most valuable of I.G. Farben's processes, their movements, plans, purposes, were shrouded in impenetrable secrecy. But it was permissible to conjecture that they had come to accomplish what I.G. Farben has long tried to do -gain access to U.S. capital by listing its stock or the stock of its Swiss subsidiary (I.G. Chemie) on the New York Stock Exchange. And, should they succeed, they might use their new capital to buy and operate U.S. chemical companies.

Long and bitter has been the opposition to the entrance of I.G. Farben into the New York money market. And not without reason. For the I.G. Farbenindustrie A. G. (Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft) is first of all the largest corporation in Europe (capital, 1,100,000,000 marks) and hence a natural competitor of U.S. industry. And, more important, it is the perfect example of a system which many a U.S. industrialist privately applauds, but which almost all U.S. businessmen feel compelled publicly to condemn. Reckless would be the executive of a great U.S. corporation who ventured to proclaim himself in favor of RATIONALIZATION.

Loosely, a lesser U.S. businessman might explain RATIONALIZATION as "price-fixing," or "monopoly." Confused, he might talk of "cartels" and "trusts." Doubtless he would stress elimination of the weak.

Actually, RATIONALIZATION may involve a combination of some or all of these practices, abhorrent to U.S. copybook morality. But RATIONALIZATION is not defined by shouting ugly words. To RATIONALIZE an industry is to so organize it that all factors have a common policy. All are anxious to eliminate waste, to keep output elastic, price levels stable, production costs low. Middlemen are reduced to a minimum, as are transport costs. Scientific and technical knowledge is pooled.

Such an industry is the German chemical industry and, in large part the British. I.G. Farben was a cartel, is now a trust. The plant at Leunawerk is only the most spectacular, from the point of view of scientific progress, of I.G. Farben's many units. Here chemists turn air into fertilizer. Here, too, artificial gasoline is extracted from coal. At Leverkusen, near Cologne, is the Friedr, Bayer & Co. plant, where aspirin is made, where the inventor of a deadly gas works side by side with the man who found a cure for sleeping sickness after 204 failures. At Ludwigshafen is the Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik (BASF) centre. The Griesheim Electron Co. is at Frankfurt.

Complete fusion of these and other units came in 1925. Since then I.G. Farben has expanded swiftly. As its name indicates, it is the leading manufacturer of dyes. It is also linked with the rayon interests. A complete list of its products would fill the page. From these sales, in 1927, I.G. Farben netted over $25,000,000.

* Leunawerk is a new industrial town, sprung up since 1916 at Merseburg.