its equipment, lodging and maintenance, and of all articles of consumption needed by the soldiers. These beneficiaries of the army often positively determine the character of the whole public life of a place, especially in small garrison towns, and the most powerful among them rule like princes over large communities and play the first fiddle in their state and in the empire. They owe their influence to militarism which allows itself to be fleeced and bamboozled by them with astonishing patience, and return thanks (one good turn deserves another) by becoming its most fervent propagandists, for which part they are, of course, already cut out by their capitalist interests. Who does not know the names of Krupp, Stumm, Ehrhardt, Löwe, Wörmann, Tippelskirch, Nobel, Powder Trust, etc.? Who has not heard of Krupp's usurious rates for armor plate, of the Tippelskirch profits with the bribes appertaining to them, of the exorbitant freight and demurrage charges of Wörmann, the net 100 and 150 percent, profit of the Powder Trust which lightened the purse of the German Empire by many a million?
