Evening with Mr. Pampel and Obersteiger Hohner 42 Evening with Mr. Mie ... 28 [NoTE.—We had invited these gentlemen, and threw about a good deal of money in order to accomplish something. Besides the M.28 entered here I added M. 48 out of my own pocket, which I have had entered in my own account.—(Signed) Cash, Mr. Milner, foreman ... 100 Cash, Mr. Plaintz, engineer, of Gustav Toelle ... 50 Foreman of S. Wolle ... 5 Cigars for foreman Miller 12.50 Cigars for foreman Hortenbach ... 6.25 Carriage and beer—call on Hortenbach 10.30 Wine, dinner, cigars, &c., with Hortenbach 35.20 Cash, Mr. Hortenbach 20.00 Total ... M. 309.25 Mr. Hortenbach seems to have taken a good deal of lubricating. Apparently his machinery remained immovable under the influence of wine, dinner, and cigars, and it became neces sary to put twenty marks in the slot in order to make him work.
How Mr. Hildebrandt got hold of this bill, or petty-cash ticket, he does not say, but he evidently takes a sinister view of the junketing disclosed, and regards the money spent upon it as so much " Schmiergeld," to use the appro priate word employed by Mr. Schnell in his affidavit. The only English translation for " Schmiergeld " is " bribe " — no doubt a very frigid and colourless word. " Smearing-money " would be more descriptive and picturesque as well as literal, though for absolute neatness of expression joined to pregnancy of meaning the Italian circumlocution for the ugly word "bribe' of " oglio di palma," or palm-oil, beats the German. "Lubricating oil" seems an apt English equivalent.
Mr. Hildebrandt also publishes a letter on this subject from one of the Vacuum Oil Com pany representatives, which seems to have attracted some attention in Kiel :— The Vacuum Oil people have always liked to be on good terms with the engineer the actual mechanic who has to see to the application of the lubricating oils to the machinery, and whose opinion on their merits is naturally deferred to by his employers. Mr. Heinrich Gremmler, a director of the Ger man Vacuum Oil Company, and manager of the Berlin branch, wrote, under date June 20, 1908, by way of instruction to one of his agents, in one of the letters photographed by Mr. Hildebrandt : " Try and get at what you want through the foremen—that is, by indirect means. There is no need at all for me to tell you on what spot you may put your hand upon success." Mr. Hildebrandt took all this up in a very unkind spirit to wards the German Vacuum Oil Company, and spoke of it as bribery, whereupon Mr. Gremmler called upon him, he says, and denied indig nantly that the Company practised bribery. In fact, the Company published a document in its defence against this charge signed by Dr. Ruperti, one of its directors, in which, while it did not go so far as to state that it never prac tised bribery, it declared, at any rate, that " it was incorrect to say that the German Vacuum Oil Company had introduced the gross prac tice of bribery into German trade as a system, and that it had succeeded by means of bribes in obtaining permanently higher prices for its oils." The studious moderation of this defence strikes me as remarkable. The Com pany, however, also took occasion to state that it never put any employee into its selling business except on a contract containing this passage :— You pledge yourself in dealing with the employees of our customers most carefully to abstain from any transaction that has even the appearance of corrupt influence. Any action con trary to this regulation is a special reason for instant dismissal.
But Mr. Hildebrandt unkindly suggests that this is only another way of saying " Don't nail his ears to the pump." He also says that after
the publication of the Hugo Cohr letter in Kiel, the Vacuum Oil Company was struck from the list of those invited to tender for the supply of oils to the municipality. The British public and the proprietors of British engineering works must form their own judgment in the matter, but they will at any rate see that, for one reason or another, the Vacuum Oil people have conceived a deep affection for the German working man.
These revelations are the more interesting because there are similar stories from other countries where the Vacuum methods have been introduced. The Morgenblad, of Stock holm (quoted in the English shipping organ Fairplay of July 22, 1909), gives an account of the methods of the Vacuum Oil Company, of Sweden, another of the Everest group. The Stockholm newspaper states that the Civil Commission appointed to inquire into the buying of naval stores has in its posses sion several letters from the Vacuum Oil Company of Sweden to engineers in the Swedish Navy. These letters contain advice to enable the engineers to prove to their superior officers, who possess less knowledge of the subject, that other lubricating oils are inferior to those vended by the Vacuum Company. One letter runs : " It is very easy to do this by only tightening the nuts a little, and the bearings will soon become hot." The sensation created by the publication of these letters caused the Chancery of Justice, the highest judicial authority in Sweden, to order the Chief of the Criminal Police in Stockholm (Mr. Lars Stendahl), who is also an officer of the Municipal Treasury, to hold a general inquiry with plenipotentiary authority as to the sum moning of witnesses. This was on May 18, 1909, and on June 5th following the King of Sweden confirmed this Commission, and added two other Commissioners, Messrs. J. Th. Akerstrom and Fr. S. Eriksson. In the beginning of September, 1909, Mr. Stendahl's report was issued, which proves by an abundance of sensational and at times amusing evidence that the so-called Swedish Vacuum Oil Company is identical with that of Rochester, U.S.A., that it has evaded Swedish taxation, fraudulently rebranded cheaper as dearer oils, and by a very curiously concealed system of bribery induced engineers of the Royal Navy to diminish the effectiveness of their service.
In the result the Company lost all its Govern ment contracts, but escaped further proceedings, as Swedish commercial law in its previous innocence of the " real smart" methods now introduced to backward old Europe by the Standard Oil apostles, had utterly failed to pro vide penalties to meet the case. From Norway, in September, came the news that the last independent refinery had been acquired by the Standard, that much public indignation had been aroused among the hardy Norsemen, and that steps were being taken with the support of the Government to build at once an inde pendent refinery.
In France, where there is a heavy duty on refined petroleum, the Standard has estab lished a refinery, which has given it a monopoly of the benzine trade. The latest news last September was that the French Government has been induced to reduce the import duty on Dutch East Indian benzine from 21 to 10s., and this has enabled the Royal Dutch combine to start a refinery in France for the purpose of competing with the Standard. As I have explained, the Sumatran and Borneo crude provides a higher percentage of benzine than the Standard's American crude, and there is no doubt this move will prove a very awkward one for the latter.