Stopping a War/Chapter 2
2. Big Business and the Riff Offensive
French big business, like big business in other capitalist empires, directs French foreign policy. The Riff is an interesting illustration of the workings of this general rule of modern statecraft. There too, the French bankers, the French Ministry, and the French General Staff have worked hand in hand.
The essential economic relations existing between French big business and the Riff were ably stated in the French Chamber of Deputies by Jacques Doriot, who has played so large a part in the stand of the French workers against the Riff War. He brought these facts to the attention of the French Deputies in his speech of February 4, 1925,—two months before the opening of the Riff War.[1]
The Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas is one of the most powerful commercial banking institutions in France. With its Standard Oil backing, it is able to exercise an immense influence over the industrial and political life of France. This bank controls over half of the 483 million francs of French capital invested in Morocco.
The Banque de Paris controls the bulk of this capital directly. A small amount is handled through subsidiary companies.
Two of the directors on the Board of the State Bank of Morocco (one of them the managing director) are directors of the Banque de Paris. During recent years the average dividend on the Morocco State Bank Stock has been 20 per cent.
The Banque de Paris also controls the Commercial Bank of Morocco. Four of its directors sit on the Board of Directors of the Moroccan railroads. It holds interests in the Franco-Spanish Fez-Tangier Railroad and dominates such electrical companies as the Société Général d'Energie Electrique. The Banque de Paris also controls the Moroccan breweries, the Maghreb Milling Company, which has a monopoly of the Moroccan flour trade, and the Municipal Slaughter House Company which controls the cattle market and has the concession for constructing slaughter houses, markets, etc. The Banque de Paris also has interests in three important land companies and in a number of construction companies. It is likewise interested in the Moroccan International Tobacco Company.
Besides these widely scattered business enterprises the Banque de Paris controls the Compagnie Général du Maroc, whose chairman is also chairman of the Banque de Paris. The Compagnie Général, with a capital of twenty million francs, engages in "all operations likely to favor the development of Morocco."
Altogether the Banque de Paris controls at least twenty-five companies in Morocco. Thus this financial organization is not only a power in French economic and political life. It is, to an even greater extent, a power in the economic and political life of Morocco.
Morocco has proved a lucrative field for French capital. At the moment, attention is centred on certain iron deposits which are presumably very rich, While these deposits have not yet been fully tested out, similar deposits in Algeria and Tunis produce ore containing 50 per cent of metal, and the iron mining companies in these two countries have been paying as high as 150 per cent in dividends.
Spain, defeated in her efforts to retain a foothold in Morocco, turned over her iron ore concessions to the Bangue de Paris group of French business men.[2] The military defeat of Spain meant the economic triumph of the Banque de Paris, provided the French army could do what the Spanish military forces had failed to do—subjugate the Riff.
This is the economic background of the Riff War. French business wanted to see Spain lose in her fight with Abd-el-Krim. That gave French business the mines. French business wants the Riff whipped into line. Otherwise the mines cannot be profitably worked.