knowing financial operations, first ascertain exactly the position of isolated capitalists, then control them, act on them by restricting their credits or, on the contrary, by extending them; at length they can entirely determine their fate, deprive them of capital, or, on the other hand, permit them to increase their capital to enormous proportions, etc.
We have just mentioned the 300,000,000 marks capital of the Disconto Gesellschaft, of Berlin. The increase of the capital of this bank to this high figure was one of the incidents of the struggle for hegemony between two of the biggest Berlin banks—the Disconto and the Deutsche Bank.
In 1870, the Disconto, a new enterprise, only had a capital of 15,000,000 marks, while that of the Deutsche Bank was as much as 30,000,000.
In 1908, the first had already amassed 200,000,000; while the second only had 170,000,000. In 1914, the Disconto raised its capital to 250,000,000 and the Deutsche Bank, by abosorbing a very important bank, the Union of Schaffhausen, raised its capital to 300,000,000. This struggle for the upper hand between the two banks, naturally, goes on side by side with a series of agreements between them which become more and more frequent and lasting.
This development of banking leads specialists in the study of banking questions, who view economic questions from a standpoint which in no way goes beyond the bounds of moderate and careful bourgeois reformism—to the following conclusions:
"The other banks will follow this example," wrote the German review, Bank, on the subject of the raising of the capital of the Disconto Gesellschaft to 300,000,000 marks—"and the three hun-
