trust, and the Reichstag passed, on March 15th, 1911, by an almost unanimous vote, a motion asking the government to bring forward a plan for oil monopoly. The government hastened to acquiesce in the desire of the nation; and the Deutsche Bank, which hoped to deceive its American partner and improve its business by a State monopoly, appeared to have won. Already the German oil magnates saw visions of wonderful profits, which would not be less than those of the great Russian sugar growers. . . But the great German banks quarrelled among themselves over the division of the spoil. The Disconto Gesellschaft exposed the aims of the Deutsche Bank; secondly, the government took fright at the idea of a struggle with Rockefeller. The Roumanian supply was not very large; would it be possible to get oil without Mr. Rockefeller? Finally (1913) a milliard was required for armaments. The project of the oil monopoly was put aside. The Rockefeller trust came out of the struggle temporarily victorious.
The Berlin review Die Bank said in this connection, that Germany could only fight the oil trust by establishing an electricity monopoly and by converting water power into electricity cheaply. "But," it added, "the electricity monopoly will come when the producers need it more definitely; when the next great failure in the electrical industry is at hand; and when the powerful electric workshops, so costly, constructed now almost everywhere by private concerns and for which these concerns receive already partial monopolies from towns, from the State, etc., can no longer work at a profit. Water power then must be used. But
