of the largest industrial and mining companies of Westphalia, the Rhineland and Luxembourg. Business interests of this magnitude were constantly expanding, and he became interested in numerous subsidiary enterprises, such as tramways and the supply of electric power and light. He was always engaged in founding new companies or amalgamating existing ones. Stinnes managed to maintain an extensive and even a detailed knowledge of the working of all the companies in which he was engaged and, in all of them, to exact zealous and conscientious work from his business subordinates. The secret of his success was vertical integration and an essential unity of direction and coordination of aims in all branches of his enterprises. When World War I broke out, Stinnes secured an enormous share in the war profits which enlarged the fortunes of the great industrialists. In enemy countries, his enterprises were sequestrated, and his firm at Rotterdam placed on the Allies' "black list". But, apart from the regular indemnification paid by the German government, he was richly compensated when he was called in by Erich Ludendorff as the most competent expert to give advice, to organize the coal and the industrial production of occupied Belgium and to help to set in motion the gigantic production of war material which the German general headquarters demanded. During the war, Stinnes extended his activities in Hamburg, and in 1916 he bought up the Woermann and the East African steamship lines. In these new undertakings, he became associated with the two greatest German shipping companies, the Hamburg-American Line and the North German Lloyd. His Hamburg interests continued to multiply in something like geometrical progression. He purchased half a dozen landed estates in Saxony to supply timber for pit props. At Flensburg in Schleswig, he secured control of the largest Baltic shipping concern, and proceeded to build a new fleet of ships, christening one of them the "Hindenburg". Investment in right-wing politics Stinnes' connection with Ludendorff led to his becoming an influence behind the scenes in German politics. A prominent capitalist and conservative, in 1918 he became a founding member of the Deutsche Volkspartei (German People's Party or DVP), the new electioneering name of the former National Liberal Party. On his initiative, on January 10, 1919, Stinnes conducted a meeting of top representatives of the German economy in revolutionary Berlin and funded Antibolschewistenfonds (Anti-Bolshevist Fund) of the Anti-Bolshevist League, which distributed anti-communist propaganda