Albert Ballin

is a

along the northern shore of the Elbe close to the western part of the town. A long road, flanked on one side by houses of ancient architecture, extended-and still extends-parallel to thi

d the early days which the boy Ballin spent in his father's house and its interestin

ore regretted than Albert Ballin. Throughout his life he never failed to look upon as ideal that era when every detail referring to the ship and to her management was still a matter of personal concern to her owner. He traced all his later successes back to the stimulating influence of those times; and if it is remembered how enormous was then the capacity for work, and how great the love of it

tinguished for their learning and for the high reputation they enjoyed among their co-religionists; others, in later times, were remarkable for their artistic gifts which secured for them the favour of several Kings of France. Those branches of the family which had settled in Germany and Denmark were prominent again for their learning and also for their business-like qualities. The intelligence and the artistic imagination which characterized Albert Ballin may be said to be due to her

r, so much so, in fact, that he grew up rather a delicate boy and was subject to all sorts of maladies and constitutional weaknesses. He was educated, as was usual at that time, at one of the private day-schools of his native city. In those days, when Hamburg did not yet possess a university of her own, and when the facilities which she provided for the intellectual needs of her citizens were deplorably inadequate for the purpose, visitors from the other parts of Germany could never understand why that section of the population which appreciated the value of a complete course of higher education-especially an education grounded on a classical foundation-was so extremely small. The average Hamburg

n quite excellent. None of his friends during his later years can furnish authoritative evidence on this point, as at that time he no longer had the leisure to devote himself to this hobby. Apart from music, he was a great lover of literature, especially of books on belles lettres, history, and politics. Thanks to his prodigious memory, he thus was able to accumulate vast stores of knowledge. During his extended travels on the business of his Company he gained a first-hand knowledge of foreign

ge. This was especially so in the case of young Albert, who loved to do his home lessons in the office rooms. History does not divulge whether he did so because he was interested in the affairs of the office, or whether he obtained there some valuable assistance. The whole primitiveness of those days is illustrated by the following episode which Ballin once related to us in his own humorous way. The family possessed-a rare thing in our modern days-a treasure of a servant who, apart from doing all the hard work, was the good genius of the home, and who had grow

ved on him, and he succeeded in doing this in a very short time. He applied himself to his work with the greatest diligence, and he became a shining example to the few assistants employed by the firm. On the days of the departure of the steamers the work of the office lasted until far into the night, as was usually the case in Hamburg in former years. An incident which took place in those early days proves that the work carried on by Morris and Co. met with the approval of their employers. One day the head of one of the foreign lines for which the firm was doing business paid a pers

, there was also the so-called indirect emigrant traffic via England, which for the most part was in the hands of the British lines. The passengers booked by the agents of the latter were first conveyed from Hamburg to a British port, and thence, by a different boat, to the United States. It was the time before the industrialization of Germany had commenced, when there was not sufficient employment going round for the country's increasing population. The result was that large numbers of the inhabitants had to emigrate to foreign countries. That period lasted until the 'nineties, by which time the growth of industries required the services of all who could work. Simultaneously, however, with the decrease of emigration from Germany, that from Southern Europe, Austria-Hungary, and the Slavonic countries was assuming huge proportions, although the beginnings of this latter were already quite noticeable in the 'seventies and 'eighties. This foreign emigrant traffic was the mainstay of the business carried on by the emigration agencies of the type of Morris and Co., whereas the German emigrants formed the backbone of the business on which the German steamship lines relied for their passenger traffic. Either the companies themselves or their agencies were in possession of the necessary Government licences entitling them to carry on the emigration business. The agencies of the foreign lines, on the other ha

presentatives for Great Britain of the American Line (one of the lines to whose emigration traffic Morris and Co. attended in Hamburg), and especially with the head of that firm, Mr. Wilding. An intimate personal friendship sprang up between these two men which lasted a lifetime. These close relations gave him an excellent opportunity for studying the business methods of the British s

by a trade boom of considerable magnitude. Such a transition from bad business to good was always preceded by the sale of a large number of "pre-paids," i.e. steerage tickets which were bought and paid for by people in the United States and sent by them to those among their friends or relatives in Europe who, without possessing the necessa

outclassed the Packetfahrt by the establishment of its service of fast steamers-"Bremen-New York in 9 days"-which was worked with admirable regularity and punctuality, but had also increased the volume of its fleet to such an extent that, in 1882, 47 of the 107 transatlantic steamers flying the German flag belonged to this Company, whereas the Packetfahrt possessed 24 only. For all these reasons it would have been useless for Morris and Co. to suggest to the Packetfahrt that they should secure for it a large increase in its emigrant traffic; and even if they had tried t

which intended to run a cargo service from Hamburg to New York-with the proposal that it should also take up the steerage business. His British friends, when they wer