Stinnes (HUGO German capitalist)

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

HUGO, German capitalist and financial leader, was born at Mulheim, Germany, Feb. 12, 1870. He recommercial education and ceived a studied for a short time at the Berlin School of Mines. At twenty he inherited large coal-mine interests, which he rapidly increased until his holdings constituted 10 per cent of Germany's 's entire coal production. During the World War he played a leading part in the organization of German industries and increased his personal wealth enormously. He acquired great shipping and other interests and purchased the control of many newspapers, among them the "Deutsche Allegemeine Zeitung," the recognized official organ of the government. In politics he allied himself with the Pan-German popular party after the war and became a central figure in public life, wielding a powerful influence on German cabinets and all government decisions through his vast industrial and financial interests. Among his pioneer achievements in German industrial organization was the consolidation and integration of the gas and electrical utilities of the Essen district, leading on to larger and larger plans for the integration of industry and the joint ownership of utilities by producers, consumers, and consuming communities, but with the direction of individual industries left in private control. STRATOSPHERE or ISOTHERMAL LAYER, a region of the upper atmosphere within which investigations have shown that the temperature ceases to fall with altitude. Its average height above the earth is between six and seven miles. Its thickness has not been definitely ascertained. It is free from clouds and its wind and air currents are markedly different from those of the lower atmosphere. STRAYS or STATIC, erratic electrical disturbances in wireless telegraphy whose origin is not yet fully known. Some strays appear to be due to distant lightning discharges. Others, according to present theory, are caused by electrical disturbances in the upper atmosphere.