Mr. Schwab, not once, but several times, since the beginning of the
war, asking that negotiations be opened. It has been intimated that
interests, private or Governmental, were willing to pay any price that
Mr. Schwab would name for his controlling interest.

Figures running into scores of millions have been named in offers, it
being the understanding that the prospective owners simply wished to
buy the big plant--the only one in the world that now compares with
that of the Krupps, with the possible exception of that of the
Schneiders at Creusot--and shut it up, in order to stop the vast sales
of munitions of war to the Allies, and the filling of contracts so big
that their delivery has hardly begun. Mr. Schwab, it is understood,
could get today $100,000,000 or more for his stock in the Bethlehem
Company.

It was established yesterday that more or less directly the visit of
Mr. Schwab to England last Fall, on the Olympic, was due to the
activity of German agents in this country in their efforts to buy the
Bethlehem Steel Company.

Word of the attempts of the German agents to obtain control of the
Bethlehem Company soon found its way to England, and the result was
that Mr. Schwab was invited to London for a special conference with
the War Office. He renewed his acquaintance with Lord Kitchener, and
his previously formed intention not to sell out was fortified with a
guarantee of orders large enough to keep the big plant at Bethlehem
going steadily for eighteen months or more.

When rumors were prevalent about New York that the visit of Sir Trevor
Dawson, head of a great English steel concern, had as its object an
attempt to obtain control of the Bethlehem Company so as to insure
that it would continue turning out supplies for the Allies, the
German agents here were making a strong bid for the control of the
concern, and their efforts have since continued.

A TIMES reporter put to Mr. Schwab yesterday the direct question as to
whether he was in actual control of the Bethlehem Steel Company.

"Absolutely," he said. "The only way anybody else could obtain control
would be to get my interest. I would never sell my interest without
making for the men who stood by me with their support when I was
struggling to put the Bethlehem Company where it is today the same
terms that would be offered for my share. As a matter of fact, my
interest in the Bethlehem Company is not for sale. Indeed, I could not
sell. I have contract