[Diskussionsbeitrag zum Kohlenbergbau, Bd. I, S. 128–129, Nr. 9]

Emil Lederer: Discussion Contribution on Coal Mining (1920)

This commission speaking turn asks how a unified coal industry might be linked to the iron industry. Lederer’s supplementary question distinguishes an Interessengemeinschaft—a community of interests—from the mere exchange of representatives between managements. He envisages reciprocal capital participation that would make the profitability of one industry consequential for the other.

Es ist ja für den Kohlenbergbau dann von sehr erheblicher wirtschaftlicher Bedeutung, wie die Eisenindustrie arbeitet, und das kann sich direkt für den Leiter des Koksbetriebes auswirken in seiner Tantieme, weil seine Tantieme doch abhängig ist von der Gesamtrentabilität des Kohlentrustes, der wieder bei gegenseitiger kapitalistischer Beteiligung abhängig ist von der Rentabilität der Eisenindustrie.

English translation: How the iron industry operates is then of very considerable economic importance for coal mining, and this can directly affect the head of the coke operation through his profit-related remuneration, because his remuneration depends on the overall profitability of the coal trust, which in turn, under reciprocal capital participation, depends on the profitability of the iron industry.

The argument moves from industrial interdependence to managerial incentives: shared capital interests could transmit the iron industry’s results through the coal trust to an individual manager’s remuneration. Lederer invokes comparable arrangements elsewhere as a way to give practical effect to common interests that remain unrealized when industries maintain separate capital structures.

Ich dachte nicht bloß an Delegationen, sondern auch an gegenseitige kapitalistische Verflechtung, welche aber nicht ausschließen würde, den Kohlenbergbau als solchen als einen einheitlichen großen trustartigen Wirtschaftskörper zu konstruieren.

English translation: I was thinking not merely of delegations, but also of reciprocal capital interconnection, which would not, however, preclude organizing coal mining as such into a single large trust-like economic entity.

His central conceptual move is to distinguish cross-industry financial integration from the organizational unity of coal mining itself. Reciprocal participation need not dissolve the proposed coal trust. The intervention thus identifies an institutional means of aligning linked industries while preserving a unified coal organization, rather than developing a complete scheme for its implementation.