On 23 May 1919, the German Minister of Economics Rudolf Wissell presided over a very confidential meeting with sixty or seventy of Germany's leading industrialists to discuss ways and means of dissuading the Allied powers at Versailles from carrying out their intentions in the Saar and Upper Silesia. The chief proposal under consideration was that Germany offer the Allies economic inducements in the form of participation in German enterprises. Wissell pointed out that, ‘however painful it might be for the individual branches of industry to have strangers in their own house, where they had previously ruled alone, the distress of the Fatherland requires a renunciation of individual interest. Reich Treasury Minister Gothein presented the issues more hopefully, reminding his listeners that foreign capital had played an important role in Germany's industrialisation until favourable conditions had enabled Germany gradually to free herself from it. Germany was once again in need of capital, but her military defeat made it impossible to borrow without offering direct foreign participation in the ownership of German industrial enterprises in return. American business circles had sent out feelers along these lines. The German government, therefore, entertained the hope that a means had been found both to deflect Germany's former enemies from some of their territorial ambitions and to procure the capital needed for reconstruction.