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A German Eighteenth-Century Iron Works During its First Hundred Years: Notes Contributing to the Unwritten History of European Aristocratic Business Leadership—III
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Extract
The profits of and the amount of capital sunk in the Lauchhammer Iron Works are not revealed in the Festschrift, the history of that firm which has served as the main source of this article. (The omission is hardly surprising, since this company was owned by noblemen, one of whom was the most powerful official in the Kingdom of Saxony, and since its history was written by the general manager of the Works and was published in 1825.) But profits must have been considerable. Otherwise the Works' continuous improvement and expansion, described earlier in this article, would have been impossible. In 1818, the Lauchhammer Iron Works was even able to lend to the Gröditz plant the funds it needed to expand into an integrated iron enterprise. Whether the Works had any bank connection prior to 1825 is not known; none is mentioned in the history, but that fact is not conclusive. Cash holdings were probably rather large; this, however, was not the case in 1776 (see the inventory on page 233). It seems certain that both expansion and improvement in the eras of both Einsiedels were financed by ploughing back profits.
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- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1953
References
66 Hereafter cited as F.
67 See Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, XXVII (Sept., 1953), especially pp. 154–55.
68 This section on administration and labor force is derived from the lists of employees and of the participants in the celebration of the hundredth anniversary in F., pages 12, 13, 49–53, 63. Since there is no information regarding the months in which employment started and ended, it is assumed that it started and ended, respectively, at the beginning and end of a year. The distortion will be irrelevant for the purposes of this study.
69 Beck, Ludwig, Geschichte des Eisens in technischer und kulturgeschichtlicher Beziehung (Braunschweig, 1893–1903), III, 354.Google Scholar
Material on the Bohemian Schichtmeisters of the seventeenth century can be found in Salz, Arthur, Geschichte der Böhmischen Industrie in der Neuzeit (München, 1913), 160 ff.Google Scholar There they were the managers of iron works, i.e. of the plants, working under the supervision of the landlords' estate administrations.
70 One may get an idea of the work force of the Lauchhammer furnace by citing that of the already-mentioned plant of the Count von Solms-Baruth. Besides the furnace master it had two furnace workers (“founders”?), two Aufgeber (“fillers”?, skilled workers for charging the furnace), one foundry master assisted by two workers (“potters” “moulders”?), two men for measuring coal and ore, respectively, six to eight charcoal burners, six to eight miners, two boatmen, two unskilled hands; see Beck, op. cit., III, 354.
71 Beck, op. cit., III, 354, reports on an unidentified German eighteenth-century forge as follows: the forge worked with four men, which seems to have been typical. These were the master, a head worker, a second skilled worker, and a boy. For each Centner of wrought iron produced the master received 3 groschens 6 pfennigs, the head worker 2 groschens, the skilled worker 1 groschen 9 pfennigs, and the boy 9 pfennigs. This piece of information ties in very well with what we know about Lauchhammer and testifies to the reliability of what has been reported.
72 The years inserted in parentheses designate the year in which the holder of the job in 1825 entered the employment of the Works.
73 Since the month of each man's entry (except in one case) is not known, the years of entry and 1825 are figured as full years. How many years after 1825 certain men served is not known, i.e., the above tabulation does not give an idea of the duration of the service of those who were employed in 1825.
74 This tabulation differs from the one preceding, for administrative personnel, in that it includes men who had entered the Works' employment prior to 1776, if most of their time falls into the period after 1776.
75 Frisch-, Zeug-, and Zähnschmiedemeister, Werkmeister, Kunstmeister, Giessmeister, Grubenwärter, Oberköhler.
76 This figure is derived from the list of participants in the parade celebrating the hundredth anniversary (such parades were very common in mining areas, see Wappler, “Oberberghauptmann von Trebra und die drei ersten sächsischen Kunstmeister” in Mitteilungen des Freiberger Altertumsvereins, No. 41 (1905), passim). It is not clear whether the flag bearer and the band of thirteen men were members of the work force. The former may have been an outsider who was to be honored, and the latter may have been hired. On the other hand, it can be assumed that almost every member participated unless he was sick or needed in continuous operations, e.g., in the blast furnace, or on guard duty.
77 Again the German word “Zeug” causes difficulty. From the context in which it appears we would assume that “Zeugarbeiter” were wood workers.
78 See Vol. II (Leiden, 1940), 516 ff.
79 In the second half of the eighteenth century wages lagged behind prices. See Hamilton, Earl J., “Prices and Progress” in Journal of Economic History, XII (1952), 339Google Scholar; and Spengler, Joseph J., “Theories of Socio-Economic Growth” in Universities-National Bureau Committee on Economic Research, Problems in the Study of Economic Growth [mimeographed] (New York, 1949), p. 83.Google Scholar
80 See also Lampadius, op. cit., p. 299.
81 Pictures of flags of this kind can be found in Hoffmann, Walter, Mansfeld Gedenkschrift zum 726 jährigen Bestehen des Mansfeld-Konzerns (Berlin, 1925), pp. 42 ff.Google Scholar Incidentally, in 1793 the entire personnel of the Bavarian mines and forges received uniforms and special flags; see Bezzel, Oskar, Geschichte des Kur pfalzbayerischen Heeres von 1778–1803 (München, 1930), 105/106.Google Scholar
82 Pictures of that vase are in 200 Jahre Lauchhammer 1725–1925 (p. p. [1925]), p. 49 and plate after p. 96. Hereafter cited as F. of 1925.
83 F. of 1925, p. 28.
84 For the sociological, political, and economic consequences of Lutheranism, see Müller-Armack, Alfred, Die Genealogie der Wirtschaftsstile, 3d ed. (Stuttgart, 1944), 107–118.Google Scholar Müller-Armack stresses on p. 231 that many of the early Lutheran business leaders adhered to Pietism.
85 Johann Friedrich Trautscholdt, Oberfactor der gräft, von Eisiedelschen Eisenwerke zu Lauchhammer, Burghammer, Gröditz und Berggiesshübel (geboren 1773, gestorben 184S) in seinem häuslichen Leben und amtlichen Wirken (p. p., Meissen, 1842). This booklet of nineteen pages is in the Landesbibliothek in Dresden and a microfilm is in Baker Library of Harvard University.
86 Leipzig, 1775–1784, 24 volumes.
87 This term is untranslatable since American corporations are differently organized. In Germany the Aufsichtsrat is a board supervising the administration which is in the hands of a board of directors, the latter corresponding to American presidents and vice-presidents. To put it differently the German Aufsichtsrat is similar to an American board of directors, consisting of outsiders who take very little interest in policy determination relying entirely on presidents and vice-presidents. A German board of directors resembles an American board consisting of the actual administrators, except that it is supervised, something the American board would not be.
88 See Saling's Börsen-Jahrbuch für 1912/1918 (Berlin, 1912), 1,307 ff.
89 This epilogue is based on F. of 1925.
90 Only after this essay was already set and proofed the author's attention was drawn to the one by Birch, Alan on “The Haigh Ironworks 1789–1856: A Nobleman's Enterprise during the Industrial Revolution” in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XXXV (1953), 316 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The paper deals with the contemporaneous works of the Earl of Balcarres in Lancashire and is of interest for purposes of comparison with the present study.
Also belated the author discovered that the celebration in 1815 of the hundredth anniversary of the noble-owned cloth manufacture at Oberleutensdorf in Bohemia shows remarkable similarities with those described here; see Schlesinger, Ludwig, “Zur Geschichte der Industrie in Oberleutensdorf” in Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen, III (1865), 146.Google Scholar