THE PROCESS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION 127by the Weavers' Guild. In 1823, ten weavers had settled in, and in 1824 tenders
were submitted for supplying uniform broadcloth to the Polish Army. By 1829
production had reached an annual value of 35 million zl. Un-predictably, these
woollen pioneers were plagued by a constant scarcity of yarn. The local supplier,
one Ludwig Mamroth of Kalisz, was causing trouble on the grounds that his for-
mer monopoly in the area was being threatened. More seriously, the November
Rising eliminated the infant industry's main customer, and hopes of exporting to
Russia were crushed by the reimposition of the tariff barrier. Rembielinski's sec-
ond scheme, floated in 1824, was for linen. On this occasion, settlers were offered
3 morgs of land, half of which was to be planted with flax. Preference was given
to immigrants, with proof of skills. An official Government concession, and a
loan of 20,000 zl. was extended to an entrepreneur from Prussian Silesia, who laid
plans for a settlement of forty-two houses in the suburb of Sl^zaki (Silesians).
Already in 1829, 133,000 yards of linen were produced. But this venture too was
destroyed by the November Rising. Rembielinski's scheme for cotton manufac-
ture was thus the third in line, and undoubtedly thrived from the failure of wool
and linen. It was entrusted in the first instance to Christian-Friedrich Wendisch,
an established Saxon manufacturer from Chemnitz, whose concession dated from
October 1824, and then to Ludwig Geyer, another Saxon, who arrived in Lodz in
1828 with his family's entire fortune of 1,000 thalers. Wendisch took 87 morgs
and a loan of 180,000 zl., with which he constructed two mills, and a water-wheel.
By 1829, a mechanized spinning-mill with 192 power mules was supplying yarn
for the hand looms of a hundred weavers. In this case, mechanization, supported
by the credit of an established German company, enabled the crisis of 1831 to be
weathered. Geyer took the point. Having survived for nine years on his original
investment, aided only by a grant of 14 morgs and a tiny loan of 3,000 zl., he now
approached the Russian directors of the Bank Polski in Warsaw for a loan of one
million zl. With the loan secured, in 1837 he ordered a complete cotton combine
from Belgium, with the mules driven by a 50 horse-power steam-engine.
Thereafter, Lodz swung over to cotton almost completely, and became the ser-
vicing centre of a galaxy of satellite towns at Pabianice, Aleksandrow,
Konstantynow, and Zdunska Wola. Its reorganization and mechanization were
nicely timed to catch the full benefit of the arrival in 1845 of the first Polish rail-
way from Warsaw to Skierniewice and Rogow. Another milestone was reached
in 1854, when both the Geyer and the Scheibler factories in Lodz went over to
mechanical weaving. Henceforth, Polish cotton could be delivered into the limit-
less Russian market, so long as the Russian Empire lasted. The elusive constella-
tion of state and private enterprise, of technological advance, of foreign and
native finance, of skilled and available labour, of favourable tariffs in a
favourable market, and of expanding modern communications, occurred at the
right moment in the right place to launch the most successful undertaking of
Poland's First Industrialization.^8
In due course, the woollen industry revived also. The ill wind of 1831 which
had blasted the woollen companies of Lodz, blew to the good of the Grodno