THE PROCESS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION 129the 'Allgemeine Osterreichische Boden Credit Anstalt' of Vienna, and the
British Premier Oil and Pipeline Co. Ltd. all made large investments. In the
event, their money was wasted. In 1915, the retreating Russian army fired
the wells. After the war, the French companies who by hook or by crook had
ousted almost all their rivals, failed to raise the capital to recover the damage.
Production did not reach the 1909 level until 1960, under Soviet management.^9
Foreign enterprise played a vital part in the development of Polish industry.
At the turn of the century, foreign capital has been estimated to account for 60
per cent of the Congress Kingdom's industrial production. Kronenburg's Bank
Handlowy (Commercial Bank) disposed of French capital from the French
Credit Lyonnais; whilst the Warsaw Bank Dyskontowy (Discount Bank) had
connections with the Deutsche Bank. The German contribution was para-
mount. Quite apart from their role in the industries of Prussia which were even-
tually joined to Poland, German entrepreneurs, technologists, and financiers
were active throughout the Russian and Austrian Partitions. In the Congress
Kingdom, a significant part was also played by British men, money, and
machines. The name of 'Evans Brothers', founders in 1822 of the machine busi-
ness which grew into the mammoth company of Lilpop, Rau, and Lowenstein,
holds an honoured place in Polish industrial chronicles, as do those of John
McDonald, manager of the first ever machine factory in Poland at Zwierzyniec,
near Zamosc in 1805; of William Preacher, the first manager of the Bank
Steelworks; and of John Pounds Pace, a fitter, who lost his life in 1830 at
Bialogon when the tails of his frock-coat caught in the fly-wheel of a lathe. It is
said on good authority that the lathes which Pace installed on behalf of Richard
Sharpe and Co. of Manchester, were-still in operation in 1956.^10
The growth of industry was closely affected by the changing patterns of trade,
and in particular in the Congress Kingdom by variations in the Russian tariff
barrier. From 1819 to 1832, and again after 1850, the Congress Kingdom was
included in the Russian customs area and Polish manufactures could pass freely
into the Empire. The exclusion of the Congress Kingdom from the tariff cus-
toms area between 1832 and 1850, for purely political reasons, provided one of
the principal causes for the marked deceleration of industrial growth in those
years. Similar variations occurred on the Prussian frontier. From 1823 to 1825,
the Congress Kingdom fought a tariff war with Prussia, which ended in an
agreement which limited both the import of Prussian manufactures and the
export of Polish grain. Restrictions on the import of German goods, introduced
by the Tsarist government in 1877, further assisted Polish exploitation of the
Russian market. In the 1880s, Russian textile manufacturers were so unnerved
by Polish competition that they made repeated calls for the tariff barrier to be
restored. By 1890, 70 per cent of the trade of the Congress Kingdom was with
Russia.
Industry was also greatly stimulated by the railway boom, which reached the
Polish lands in the sixth and seventh decades of the century. Earlier projects,
such as the line between Warsaw and Dabrowa proposed in 1834 by the Bank