Part 5 (1/2)
The more important art dealers feared it less than the smaller ones, among whom Herr Sauer and the new Industrie-Komptoir were my most active enemies. Despite this, there opened a way suddenly by which I could make peace with the art dealers and even draw considerable profit from them.
Through Herr von Hartl, I became acquainted with a skillful clavier-player, Teuber, who was also a composer, and at once showed great interest in my invention. He spoke to his acquaintances, Herr Sonnleithner and Herr Ricci. Through their intervention the art dealers asked me if I would abstain from establis.h.i.+ng a music-printery of my own, providing they guaranteed me a sufficient amount of work. I calculated that I could print six thousand sheets of music a day with the three presses that I had planned. This, at the low price of twenty-five kreuzer per hundred impressions, would amount in all to a sum of twenty-five gulden. Also if I accepted, say, work that would average three hundred impressions, there would be needed ten stones, counting two sheets to each stone. Thus there would be a further engraving profit of ten gulden, because I received fifty kreuzer for each sheet, but paid my note-writer only twenty kreuzer. For house, color, acids, polisher's wages, etc., there must be reckoned four gulden a day. The six printers to operate the three presses would cost four gulden a day also. Now if I reckoned two gulden a day for possible accidental errors, etc., there would still remain twenty-five gulden a day profit. This meant seven thousand and five hundred gulden clear profit in the three hundred working days of a year, without the least risk.
As I considered this a satisfactory profit for one single branch of my art, I told Herr Sonnleithner that I would attempt to induce Herr von Hartl to give up the idea of establis.h.i.+ng his own publis.h.i.+ng house, provided that the united art dealers would guarantee me that amount of work and agree also to reimburse me if the presses were not kept busy, excepting through my own fault. Herr Sonnleithner welcomed the proposal, not doubting that the dealers would need all the work stipulated, and, indeed, declaring that the Art and Industrie-Komptoir alone might give me twice that much.
I knew that Herr von Hartl had entertained little regard for this branch of work. Therefore I thought it would delight him to find that he could not only relieve himself from further expense in this line, but gain several thousand gulden. I was mistaken. He deduced that music-printing was not so unimportant as he had imagined; and he told me to inform the dealers that I would take as much work as they offered at low prices, but that we could not make ourselves dependent on them.
As the dealers refused decidedly to give me the means with their own hands of building up a great establishment, the project fell entirely.
However, Herr von Hartl now had declared himself in favor of establis.h.i.+ng a music-printery; and a few days later there came a highly favorable opportunity to start one at once under happy auspices, together with a complete art publis.h.i.+ng establishment.
An acquaintance of my landlady, to whom I had showed my printery, sent for me to tell me that Herr Eder, an art dealer, wished to give up his business because of illness and was willing to sell reasonably. This friend enlarged on the luck it would be to obtain this well-situated shop, which earned several thousand gulden by printing birthday and New Year's cards alone, at the very easy terms which Herr Eder had suggested provisionally. He desired me to see him at once, under the pledge of secrecy, which pledge Herr von Hartl was to give also, as Herr Eder did not wish to injure his credit by offering his establishment openly for sale.
Herr Eder did, indeed, offer most favorable terms, according to my opinion. He showed me that on the average the net profit of his business had been ten thousand gulden annually during the last ten years. (At that time the gulden notes stood at par.) Furthermore he estimated the value of all his printed stock only at the cost of manufacture, and the great stock of copper plates, many newly etched, at merely their value as copper. The large stock of different papers, with the many writing and drawing materials, were estimated at cost value, also. For his trading rights, and for his excellent rental contract which had many years to run, he did not ask anything. The sum that he asked for everything was forty thousand gulden, of which only ten thousand gulden were to be paid at once, the rest being paid in annual installments during the following ten years.
If Herr von Hartl had accepted this, there would have been four thousand gulden net profit a year in it. And by combining with it the advantages of the new process, the profit was certain to be greater. To begin a new publis.h.i.+ng house without mercantile knowledge, without knowing what the public wanted, would be far more difficult than to continue one that already was in operation, especially so as Herr Eder had offered to remain for a year as a.s.sociate to teach me the business.
I cannot yet understand why Herr von Hartl discarded this proposition.
Perhaps he feared that he would be overreached in some way. He might have been more receptive had he been able to foresee that his new establishment would cost him a sum of twenty thousand gulden within a very few years without advancing toward being even the ghost of a business. Perhaps I did not possess the gift of convincing others. At any rate, both projects failed to meet with approval. That Herr von Hartl could be convinced, however, even to his plain injury, I will prove later. For lithography the failure of this plan was a great loss, because it would have given me opportunity to get into the art line ten years earlier than I did, and make useful application of my inventions.
The family Gleissner now arrived in Vienna and brought one of my former apprentices, Mathias Grunewald. Meantime some presses had been completed, and we could begin to print. Gleissner's symphonies recently had been much praised in a musical paper of Leipsic, and he proposed to us to begin with a few of his works. Of course it would have been wiser to begin with a good work by a famous man, whose name was sufficiently popular in Vienna. I did visit Herr Doctor Haydn, but received the reply that he could not compose any more and would only review old works thenceforth.
Immediately at the commencement a stock of stones was needed. As we could foresee that we should need some thousands of stones in the course of time, Herr von Hartl decided to make a trip with me, by way of Munich and Augsburg, to the quarries of Solenhofen that we might inform ourselves on the spot about the best way to get stones.
A further inducement to make this journey was that he wished to examine the estate of Niedau, which had been described as being very favorably situated for the erection of manufactories. Herr von Hartl already had a large spinnery in operation. This, and perhaps the printery, he planned to establish in Niedau, because there both workers and property were cheaper. He intended to leave only the business offices in Vienna.
The establishment of this spinnery had so important an effect on my fate as well as on the future of lithography that I must describe it here.
When I arrived in Vienna, Count von Saurau had just gone to Petersburg as Austrian Amba.s.sador. Being a patron of home industries, he had advanced ten thousand gulden some time before to an expert spinner named Mistelbauer, to erect looms for manufacturing fine English and French stuffs in Austria, a work for which Mistelbauer was perfectly qualified.
When the Count departed, Herr von Hartl took charge of several of his interests, among them the Mistelbauer spinnery. Thus at the next Vienna Messe (market-fair), Mistelbauer visited Herr von Hartl to make an accounting. The goods that Mistelbauer had brought convinced Herr von Hartl of his skill and technical capacity. The details of his processes, and his ingenuity in operating so many looms with so little capital, indicated to Herr von Hartl that increased capital would bring enormously increased results. As the spinnery company had as good as decided that a good part of their own products should be further worked by themselves, Herr von Hartl considered it a lucky circ.u.mstance to meet a particularly good weaver and also a cotton-printer, who alleged that he could print the home-made cottons exactly as well as the English printers and possibly at smaller cost.
He wrote to Count von Saurau that he was willing to a.s.sist Mistelbauer with more money. Count Saurau agreed, and Herr von Hartl advanced money to Mistelbauer till it reached a sum of forty thousand gulden. He appeared only as a creditor, however, and held a mortgage on the entire spinnery, with all its present and future stock, in order to be covered should the operations fail.
Now Mistelbauer was a man who had little or no mercantile talent. He did not understand book-keeping, and though he had managed the original small establishment pretty well, he was not equal to the bigger one. A factor should have been appointed to manage the commercial end and the accounts. Another trouble was that Herr von Hartl, in order to satisfy himself, continually demanded new sample work from him, which, on the other hand, pleased Mistelbauer, as it enabled him to show his skill.
Thus, instead of working steadily along the original sound lines, he kept going into new things. Among others he erected looms to make color, and print Manchester fabrics. Regardless of the fact that I (as he well knew) was working at cotton-printing, and that Herr von Hartl intended to work my inventions, he managed to induce that gentleman to let him erect a cotton-printery, a matter which he did not understand in the least.
Mistelbauer had been a poor peasant boy of Helmannsod by Linz. He had gone into foreign lands in his youth, but when he obtained the ten thousand gulden from Count Saurau, he selected his native place for the works. Even at that time his improved condition aroused the envy of the village; but he lived in a poor hut and differed in nothing from the other inhabitants. When Herr von Hartl a.s.sisted him, he succeeded soon in convincing him that they needed more room, and obtained his consent for building. Instead of erecting a factory, he erected a considerable dwelling, the cost of which was far beyond the original estimates. On account of all the other work undertaken at the same time, nothing could be finished in time, and Mistelbauer was continually too late for the markets with his product. As a result, instead of being punctual with all his payments as he had been heretofore, he could not even pay his interest, and Herr von Hartl had to make new advances all the time.
Naturally Herr von Hartl began to feel apprehensive, and he decided to visit Mistelbauer on the occasion of our journey to Solenhofen.
When we reached Helmannsod, Herr von Hartl shook his head dubiously, especially when he found the accounts in the greatest disorder. But the great stock of goods, though most of them were only half finished, and the thought that everything could be made to go smoothly again with better management, encouraged him, and he instructed Mistelbauer, showing him how to establish order in his works as well as in the accounts.
Then we continued our journey. In Munich, where we remained three days, I visited my mother and my brothers, who all lived together and were operating a press that worked mostly for Herr Falter. According to their a.s.surances, their income had hardly sufficed to support them.
In Augsburg, Herr von Hartl contracted with a paper dealer for the paper necessary for music-printing, and in Solenhofen he bought several hundred stones for this work and made arrangements for future supplies.
Then we returned through Regensburg and Pa.s.sau. This whole journey was one of the greatest pleasures of my life. The weather was excellent, and Herr von Hartl was so kind to me that I was more than ever convinced of his sincere desire for my success.
We engaged two writers of music immediately on our return to Vienna. One was J. Held, a young man recently married, who earned his living by teaching and copying. The second was his brother-in-law. They comprehended the process quickly and soon were so skillful that each earned twelve gulden and more a week, despite the fact that we rarely paid them more than twenty and twenty-four kreuzer for each sheet.
The new smaller works of Herr Gleissner were finished very soon, and it became necessary to find more work to keep my etchers and four printers busy. I asked Herr von Hartl to buy some compositions from Vienna's best musicians, such as Krommer, Beethoven, etc. He was willing, but desired to wait for a proper opportunity to speak to Herr Krommer. Thus some weeks pa.s.sed, and in order to keep the force busy, Herr Gleissner composed continually and printed his work. Nearly a whole year pa.s.sed that way, and still Herr von Hartl had found no opportunity (owing to his many affairs) to arrange with Herr Krommer or other composers.