The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1886-04-28

yer ore Ill SCnTechenDerS WAS ulSCOF-
cred. Quickly from there the news ex-
tended and cuttings were made in many
other places, and even to Prozel the
rich vein of silver ore was uncovered.
The whole region was raised and
wakenedup. The hamlet which sprang
up around the first mine, called Anna
berg, had already grown to be town.
Since 1926 Heinrich Won Etterlein had
been superintendent of the mines.
He was descended from a patrician
family, was born in Nuremberg in 1885
and died in Etterlein in 1882.
To him in 1914 was born daughter
who was called Barbara, and was pre-
destined to give work and a livelihood
to the women of the Hartz mountains.
At an early age she showed great skill
and dexterity in all woman's work and
especially in lace-making, with which
only the wives and daughters of people
of the highest rank then occupied them
selves. This lace was used chiefly for
the decoration of the altar, the COM
munion cloth and the priests robes,
and required.much time and great Labor.
Barbara sought for that reason an easier
and less time-consuming method of
making point lace, and in collar which
she gave to her betrothed, Christopher
Uttmann, on the morning Of their we'd
ding day has furnished proofs that her
efforts and search were not in vain. The
collar was the first bobbin work that
was seen in the Hartz mountains.
Christopher Uttman came from Lowen-
berg,in Schlesien, to Annaberg and
grew to be rich land-holder, to the
surprise of those who had previously
known him. Recently this invention
of lace work has been called in ques-
ton, and it is now generally accepted
that Barbara Uttman learned it
from Netherlander. This is high
ly probable and also easily I'M
derstood since the settlement
of Netherland silk-weavers at Buchholz,
near Annaberg. took place in 1861, and
lace-work Of white and yellow thread
may have been made, as it was by no
means unlikely that among the many
which the lode star of the mines drew
toward Annaberg some should have
been lace-makers.
Certain it is that Barbara Uttmann,
who herself drove profitable trade in
point lace, both taught and extended
this useful art in Annaberg. How
quickly the same became national one
sees when in 1868 there broke out in the
Hartz mountains pestilence which in
Annaberg alone swept away eight hun
dred lace-makers, the manufacture hav-
ing only begun in 1861.
From Annaberg, also this pleasant
and lucrative employment spread to all
the neighboring mountain towns, where
it also became speciality. Villagers
| who wished to engage in it must, ac-
cording to an ordinance of 1909, pay a
tax for that privilege.
In the year 1900 the number of steady
lace-makers rose to ten thousand, and
ere twenty years it reached fifty thou
sand, while about twenty thousand adj
ditional makers came in the winter sea-
son. In later times in the summer
there we're between thirty-five and forty
thousand at work. The profit sank
Vita tue increase of workers. Whilst
il the early part of the century skillful
worker could earn ten groschen day,
afterward not even if she gave herselfno
moment S rest from morning till evening
could she earn more than six groschen,
and in bad years even less. So little,
indeed, that even hard, honest work
could not hinder poverty from entering
the frugal little dwellings,. The woven
lace which in 1909 began to be made in
England drove out the hand made.
AS is everywhere the case where ma
chinery contends with hand work, it
lowered the price of the latter to much
below its value, and the people of the
Hartz mountains were obliged to en-
gage in the unequal struggle with the
new power which gives this century its
individuality. Alas! they did it not in
the right manner, they sought not by
perfection, but by cheapness, to vie with
the Nottingham lace. THAT this is not
the right way to contend against the
machine work." said Beethold Sigis-
mond in his entertaining book on the
Hartz mountains, sis plain. The hand
workers can raise its value by invent
ing variety and perfection of patterns,
instead of the well-known though cheap
curtain and cotton lace, and can, in a
manner not possible to the machine,
make Valenc:ennes and Brussels point.
Hand work must become an art where
it is opposed to machine work. Through
the discovery of photography many in
ferior artists lost their means OF earn
ing living, but the fine portrait paint
er will never be supplanted. So it is
with the point lace. The poorer work
ers must give way to the machine. the
more skillful remain"
The people of the Hartz mountains
must carry on the contest with the low
prices by the weapons of a higher art
since they love the work oflace-making.
1t IS among them a tradition which is
handed down from generation to gen.
Grafton. The two womanly industries
of the Hartz mountains, the lace-mak-
ING, which in the sixteenth century, to-
gether with the veil-making, came from
Switzerland into the Vosges mountains,
never spread so extensively as the bob.
| bin work.
Clara Ung]emann, who was born in
| Bialystok and was educated in a con-
vent at Thorn, brought with her and
taught the tamhour work which she had