Andrzej Wierzbicki – forgotten capitalist

Andrzej Wierzbicki – a forgotten capitalist. Karol Skorek

The text was originally published in the quarterly "Think.pl". Number 33 (1/2015).

During the interwar period, the national camp had many economical activists in its ranks who specialized in various areas of social life. economical explanation was held by luminaries specified as R. Rybary, A. Haydel and E. Taylor. In turn, the monetary issues were dealt with by J. Zdziechowski. The voice of the Polish manufacture was without uncertainty A. Wierzbicki - the legendary chief of Leviathan. The communicative turned out to be malicious, due to the fact that the character of Wierzbicki – a man of large charisma and strength of character – was almost forgotten, and at the time of his glory he was known to most citizens of the Second Republic! To the left, it was a prominent example of a capitalist exploiter, while the right spoke of it with undisclosed pride. Word clashes with the president of Leviathan were so hard that his political opponents said with fear: “They have Wierzbicki”1. present it is worth reading the résumé of the head of the largest prewar industrialist organization to learn what exemplary public service should look like. A. Wierzbicki was born in Chawa (1877). He spent his first years of his childhood in Russia. His father (of the doctor's profession) died of breast illness during the typhoid epidemic, causing financial problems for the family. Wierzbice moved to Warsaw, where they lived with their late deceased father's brother. The burden of maintaining the household rested on Maria Wierzbicka (Mother Andrew) who earned a surviving with handiwork and homemade cigaret products2. The first level of education of young Wierzbicki was the conviction of the preliminary exams for the 4th secondary school in Warsaw. He was a weak student at first. Only after a year's break – suggested by the manager – did he importantly improve his grades. due to the hard material situation of the family, he began tutoring to relieve his parent of the burden of keeping the house. In junior advanced school, he discovered that he was most attracted to physics and mathematics, which influenced the choice of future studies. The authorities tried to russify young people, so the usage of Polish was prohibited3.

Young Wierzbicki, according to his interests, wanted to survey at the University of Technology, but unfortunately not yet established in Warsaw, so he chose to survey in St. Petersburg. The first step in the realization of dreams was to pass the math competition exams. On 25 possible points he received 24 and 3⁄4 (minimum threshold 23 and 1⁄2). Thanks to a good consequence he was accepted to survey at the Petersburg Institute of Technology in the field of technologist4. Polish academic youth in St. Petersburg formed a separate community. Students organized around Kas Self-Help, Library and Student Kitchen. These institutions were available to all Pole regardless of the belief in the worldview. Wierzbicki was introduced in self-learning circles as a talker (readings were held in the Student Kitchen). His activity has been seen. He was proposed to join the Polish Youth Union “Zet”5. It was a secret organization established in 1887 by Z. Balicki. He wrote about his experience with Zet as follows:

‘Being a proponent of the pillar ideas, I was called as 1 of the first to this group. As we know, the organization of the “Zetu” was two-step. An adept, tried in student life, in self-education circles, was visited by well-known, frequently already friends of 2 colleagues and was offered the creation of a secret youth organization with higher goals. erstwhile the adept expressed his enthusiasm for this idea, especially erstwhile he claimed that he himself felt the request to trust on a akin organization, he was informed that specified an organization already existed; after receiving a solemn pledge that he would keep secret the fact of its existence and activities, he was invited to the next gathering of “Zetu”“6. Originally, socialist youth dominated student organizations. In time, however, according to Wierzbicki, the national youth became much more active, making the national candidates win elections to the boards of the organization. National and socialist youths have been in constant, fierce ideological battles7. After graduating and earning the title, a technologist engineer worked in the field of electrical engineering, where he rapidly gained a advanced position in industrial wheels. From 1903 to 1912 he worked as an engineer of the Russian Society for Electrical Roads and Lighting, while serving as secretary, vice president of the Mechanical Branch and associate of the Board of the Society of mill Association in St. Petersburg8.

Upon his return to Warsaw in 1912, Wierzbicki was appointed president of the Society of Industrialists of the Kingdom of Poland. He was the head of the St. Petersburg mill Society.9. Through the nomination of the National Committee of Poland, he became president of the Polish economical Delegation for a peace conference in Paris (1918-1919)10.

In 1918 he served as Minister of manufacture and Commerce in the government of Prime Minister Józef Świeżyński, appointed by the Regency Council11. The Central Union of Polish Industry, Mining, Trade and Finance was established on 15 December 1919. Left writing Worker It compared the recently born industrial organization to the biblical monster Leviathan. Wierzbicki thought it was a large name. Thus, out of spite of fate, the PPS organ baptized the fresh business organization. Leviathan became an organization connecting 29 economical associations. shortly the recently formed organization became a powerful centre of force that co-decided with the government on the economical improvement of the country12.

Andrzej Wierzbicki was elected associate of the Sejm from 1919 to 1927 and 1935 to 1937. In his parliamentary activities, he focused on promoting the thought of economical liberalism, free competition and limited state intervention. He resisted etatism13.

Wierzbicki's May assassination was cold. He pointed out the unprogrammableness of the sanitization contained in the slogan “no experiments”14. He worked with socialists to defend the Polish industry, but never decided to join the BBWR15. He pointed to the charisma of Józef Piłsudski, who could charm women and men16. He was a man of versatile interest. He was fascinated by flowers, butterflies, birds, cosmology, explanation of relativity. He knew about medicine and theological problems. He memorized the full fresh Testament Bible. He worked in agriculture, dried and irrigated meadows, devised crop rotations, made fertilization plans, ordered seed, planted orchards and ponds17.

Before the war Andrzej Wierzbicki belonged to the richest people in Poland. He figured it out on his own. He didn't inherit any property. After the war, the Bolsheviks took everything from him. People’s power despised him, so he could not find a job. His cognition of Russian saved him from starvation. He lived with translations (signed by a pseudonym)18.

In the fall of 1959, Andrzej Wierzbicki had viral pneumonia. He was taken for reflection to the Medical Academy infirmary in Warsaw at Lindley Street. There was a twist of guts – the operation was carried out by prof. Nilubowicz. The patient's destiny for many months varied between life and death. In the spring of 1960, Andrzej Wierzbicki unexpectedly regained his strength and returned to his apartment. The next twist of guts was dead. He died at a infirmary in Międzylesie on 11 February 1961.19. Thus died a man who before the war was an elite of the elite, and after the war he was despised poor.

Best clippings from Andrzej Wierzbicki's parliamentary speeches: "Poland is already at this phase of industrial development, that it should meet all consumer needs of broad layers of population, but is not yet able to meet industry's installation needs with its own sumptum. We are in the sphere of our industrial fabrication only in the first act, in the first stage. While we manufacture a number of machines, we can install our own sugar, spirits, simple mechanical industry, but already the installation needs of the complex mechanical industry, the large metallurgical industry, the chemical, electrical, printing and textile industries for many years we will inactive gotta meet imports from abroad“20.

‘The industrial spheres, taking the view that Poland is an agricultural and industrial state and awaiting full exploitation of its production capacity, always felt that a uniform policy for the improvement of production, as in the industrial sphere, as in the agricultural sphere and so at meetings of the Industrial and Trade Council and six months ago, was necessary, and a year and a year and a half ago, defended this policy.“21.

‘But at the same time our production must be carried out in conditions corresponding to planet production, due to the fact that if it is carried out in worse conditions, the cost of production will be higher and the interior marketplace will pay besides much to send part of the production with losses abroad, due to the fact that without exports the manufacture cannot sustain itself“22. ‘Instead of going to production workshops, alternatively of going to crafts, the children of workers, the children of the lowest mill officers go to office manipulators – their parents think only to push them out on mill or industrial officials. It's a unusual sprain. And its results are highly severe, due to the fact that this kind of process, which rips out of the productive life the colossal hosts of people and throws them into the non-productive work, must take revenge on economical life and take revenge in an incredibly bright way“23. ‘This is actually a completely magical chain, due to the fact that if you decision prices of footwear, shirts, clothes, then you gotta decision prices of all another products, due to the fact that you can produce cheaper due to the fact that it will be easier to keep a worker. If prices move, then the village will eat more easily, can buy more shoes, shirts, etc. Therefore, the minute of expanding the productivity of work is simply a minute of direct unheard of importance, of tremendous importance. If the cost of production is reduced in 1 place, the avalanche will pass through all industries and will have its reflexes everywhere“24. ‘We can't work any worse and we can't work little than they work in Italy, Belgium and France – I'm not talking about the Germans anymore, due to the fact that they work a lot there.“25. ‘If all parliamentary parties talk about productivity of work, about fresh American methods that can make a miracle of performance from a heartless mill mechanism, then there is no price that would not be worth giving for experts to find themselves and can inspire the Sejm with the ability to execute work in specified a way that it becomes a creative origin in our state body, that it is indeed the highest authority and model, and it was not, as is very frequently the case today, an image of how it should not be organised throughout life“26. ‘And it turns out that what the workers' class is most afraid about, what is at their heart, namely the issue of the organization of manufacturing plants... that this is what Piotr Drzewiecki took care of and that this beautiful book of the large American was published from the fund of his name: "Twelve Principles of Performance". Gentlemen, any gentleman who reads this book will not become an industrialist, for that there is no fear (funny), but the performance of his individual life, political life, social life will be able to organize and he will be terrified, seeing how many moments of life he has spent in vain, how much he could gain, how he could rise his party, his relationship. (Merry, applause). This is simply a wonderful book, not only for industrialists, but for everyone, and I am convinced that even the Prime Minister, who has an unheard regular in this area, will be very pleased to read these "Twelve Principles of Performance" (voice: Milkiness. Joy) and surely will besides draw many favorable conclusions from this. (Mr Taraszkiewicz: His own)“27.

‘The will to take money, gentlemen, is an unheard lever. I don't know the party, I don't know a colleague in this Parliament who doesn't have the will to take parliamentary allowances all first month. (Merry). I haven't heard anyone quit their diet yet. The will to take money is the most powerful and the top lever, it is simply a phenomenal force, unheard of, it is only to administer this will in a productive and deliberate manner. And if the parliamentary diets depend on the considerable industriousness of Members, if there were no socialist strategy in which each associate receives the same diet, then the work of Members would be infinitely more efficient“28.

‘I advise you to read today's dispatches. possibly the gentlemen haven't read Foch's study yet and the ambassadors' enunciation to the German Reich. Gentlemen will see this study slip over the case of the German Reich's very intense weapons“29.

‘I would advise you to consider this fact, to consider it in your conscience, and to answer whether a nation that is revived by the most peaceful ideas, and which at the same time has no prepared national defence, is specified a nation worth surviving on this earth?“30.

‘The rule of a shorter day's work must be carried out everywhere, due to the fact that if it is not carried out everywhere, those countries which have a longer day's work will conquer the world's competition, having a shorter day's work, so the benefit will be very short-lived“31.

‘Intelligence always thinks for an full nation, in intelligence there is simply a centered brain and thoughts of an full nation; if masses have common sense, something highly valuable and valuable; if masses very frequently have healthy pursuits, then only a layer of intelligence can this common sense and these healthy pursuits consciously thought to scan and transform into ways of action. The effort of intelligence, creative, segregating and organizing the forces of the nation is essential to accomplish the ideal.“32.

‘And just as our state budget is life over state, so are the sick's money surviving over state.“33.

‘... we think that we can slip over economical rights that regulate the production of the full planet in iron ways, we think, as if we could slip over them and make a fetish of the inviolability of "social garners"“34.

‘Economic life – and agriculture, and craft, and industry, and trade – works for a large camp of auditors, specified as state officials. Control ends erstwhile there's no 1 left to control. Therefore, there is simply a close link of symbiosis not only between agriculture and industry, crafts and trade, but it turns out that symbiosis is besides based on the relation between state officials and all economical life. That is why the bad favour is done by the overgrowth of statism is an official, who is connected with the full life of Poland. No 1 is born immediately an official, a farmer or an industrialist. Everyone strives for full life and wants to find a place in their country, in their Poland, suitable for their abilities and preferences“35.

‘It is impossible to keep specified an anomaly that public limited companies, with double taxation of profits in the company itself and shareholders, pay tax, up to 60 percent of our income. These are completely Prohibition rates and industrial life cannot be developed under these conditions, and there cannot be people in these conditions who would like to buy shares of enterprises as long as there is specified taxation legislation“36.

Bibliography

And Studies:

1. Wierzbicki A., Alive Leviathan — REMINDERS, National Publishing Agency, Warsaw 2001.

2. Wierzbicki A., Memories and papers (1877-1920), State technological Publishing House, Warsaw 1957.

3. Kozłowski E, About the overturn of May 1926, Ministry of Defence Publishing House, Warsaw 1984.