Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

MONIKA POETTINGER
favour industry is to enlighten it through education, severing every
contact with old habits and making it capable of using every invention
of genius to its advantage; but to instruct the artisans it is necessary
to gather them all together and put them in touch with scholars,
funding the alliance of practice and theory.’ 103
The principal aim of this intellectual republic was indeed the economic
development of Lombardy, an end to be achieved by the
application of science to industry and agriculture and the dissemination
of education and innovation. In a speech as President of the
Society, Mylius again underlined the necessity of creating an educated
and specialized workforce and stimulating the innovative capacity
of entrepreneurs. ‘The arts favoured in their development by the
inborn intelligence of this industrious population’, he declared, ‘must
yet be aided by the diffusion of enlightenment, encouraged through
the stimulus of emulation, aided by the advantages of merit recognized
and widely known.’ 104 Mylius’s intellectual republic was thus
formed by those noblemen, merchants, and intellectuals who rejected
the views of the region held by the conservatives and agriculturalists
and worked instead for its industrialization through innovative
entrepreneurship and a scientific and practical education open to all.
These were not merely words; throughout his long life Mylius constantly
financed innovative enterprises.
In one case this sort of venture capital there was an intervention
within his own family. Mylius’s only son, although raised as a merchant,
was an enthusiastic mechanic who applied all his knowledge
to the development of an innovative system of silk threading and
reeling. The manufactory in Boffalora, acquired by Heinrich in 1813,
became the laboratory for the experiments conducted by his son
Antonio Kramer. The throwing mill remained an unprofitable venture
for a long time because all parts of the production process were
new, and the aim was for the end product to be of outstanding quality.
In spite of initially negative results, Heinrich Mylius continued to
finance the mill for over thirty years and in the end the two young-
103 Report by the President (Heinrich Mylius), 29 Mar. 1842, Archivio della
Società d’Incoraggiamento, Cartella 17. Quoted by Carlo G. Lacaita, ‘La
Società d’incoraggiamento d’Arti e Mestieri di Milano’, in Baasner (ed.), I
Mylius-Vigoni, 35.
104 Allocuzione di ringraziamento pronunciata da Enrico Mylius alla Società
d’Incoraggiamento d’Arti e Mestieri (Milan, 1844).
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