At that time adverse external circumstances pressed heavily upon the young manufactory, the whole possessions of its founder consisting only of a small house situated on the Rednitz and surrounded by a small garden. A judicial inventory dated 1786 still preserved in the family specifies faithfully the insignificant property possessed by them, showing a nett result of “Fifty nine florins”. The finest and dearest qualities mentioned therein are spoken of as “several gross of _English_ pencils”, for thus the better German manufactures had to disguise themselves under a foreign title. The demand for these manufactures was trifling and purely local, as the spirit of commerce and enterprise did but little to assist their introduction. Nürnberg and Fürth appear to have been the first to patronise the products of the manufactory. To these places, as we know, the pencils finished in the course of the week were carried on Saturdays in a basket; but the fact of their having been well paid for goes to prove that even then their excellence was acknowledged. The relations at that time existing between the producer and the consuming public were however but little regulated. The producer stood by himself alone, cut off from the world, which seemed to him too immensely large for him to dare to step out into it. The farsighted vision, searching in every direction to discover new wants and invent new improvements, were wanting to him, as was also the beneficial influence of external relations, with which he was never brought in contact. Nor was the consumer any more favorably situated. The article became the object of extensive commercial speculation and had often to travel a very long way before it reached the hands of the consuming public, nor was the repute of a good name any guarantee to the consumer of the excellence of the article, for in order to keep the manufacturers in complete dependance, the merchants would not allow them to mark their better products with their names, but prescribed them foreign names and unmeaning signs, such as: Harps, Stars etc. It was but slowly that the French process of mixing the lead with clay gained ground and many years after the adoption of this process the workmen, even in _Faber’s_ manufactory, were still employed in working the Spanish lead in the old fashioned way by melting it and cutting it with a saw. The progress of the French however soon forced the merchants to press the Nürnberg manufacturers to advance, so as not to be left behind by competition. After the introduction of the new composition the Nürnberg manufactories soon found themselves favorably circumstanced and yielded satisfactory profits both to the merchants and the manufacturers.