The daily wages for workers and labourers was between 2.10 and 2.20 pesos for 10 to 12 hour days. I paid 2.50 for 9 hour days plus free candles for the night. A carpenter from the neighbourhood, a certain Bertrand, heard of my working conditions and asked me not to spoil the salary system. In the meantime, my Auzeill relative, seeing how my situation improved daily, became furiously jealous and wanted to socialize with me, always looking for an argument. This situation plus the accommodations which were small, led to my wife undertaking the search for another house with parquet and a workshop, which at the time seamed impossible.
Unable to do anything else but run the business, it was my wife that found great appropriate space. It was a shed with a zinc roof behind a two room house on 2126 Corrientes street at a price of 90 pesos per month. We moved in immediately allowing us to employ 4 new workers in addition to the existing 3. I gave a large part of the work to Mr. Casas who worked with his Catalan friends from Barcelona. Mr Dieve was in charge of varnishing. When the first rains arrived, great was our disappointment when we realized that the roof was in bad shape, which made our job impossible. Despite our requests, there were no improvements and only three months later we were moving again to 56 Rodriguez Pena. It was a house with two large rooms, a dinning room with parquet and a large open patio of 4x10 metres.
My wife with her limited Spanish vocabulary introduced us as fine tapestry workers. Eight days later, the landlord told us we had lied to him regarding our occupation and that he did not want machinery in the household and intimated us to leave at month end. After a few days we finally found a house for rent located at 1830 Moreno with 4 rooms and one facing the street. It had running water and a sewer. At the time the streets were riddled with pipes and pot holes which made the traffic of horse wagons very difficult.
This house rented for 120 pesos per month. We were really well set up but our expenses were on the rise and we needed more work, mostly because money was depreciated on the stock market. President Juarez Celman was a squanderer and very disorganized. I then started to build small Louie XIV units but my clients weren’t buying, preferring hard to find tables and glass cabinets. I built a cabinet in the same style as our furniture which proved a great success and generated very many orders over the next few years. I hired Monsieur Duprez and fired Mr. Casas for being too ordinary. My clients frequently asked me to take care of the filleting and gold platting of carvings, which at the time did not suite me since I lacked a specialists in that area. One day I found an ad from Mr. Lehoux, (Parisian gold plater recently arrived in Buenos Aires) in the Correo del Plata who was looking for work to do in his home (346 Suipacha). I went looking for him to explore the possibility of working together. Lehouox was working for another three companies, among them, Simonetti & Hnos. Meanwhile Duprez was making magnificent carvings never before seen in this country. A short time later Mr. Privat who had completed the installation of the Cafe Tortoni introduced himself to me, as he had not been paid and was out of work. I am a carpenter, I know how to work well, but I don’t know Luis XIV, nor Luis XV nor can I carve, but I can build the glass cabinets that you build. Also, I know Mr. Duprez and he can advise me, he explained. This is how this gentleman started to work for me.
