Various kinds of production and trade was done on Lubartowska Street, yet the biggest industrial plant was Wilhelm Hess’s scales factory. The son of a miller from the Czech town of Luže, Hess (1848-1932) went in search of a better life in the United States, where he worked in scales factories in Chicago and Buffalo, yet he returned to Europe. He stopped over in Lublin on his way to Kyiv, on account of his daughter’s illness. He opened a small scales repair workshop in the city, which gradually expanded to become the greatest scales producer in the former Russian Empire, employing over a thousand workers in its best period, 1910 to 1914. The buildings of the former scales factory have survived on both sides of Lubartowska Street (the current numbers 58 to 62 and 77).The clock on the factory tower measured time and set the rhythm for the whole neighbourhood. The factory whistle, in turn, directed the residents’ day. It announced the beginning of work to some, and the time for prayer to others. As for school youth, it announced to them the need to hurry to school. The whole neighbourhood knew Hess. He could be frequently seen riding in a carriage in the company of his fair-haired daughter.Róża Fiszman, My LublinThe 1905 workers’ strikes also affected Lublin. Jacob Glatstein described the course of events taking place in Hess’s factory.Meanwhile, members of the Polish Socialist Party were pouring into the streets, from the Hess foundry which manufactured heavy scales, from the brickyards and the sugar refineries, carrying torches, waving flags and singing:Workers to the barricadesRaise aloft the red flag.At first they marched slowly, then the pace quickened. The torches flashed by the windows, followed by an ominous silence that seemed like a cry for help. Suddenly, there was the sound of angry hoofbeats, as the fiery Cossack horses came galloping in. Enraged at having missed their chance, the Cossacks relieved their fury by firing into the air a shot that pierced the Jewish night like a red-hot nail.Jacob Glatstein, The Glatstein Chronicles