Produced by Stacy Brown, Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration:
Very Truly Yours
Ichabod Washburn]
CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY
OR
MEN OF BUSINESS WHO DID SOMETHING
BESIDES MAKING MONEY
_A BOOK FOR YOUNG AMERICANS_
BY
JAMES PARTON
FIFTH THOUSAND
[Illustration]
BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1890
Copyright, 1884,
By JAMES PARTON.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
PREFACE.
In this volume are presented examples of men who shed lustre upon
ordinary pursuits, either by the superior manner in which they exercised
them or by the noble use they made of the leisure which success in them
usually gives. Such men are the nobility of republics. The American
people were fortunate in having at an early period an ideal man of this
kind in Benjamin Franklin, who, at the age of forty-two, just mid-way in
his life, deliberately relinquished the most profitable business of its
kind in the colonies for the sole purpose of developing electrical
science. In this, as in other respects, his example has had great
influence with his countrymen.
A distinguished author, who lived some years at Newport, has expressed
the opinion that the men who occupy the villas of that emerald isle
exert very little power compared with that of an orator or a writer. To
be, he adds, at the head of a normal school, or to be a professor in a
college, is to have a sway over the destinies of America which reduces
to nothingness the power of successful men of business.
Being myself a member of the fraternity of writers, I suppose I ought to
yield a joyful assent to such remarks. It is flattering to the self-love
of those who drive along Bellevue Avenue in a shabby hired vehicle to be
told that they are personages of much more consequence than the heavy
capitalist who swings by in a resplendent curricle, drawn by two matched
and matchless steeds, in a six-hundred dollar harness. Perhaps they are.
But I advise young men who aspire to serve their generation effectively
not to undervalue the importance of the gentleman in the curricle.
One of the individuals who has figured lately in the society of Newport
is the proprietor of an important newspaper. He is not a writer, nor a
teacher in a normal school, but he wields a considerable power in this
country. Fifty men write for the journal which he conducts, some of whom
write to admiration, for they are animated by a humane and patriotic
spirit. The late lamented Ivory Chamberlain was a writer whose leading
editorials were of national value. But, mark: a telegram of ten words
from that young man at Newport, written with perspiring hand in a pause
of the game of polo, determines without appeal the course of the paper
in any crisis of business or politics.
I do not complain of this arrangement of things. I think it is just; I
know it is unalterable.
It is then of the greatest possible importance that the men who control
during their lifetime, and create endowments when they are dead, should
share the best civilization of their age and country. It is also of the
greatest importance that young men whom nature has fitted to be leaders
should, at the beginning of life, take to the steep and thorny path
which leads at length to mastership.
Most of these chapters were published originally in "The Ledger" of New
York, and a few of them in "The Youths' Companion" of Boston, the
largest two circulations in the country. I have occasionally had reason
to think that they were of some service to young readers, and I may add
that they represent more labor and research than would be naturally
supposed from their brevity. Perhaps in this new form they may reach and
influence the minds of future leaders in the great and growing realm of
business. I should pity any young man who could read the briefest
account of what has been done in manufacturing towns by such men as John
Smedley and Robert Owen without forming a secret resolve to do something
similar if ever he should win the opportunity.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
David Maydole, Hammer-Maker 9
Ichabod Washburn, Wire-Maker 18
Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith 27
Michael Reynolds, Engine-Driver 36
Major Robert Pike, Farmer 43
George Graham, Clock-Maker, buried in Westminster Abbey 51
John Harrison, Exquisite Watch-Maker 58
Peter Faneuil, and the Great Hall he built 65
Chauncey Jerome, Yankee Clock-Maker 79
Captain Pierre Laclede Liguest, Pioneer 89
Israel Putnam, Farmer 96
George Flower, Pioneer 104
Edward Coles, Noblest of the Pioneers, and his Great Speech 117
Peter H. Burnett, Banker 126
Gerrit Smith 133
Peter Force, Printer 140
John Bromfield, Merchant 148
Frederick Tudor, Ice Exporter 156
Myron Holley, Market-Gardener 163
The Founders of Lowell 170
Robert Owen, Cotton-Manufacturer 180
John Smedley, Stocking-Manufacturer 188
Richard Cobden, Calico Printer 195
Henry Bessemer 206
John Bright, Manufacturer 212
Thomas Edward, Cobbler and Naturalist 224
Robert Dick, Baker and Naturalist 232
John Duncan, Weaver and Botanist 240
James Lackington, Second-Hand Bookseller 247
Horace Greeley's Start 254
James Gordon Bennett, and how he founded his "Herald" 264
Three John Walters, and their Newspaper 275
George Hope 288
Sir Henry Cole 294
Charles Summers 300
William B. Astor, House-Owner 307
Peter Cooper 313
Paris-Duverney, French Financier 332
Sir Rowland Hill 342
Marie-Antoine Carème, French Cook 349
Wonderful Walker, Parson of all Work 355
Sir Christopher Wren 363
Sir John Rennie, Engineer 372
Sir Moses Montefiore 379
Marquis of Worcester, Inventor of the Steam-Engine 385
An Old Dry-Goods Merchant's Recollections 392
PORTRAITS.
PAGE
ICHABOD WASHBURN _Frontispiece._
CHAUNCEY JEROME 79
GERRIT SMITH 133
MYRON HOLLEY 163
JOHN BRIGHT 212
JOHN DUNCAN 240
PETER COOPER 313
SIR ROWLAND HILL 342
CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY.
DAVID MAYDOLE,
HAMMER-MAKER.
When a young man begins to think of making his fortune, his first notion
usually is to go away from home to some very distant place. At present,
the favorite spot is Colorado; awhile ago it was California; and old men
remember when Buffalo was about as far west as the most enterprising
person thought of venturing.
It is not always a foolish thing to go out into the world far beyond the
parent nest, as the young birds do in midsummer. But I can tell you,
boys, from actual inquiry, that a great number of the most important and
famous business men of the United States struck down roots where they
were first planted, and where no one supposed there was room or chance
for any large thing to grow.
I will tell you a story of one of these men, as I heard it from his own
lips some time ago, in a beautiful village where I lectured.
He was an old man then; and a curious thing about him was that, although
he was too deaf to hear one word of a public address, even of the
loudest speaker, he not only attended church every Sunday, but was
rarely absent when a lecture was delivered.
While I was performing on that occasion, I saw him sitting just in front
of the platform, sleeping the sleep of the just till the last word was
uttered.
Upon being introduced to this old gentleman in his office, and learning
that his business was to make hammers, I was at a loss for a subject of
conversation, as it never occurred to me that there was anything to be
said about hammers.
I have generally possessed a hammer, and frequently inflicted damage on
my fingers therewith, but I had supposed that a hammer was simply a
hammer, and that hammers were very much alike. At last I said,--
"And here you make hammers for mankind, Mr. Maydole?"
You may have noticed the name of David Maydole upon hammers. He is the
man.
"Yes," said he, "I have made hammers here for twenty-eight years."
"Well, then," said I, shouting in his best ear, "by this time you ought
to be able to make a pretty good hammer."
"No, I can't," was his reply. "I can't make a pretty good hammer. I make
the best hammer that's made."
That was strong language. I thought, at first, he meant it as a joke;
but I soon found it was no joke at all.
He had made hammers the study of his lifetime, and, after many years of
thoughtful and laborious experiment, he had actually produced an
article, to which, with all his knowledge and experience, he could
suggest no improvement.
I was astonished to discover how many points there are about an
instrument which I had always supposed a very simple thing. I was
surprised to learn in how many ways a hammer can be bad.
But, first, let me tell you how he came to think of hammers.
There he was, forty years ago, in a small village of the State of New
York; no railroad yet, and even the Erie Canal many miles distant. He
was the village blacksmith, his establishment consisting of himself and
a boy to blow the bellows.
He was a good deal troubled with his hammers. Sometimes the heads would
fly off. If the metal was too soft, the hammer would spread out and wear
away; if it was too hard, it would split.
At that time blacksmiths made their own hammers, and he knew very little
about mixing ores so as to produce the toughest iron. But he was
particularly troubled with the hammer getting off the handle, a mishap
which could be dangerous as well as inconvenient.
At this point of his narrative the old gentleman showed a number of old
hammers, such as were in use before he began to improve the instrument;
and it was plain that men had tried very hard before him to overcome
this difficulty.
One hammer had an iron rod running down through the handle with a nut
screwed on at the end. Another was wholly composed of iron, the head and
handle being all of one piece. There were various other devices, some of
which were exceedingly clumsy and awkward.
At last, he hit upon an improvement which led to his being able to put a
hammer upon a handle in such a way that it would stay there. He made
what is called an adze-handled hammer, the head being attached to the
handle after the manner of an adze.
The improvement consists in merely making _a longer hole_ for the handle
to go into, by which device it has a much firmer hold of the head, and
can easily be made extremely tight.
With this improvement, if the handle is well seasoned and well wedged,
there is no danger of the head flying off. He made some other changes,
all of them merely for his own convenience, without a thought of going
into the manufacture of hammers.
The neighborhood in which he lived would have scarcely required half a
dozen new hammers per annum. But one day there came to the village six
carpenters to work upon a new church, and one of these men, having left
his hammer at home, came to David Maydole's blacksmith's shop to get
one made.
"Make me as good a hammer," said the carpenter, "as you know how."
That was touching David upon a tender place.
"As good a one as I know how?" said he. "But perhaps you don't want to
pay for as good a one as I know how to make."
"Yes, I do," replied the man; "I want a good hammer."
The blacksmith made him one of his best. It was probably the best hammer
that had ever been made in the world, since it contained two or three
important improvements never before combined in the instrument.
The carpenter was delighted with it, and showed it, with a good deal of
exultation, to his five companions; every man of whom came the next day
to the shop and wanted one just like it. They did not understand all the
blacksmith's notions about tempering and mixing the metals, but they saw
at a glance that the head and the handle were so united that there never
was likely to be any divorce between them.
To a carpenter building a wooden house, the mere removal of that one
defect was a boon beyond price; he could hammer away with confidence,
and without fear of seeing the head of his hammer leap into the next
field, unless stopped by a comrade's head.
When all the six carpenters had been supplied with these improved
hammers, the contractor came and ordered two more. He seemed to think,
and, in fact, said as much, that the blacksmith ought to make _his_
hammers a little better than those he had made for the men.
"I can't make any better ones," said honest David. "When I make a thing,
I make it as well as I can, no matter who it's for."
Soon after, the store-keeper of the village, seeing what excellent
hammers these were, gave the blacksmith a magnificent order for two
dozen, which, in due time, were placed upon his counter for sale.
At this time something happened to David Maydole which may fairly be
called good luck; and you will generally notice events of the kind in
the lives of meritorious men. "Fortune favors the brave," is an old
saying, and good luck in business is very apt to befall the man who
could do very well without it.
It so happened that a New York dealer in tools, named Wood, whose store
is still kept in Chatham Street, New York, happened to be in the village
getting orders for tools. As soon as his eye fell upon those hammers, he
saw their merits, and bought them all. He did more. He left a standing
order for as many hammers of that kind as David Maydole could make.
That was the beginning. The young blacksmith hired a man or two, then
more men, and made more hammers, and kept on making hammers during the
whole of his active life, employing at last a hundred and fifteen men.
During the first twenty years, he was frequently experimenting with a
view to improve the hammer. He discovered just the best combination of
ores to make his hammers hard enough, without being too hard.
He gradually found out precisely the best form of every part. There is
not a turn or curve about either the handle or the head which has not
been patiently considered, and reconsidered, and considered again, until
no further improvement seemed possible. Every handle is seasoned three
years, or until there is no shrink left in it.
Perhaps the most important discovery which he made was that a perfect
tool cannot be made by machinery.
Naturally, his first thought, when he found his business increasing, was
to apply machinery to the manufacture, and for some years several parts
of the process were thus performed. Gradually, his machines were
discarded, and for many years before his retirement, every portion of
the work was done by hand.
Each hammer is hammered out from a piece of iron, and is tempered over a
slow charcoal fire, under the inspection of an experienced man. He looks
as though he were cooking his hammers on a charcoal furnace, and he
watches them until the process is complete, as a cook watches mutton
chops.
I heard some curious things about the management of this business. The
founder never did anything to "push" it. He never advertised. He never
reduced the price of his hammers because other manufacturers were doing
so.
His only care, he said, had been to make a perfect hammer, to make just
as many of them as people wanted, and _no more_, and to sell them at a
fair price. If people did not want his hammers, he did not want to make
them. If they did not want to pay what they were worth, they were
welcome to buy cheaper ones of some one else.
For his own part, his wants were few, and he was ready at any time to go
back to his blacksmith's shop.
The old gentleman concluded his interesting narration by making me a
present of one of his hammers, which I now cherish among my treasures.
If it had been a picture, I should have had it framed and hung up over
my desk, a perpetual admonition to me to do my work well; not too fast;
not too much of it; not with any showy false polish; not letting
anything go till I had done all I could to make it what it should be.
In telling this little story, I have told thousands of stories. Take the
word _hammer_ out of it, and put _glue_ in its place, and you have the
history of Peter Cooper. By putting in other words, you can make the
true history of every great business in the world which has lasted
thirty years.
The true "protective system," of which we hear so much, is _to make the
best article_; and he who does this need not buy a ticket for Colorado.
ICHABOD WASHBURN,
WIRE-MAKER.
Of all our manufactures few have had a more rapid development than
wire-making. During the last thirty years the world has been girdled by
telegraphic wires and cables, requiring an immense and continuous supply
of the article. In New York alone two hundred pianos a week have been
made, each containing miles of wire. There have been years during which
a garment composed chiefly of wire was worn by nearly every woman in the
land, even by the remotest and poorest.
Who has supplied all these millions of miles of wire? A large part of
the answer to this question is given when we pronounce the name at the
head of this article, Ichabod Washburn. In the last years of his life he
had seven hundred men at Worcester making wire, the product of whose
labor was increased a hundred fold by machinery which he had invented or
adapted.
It is curious to note how he seemed to stumble into the business just in
the nick of time. I say, _seemed_; but, in truth, he had been prepared
for success in it by a long course of experience and training. He was a
poor widow's son, born on the coast of Massachusetts, a few miles from
Plymouth Rock; his father having died in early manhood, when this boy
and a twin brother were two months old. His mother, suddenly left with
three little children, and having no property except the house in which
she lived, supported her family by weaving, in which her children from a
very early age could give her some help. She kept them at school,
however, during part of the winter, and instilled into their minds good
principles. When this boy was nine years of age she was obliged, as the
saying was, "to put him out to live" to a master five miles from her
house.
On his way to his new home he was made to feel the difference between a
hard master and a kind mother. Having a quick intelligent mind, he
questioned the man concerning the objects they passed. At length the boy
saw a windmill, and he asked what that was.
"Don't ask me so many questions, boy," answered the man, in a harsh,
rough voice.
The little fellow was silenced, and he vividly remembered the event, the
tone, and the scene, to old age. His employer was a maker of harness,
carriages, and trunks, and it was the boy's business to take care of a
horse and two cows, light fires, chop wood, run errands, and work in the
shop. He never forgot the cold winter mornings, and the loud voice of
his master rousing him from sleep to make the fire, and go out to the
barn and get the milking done before daylight. His sleeping-place was a
loft above the shop reached by a ladder. Being always a timid boy, he
suffered extremely from fear in the dark and lonely garret of a building
where no one else slept, and to which he had to grope his way alone.
What would the dainty boys of the present time think of going to mill on
a frosty morning astride of a bag of corn on the horse's back, without
stockings or shoes and with trousers half way up to the knees? On one
occasion the little Ichabod was so thoroughly chilled that he had to
stop at a house to get warm, and the good woman took pity on him, made
him put on a pair of long black stockings, and a pair of her own shoes.
Thus equipped, with his long black legs extending far out of his short
trousers, and the woman's shoes lashed to his feet, he presented a
highly ludicrous appearance, and one which, he thought, might have
conveyed a valuable hint to his master. In the daytime he was usually
employed in the shop making harnesses, a business in which he became
expert. He served this man five years, or until he was fourteen years of
age, when he made a complete harness for one of his cousins, which
rendered excellent service for many years, and a part of it lasted
almost as long as the maker.
Thus, at fourteen, he had completed his first apprenticeship, and had
learned his first trade. The War of 1812 having given a sudden start to
manufactures in this country, he went to work in a cotton factory for a
while, where, for the first time in his life, he saw complicated
machinery. Like a true Yankee as he was, he was strongly attracted by
it, and proposed to learn the machinist's trade. His guardian opposed
the scheme strongly, on the ground that, in all probability, by the time
he had learned the trade the country would be so full of factories that
there would be no more machinery required.
Thus discouraged, he did the next best thing: he went apprentice to the
blacksmith's trade, near Worcester, where he was destined to spend the
rest of his life. He was sixteen years of age when he began this second
apprenticeship; but he was still one of the most timid and bashful of
lads. In a fragment of autobiography found among his papers after his
death he says:--
"I arrived at Worcester about one o'clock, at Syke's tavern where we
were to dine; but the sight of the long table in the dining-room so
overpowered my bashful spirit that I left the room and went into the
yard without dinner to wait till the stage was ready."
On reaching his new home, eighty miles from his mother's house, he was
so overcome by homesickness that, the first night, he sobbed himself to
sleep. Soon he became interested in his shop and in his work, made
rapid progress, and approved himself a skillful hand. Having been
brought up to go to church every Sunday, he now hired a seat in the
gallery of one of the churches at fifty cents a year, which he earned in
over-time by forging pot-hooks. Every cent of his spending money was
earned in similar ways. Once he made six toasting-irons, and carried
them to Worcester, where he sold them for a dollar and a quarter each,
taking a book in part payment. When his sister was married he made her a
wedding present of a toasting-iron. Nor was it an easy matter for an
apprentice then to do work in over-time, for he was expected to labor in
his master's service from sunrise to sunset in the summer, and from
sunrise to nine o'clock in the winter.
On a bright day in August, 1818, his twentieth birthday, he was out of
his time, and, according to the custom of the period, he celebrated the
joyful event by a game of ball! In a few months, having saved a little
money, he went into business as a manufacturer of ploughs, in which he
had some little success. But still yearning to know more of machinery he
entered upon what we may call his third apprenticeship, in an armory
near Worcester, where he soon acquired skill enough to do the finer
parts of the work. Then he engaged in the manufacture of lead pipe, in
which he attained a moderate success.
At length, in 1831, being then thirty-three years old, he began the
business of making wire, in which he continued during the remainder of
his active life. The making of wire, especially the finer and better
kinds, is a nice operation. Until Ichabod Washburn entered into the
business, wire of good quality was not made in the United States; and
there was only one house in Great Britain that had the secret of making
the steel wire for pianos, and they had had a monopoly of the
manufacture for about eighty years.
Wire is made by drawing a rod of soft, hot iron through a hole which is
too small for it. If a still smaller sized wire is desired, it is drawn
through a smaller hole, and this process is repeated until the required
size is attained. Considerable power is needed to draw the wire through,
and the hole through which it is drawn is soon worn larger. The first
wire machine that Washburn ever saw was arranged with a pair of
self-acting pincers which drew a foot of wire and then had to let go and
take a fresh hold. By this machine a man could make fifty pounds of
coarse wire in a day. He soon improved this machine so that the pincers
drew fifteen feet without letting go; and by this improvement alone the
product of one man's labor was increased about eleven times. A good
workman could make five or six hundred pounds a day by it. By another
improvement which Washburn adopted the product was increased to
twenty-five hundred pounds a day.
He was now in his element. He always had a partner to manage the
counting-room part of the business, which he disliked.
"I never," said he, "had taste or inclination for it, always preferring
to be among the machinery, doing the work and handling the tools I was
used to, though oftentimes at the expense of a smutty face and greasy
hands."
His masterpiece in the way of invention was his machinery for making
steel wire for pianos,--a branch of the business which was urged upon
him by the late Jonas Chickering, piano manufacturer, of Boston. The
most careless glance at the strings of a piano shows us that the wire
must be exquisitely tempered and most thoroughly wrought, in order to
remain in tune, subjected as they are to a steady pull of many tons.
Washburn experimented for years in perfecting his process, and he was
never satisfied until he was able to produce a wire which he could
honestly claim to be the best in the world. He had amazing success in
his business. At one time he was making two hundred and fifty thousand
yards of crinoline wire every day. His whole daily product was seven
tons of iron wire, and five tons of steel wire.
This excellent man, in the midst of a success which would have dazzled
and corrupted some men, retained all the simplicity, the modesty, and
the generosity of his character. He felt, as he said, nowhere so much at
home as among his own machinery, surrounded by thoughtful mechanics,
dressed like them for work, and possibly with a black smudge upon his
face. In his person, however, he was scrupulously clean and nice, a
hater of tobacco and all other polluting things and lowering influences.
Rev. H. T. Cheever, the editor of his "Memorials," mentions also that he
remained to the end of his life in the warmest sympathy with the natural
desires of the workingman. He was a collector of facts concerning the
condition of workingmen everywhere, and for many years cherished a
project of making his own business a coöperative one.
"He believed," remarks Mr. Cheever, "that the skilled and faithful
manual worker, as well as the employer, was entitled to a participation
in the net proceeds of business, over and above his actual wages. He
held that in this country the entire people are one great working class,
working with brains, or hands, or both, who should therefore act in
harmony--the brain-workers and the hand-workers--for the equal rights of
all, without distinction of color, condition, or religion. Holding that
capital is accumulated labor, and wealth the creation of capital and
labor combined, he thought it to be the wise policy of the large
capitalists and corporations to help in the process of elevating and
advancing labor by a proffered interest."
These were the opinions of a man who had had long experience in all the
grades, from half-frozen apprentice to millionaire manufacturer.
He died in 1868, aged seventy-one years, leaving an immense estate;
which, however, chiefly consisted in his wire-manufactory. He had made
it a principle not to accumulate money for the sake of money, and he
gave away in his lifetime a large portion of his revenue every year. He
bequeathed to charitable associations the sum of four hundred and
twenty-four thousand dollars, which was distributed among twenty-one
objects. His great bequests were to institutions of practical and homely
benevolence: to the Home for Aged Women and Widows, one hundred thousand
dollars; to found a hospital and free dispensary, the same amount;
smaller sums to industrial schools and mission schools.
It was one of his fixed convictions that boys cannot be properly fitted
for life without being both taught and required to use their hands, as
well as their heads, and it was long his intention to found some kind of
industrial college. Finding that something of the kind was already in
existence at Worcester, he made a bequest to it of one hundred and ten
thousand dollars. The institution is called the Worcester County Free
Institute of Industrial Science.
ELIHU BURRITT,
THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH.
Elihu Burritt, with whom we have all been familiar for many years as the
Learned Blacksmith, was born in 1810 at the beautiful town of New
Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hartford. He was the
youngest son in an old-fashioned family of ten children. His father
owned and cultivated a small farm; but spent the winters at the
shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom of Connecticut in
that day. When Elihu was sixteen years of age, his father died and the
lad soon after apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in his native
village.
He was an ardent reader of books from childhood up; and he was enabled
to gratify this taste by means of a small village library, which
contained several books of history, of which he was naturally fond. This
boy, however, was a shy, devoted student, brave to maintain what he
thought right, but so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar
when his parents were going to have company.
As his father's long sickness had kept him out of school for some time,
he was the more earnest to learn during his apprenticeship; particularly
mathematics, since he desired to become, among other things, a good
surveyor. He was obliged to work from ten to twelve hours a day at the
forge; but while he was blowing the bellows he employed his mind in
doing sums in his head. His biographer gives a specimen of these
calculations which he wrought out without making a single figure:--
"How many yards of cloth, three feet in width, cut into strips an inch
wide, and allowing half an inch at each end for the lap, would it
require to reach from the centre of the earth to the surface, and how
much would it all cost at a shilling a yard?"
He would go home at night with several of these sums done in his head,
and report the results to an elder brother who had worked his way
through Williams College. His brother would perform the calculations
upon a slate, and usually found his answers correct.
When he was about half through his apprenticeship he suddenly took it
into his head to learn Latin, and began at once through the assistance
of the same elder brother. In the evenings of one winter he read the
Æneid of Virgil; and, after going on for a while with Cicero and a few
other Latin authors, he began Greek. During the winter months he was
obliged to spend every hour of daylight at the forge, and even in the
summer his leisure minutes were few and far between. But he carried his
Greek grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting
for a large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black
fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjective or part of a verb,
without being noticed by his fellow-apprentices.
So he worked his way until he was out of his time, when he treated
himself to a whole quarter's schooling at his brother's school, where he
studied mathematics, Latin and other languages. Then he went back to the
forge, studying hard in the evenings at the same branches, until he had
saved a little money; when he resolved to go to New Haven, and spend a
winter in study. It was far from his thoughts, as it was from his means,
to enter Yale College; but he seems to have had an idea that the very
atmosphere of the college would assist him. He was still so timid that
he determined to work his way without asking the least assistance from a
professor or tutor.
He took lodgings at a cheap tavern in New Haven, and began the very next
morning a course of heroic study. As soon as the fire was made in the
sitting-room of the inn, which was at half-past four in the morning, he
took possession, and studied German until breakfast-time, which was
half-past seven. When the other boarders had gone to business, he sat
down to Homer's Iliad, of which he knew nothing, and with only a
dictionary to help him.
"The proudest moment of my life," he once wrote, "was when I had first
gained the full meaning of the first fifteen lines of that noble work. I
took a short triumphal walk in favor of that exploit."
Just before the boarders came back for their dinner, he put away all his
Greek and Latin books, and took up a work in Italian, because it was
less likely to attract the notice of the noisy crowd. After dinner he
fell again upon his Greek, and in the evening read Spanish until
bed-time. In this way he lived and labored for three months, a solitary
student in the midst of a community of students; his mind imbued with
the grandeurs and dignity of the past, while eating flapjacks and
molasses at a poor tavern.
Returning to his home in New Britain, he obtained the mastership of an
academy in a town near by: but he could not bear a life wholly
sedentary; and, at the end of a year, abandoned his school and became
what is called a "runner" for one of the manufacturers of New Britain.
This business he pursued until he was about twenty-five years of age,
when, tired of wandering, he came home again, and set up a grocery and
provision store, in which he invested all the money he had saved. Soon
came the commercial crash of 1837, and he was involved in the widespread
ruin. He lost the whole of his capital, and had to begin the world anew.
He resolved to return to his studies in the languages of the East.
Unable to buy or find the necessary books, he tied up his effects in a
small handkerchief, and walked to Boston, one hundred miles distant,
hoping there to find a ship in which he could work his passage across
the ocean, and collect oriental works from port to port. He could not
find a berth. He turned back, and walked as far as Worcester, where he
found work, and found something else which he liked better. There is an
Antiquarian Society at Worcester, with a large and peculiar library,
containing a great number of books in languages not usually studied,
such as the Icelandic, the Russian, the Celtic dialects, and others. The
directors of the Society placed all their treasures at his command, and
he now divided his time between hard study of languages and hard labor
at the forge. To show how he passed his days, I will copy an entry or
two from a private diary he then kept:--
"Monday, June 18. Headache; 40 pages Cuvier's Theory of the Earth; 64
pages French; 11 hours forging.
"Tuesday, June 19. 60 lines Hebrew; 30 pages French; 10 pages of Cuvier;
8 lines Syriac; 10 lines Danish; 10 lines Bohemian; 9 lines Polish; 15
names of stars; 10 hours forging.
"Wednesday, June 20. 25 lines Hebrew; 8 lines Syriac; 11 hours forging."
He spent five years at Worcester in such labors as these. When work at
his trade became slack, or when he had earned a little more money than
usual, he would spend more time in the library; but, on the other hand,
when work in the shop was pressing, he could give less time to study.
After a while, he began to think that he might perhaps earn his
subsistence in part by his knowledge of languages, and thus save much
waste of time and vitality at the forge. He wrote a letter to William
Lincoln, of Worcester, who had aided and encouraged him; and in this
letter he gave a short history of his life, and asked whether he could
not find employment in translating some foreign work into English. Mr.
Lincoln was so much struck with his letter that he sent it to Edward
Everett, and he having occasion soon after to address a convention of
teachers, read it to his audience as a wonderful instance of the pursuit
of knowledge under difficulties. Mr. Everett prefaced it by saying that
such a resolute purpose of improvement against such obstacles excited
his admiration, and even his veneration.
"It is enough," he added, "to make one who has good opportunities for
education hang his head in shame."
All this, including the whole of the letter, was published in the
newspapers, with eulogistic comments, in which the student was spoken of
as the Learned Blacksmith. The bashful scholar was overwhelmed with
shame at finding himself suddenly famous. However, it led to his
entering upon public life. Lecturing was then coming into vogue, and he
was frequently invited to the platform. Accordingly, he wrote a lecture,
entitled "Application and Genius," in which he endeavored to show that
there is no such thing as genius, but that all extraordinary attainments
are the results of application. After delivering this lecture sixty
times in one season, he went back to his forge at Worcester, mingling
study with labor in the old way.
On sitting down to write a new lecture for the following season, on the
"Anatomy of the Earth," a certain impression was made upon his mind,
which changed the current of his life. Studying the globe, he was
impressed with the _need_ that one nation has of other nations, and one
zone of another zone; the tropics producing what assuages life in the
northern latitudes, and northern lands furnishing the means of
mitigating tropical discomforts. He felt that the earth was made for
friendliness and coöperation, not for fierce competition and bloody
wars.
Under the influence of these feelings, his lecture became an eloquent
plea for peace, and to this object his after life was chiefly devoted.
The dispute with England upon the Oregon boundary induced him to go to
England, with the design of traveling on foot from village to village,
preaching peace, and exposing the horrors and folly of war. His
addresses attracting attention, he was invited to speak to larger
bodies, and, in short, he spent twenty years of his life as a lecturer
upon peace, organizing Peace Congresses, advocating low uniform rates of
ocean postage, and spreading abroad among the people of Europe the
feeling which issued, at length, in the arbitration of the dispute
between the United States and Great Britain; an event which posterity
will, perhaps, consider the most important of this century. He heard
Victor Hugo say at the Paris Congress of 1850:--
"A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just
as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be amazed that such
a thing could ever have been."
If he had sympathetic hearers, he produced upon them extraordinary
effects. Nathaniel P. Rogers, one of the heroes of the Anti-slavery
agitation, chanced to hear him in Boston in 1845 on his favorite subject
of Peace. He wrote soon after:--
"I had been introduced to Elihu Burritt the day before, and was much
interested in his original appearance, and desirous of knowing him
further. I had not formed the highest opinion of his liberality. But on
entering the hall my friends and I soon forgot everything but the
speaker. The dim-lit hall, the handful audience, the contrast of both
with the illuminated chapel and ocean multitude assembled overhead,
bespeak painfully the estimation in which the great cause of peace is
held in Christendom. I wish all Christendom could have heard Elihu
Burritt's speech. One unbroken, unabated stream it was of profound and
lofty and original eloquence. I felt riveted to my seat till he finished
it. There was no oratory about it, in the ordinary sense of that word;
no graces of elocution. It was mighty thoughts radiating off from his
heated mind like the sparkles from the glowing steel on his own anvil,
getting on as they come out what clothing of language they might, and
thus having on the most appropriate and expressive imaginable. Not a
waste word, nor a wanting one. And he stood and delivered himself in a
simplicity and earnestness of attitude and gesture belonging to his
manly and now honored and distinguished trade. I admired the touch of
rusticity in his accent, amid his truly splendid diction, which
betokened, as well as the vein of solid sense that ran entirely through
his speech, that he had not been educated at the college. I thought of
ploughman Burns as I listened to blacksmith Burritt. Oh! what a dignity
and beauty labor imparts to learning."
Elihu Burritt spent the last years of his life upon a little farm which
he had contrived to buy in his native town. He was never married, but
lived with his sister and her daughters. He was not so very much richer
in worldly goods than when he had started for Boston with his property
wrapped in a small handkerchief. He died in March, 1879, aged sixty-nine
years.
MICHAEL REYNOLDS,
ENGINE-DRIVER.
Literature in these days throws light into many an out-of-the-way
corner. It is rapidly making us all acquainted with one another. A
locomotive engineer in England has recently written a book upon his art,
in order, as he says, "to communicate that species of knowledge which it
is necessary for an engine-driver to possess who aspires to take high
rank on the footplate!" He magnifies his office, and evidently regards
the position of an engineer as highly enviable.
"It is very _natural_," he remarks, "for those who are unacquainted with
locomotive driving to admire the life of an engine-man, and to imagine
how very pleasant it must be to travel on the engine. But they do not
think of the gradations by which alone the higher positions are reached;
they see only on the express engine the picturesque side of the result
of many years of patient observation and toil."
This passage was to me a revelation; for I had looked upon an engineer
and his assistant with some compassion as well as admiration, and have
often thought how extremely disagreeable it must be to travel on the
engine as they do. Not so Michael Reynolds, the author of this book, who
has risen from the rank of fireman to that of locomotive inspector on
the London and Brighton railroad. He tells us that a model engineer "is
possessed by a master passion--a passion for the monarch of speed." Such
an engineer is distinguished, also, for his minute knowledge of the
engine, and nothing makes him happier than to get some new light upon
one of its numberless parts. So familiar is he with it that his ear
detects the slightest variation in the beats of the machinery, and can
tell the shocks and shakes which are caused by a defective road from
those which are due to a defective engine. Even his nose acquires a
peculiar sensitiveness. In the midst of so much heat, he can detect that
which arises from friction before any mischief has been done. At every
rate of speed he knows just how his engine ought to sound, shake, and
smell.
Let us see how life passes on a locomotive, and what is the secret of
success in the business of an engineer. The art of arts in
engine-driving is the management of the fire. Every reader is aware that
taking care of a fire is something in which few persons become expert.
Most of us think that we ourselves possess the knack of it, but not
another individual of our household agrees with us. Now, a man born
with a genius for managing a locomotive is one who has a high degree of
the fire-making instinct. Mr. Reynolds distinctly says that a man may be
a good mechanic, may have even built locomotives, and yet, if he is not
a good "shovel-man," if he does not know how to manage his fire, he will
never rise to distinction in his profession. The great secret is to
build the fire so that the whole mass of fuel will ignite and burn
freely without the use of the blower, and so bring the engine to the
train with a fire that will last. When we see an engine blowing off
steam furiously at the beginning of the trip, we must not be surprised
if the train reaches the first station behind time, since it indicates a
fierce, thin fire, that has been rapidly ignited by the blower. An
accomplished engineer backs his engine to the train without any sign of
steam or smoke, but with a fire so strong and sound that he can make a
run of fifty miles in an hour without touching it.
The engineer, it appears, if he has an important run to make, comes to
his engine an hour before starting. His first business, on an English
railroad, is to read the notices, posted up in the engine house, of any
change in the condition of the road requiring special care. His next
duty is to inspect his engine in every part: first, to see if there is
water enough in the boiler, and that the fire is proceeding properly;
then, that he has the necessary quantity of water and coal in the
tender. He next gets into the pit under his engine, with the proper
tools, and inspects every portion of it, trying every nut and pin within
his reach from below. Then he walks around the engine, and particularly
notices if the oiling apparatus is exactly adjusted. Some parts require,
for example, four drops of oil every minute, and he must see that the
apparatus is set so as to yield just that quantity. He is also to look
into his tool-box, and see if every article is in its place. Mr.
Reynolds enumerates twenty-two objects which a good engineer will always
have within his reach, such as fire implements of various kinds,
machinist tools, lamps of several sorts, oiling vessels, a quantity of
flax and yarn, copper wire, a copy of the rules and his time-table; all
of which, are to be in the exact place designed for them, so that they
can be snatched in a moment.
One of the chief virtues of the engineer and his companion, the fireman,
is one which we are not accustomed to associate with their profession;
and that is cleanliness. On this point our author grows eloquent, and he
declares that a clean engineer is almost certain to be an excellent one
in every particular. The men upon a locomotive cannot, it is true, avoid
getting black smudge upon their faces. The point is that both the men
and their engines should be clean in all the essential particulars, so
that all the faculties of the men and all the devices of the engine
shall work with ease and certainty.
"There is something," he remarks, "so very degrading about dirt, that
even a poor beast highly appreciates clean straw. Cleanliness hath a
charm that hideth a multitude of faults, and it is not difficult to
trace a connection between habitual cleanliness and a respect for
general order, for punctuality, for truthfulness, for all placed in
authority."
Do you mark that sentence, reader? The spirit of the Saxon race speaks
in those lines. You observe that this author ranks among the virtues "a
respect for all placed in authority." That, of course, may be carried
too far; nevertheless, the strong races, and the worthy men of all
races, do cherish a respect for lawful authority. A good soldier is
_proud_ to salute his officer.
On some English railroads both engineers and engines are put to tests
much severer than upon roads elsewhere. Between Holyhead and Chester, a
distance of ninety-seven miles, the express trains run without stopping,
and they do this with so little strain that an engine performed the duty
every day for several years. A day's work of some crack engineers is to
run from London to Crewe and back again in ten hours, a distance of
three hundred and thirty miles, stopping only at Rugby for three minutes
on each trip. There are men who perform this service every working day
the whole year through, without a single delay. This is a very great
achievement, and can only be done by engineers of the greatest skill and
steadiness. It was long, indeed, before any man could do it, and even
now there are engineers who dare not take the risk. On the Hudson River
road some of the trains run from New York to Poughkeepsie, eighty miles,
without stopping, but not every engineer could do it at first, and very
often a train stopped at Peekskill to take in water. The water is the
difficulty, and the good engineer is one who wastes no water and no
coal.
Mr. Reynolds enumerates all the causes of accidents from the engine,
many of which cannot be understood by the uninitiated. As we read them
over, and see in how many ways an engine can go wrong, we wonder that a
train ever arrives at its journey's end in safety. At the conclusion of
this formidable list, the author confesses that it is incomplete, and
notifies young engineers that _nobody_ can teach them the innermost
secrets of the engine. Some of these, he remarks, require "years of
study," and even then they remain in some degree mysterious.
Nevertheless, he holds out to ambition the possibility of final success,
and calls upon young men to concentrate all their energies upon the
work.