[27] “Your wealth, your amusement, your pride, would all be alike impossible, but for those whom you scorn or forget.... The sailor wrestling with the sea’s rage; the quiet student poring over his book or his vial; the common worker, without praise, and nearly without bread, fulfilling his task as your horses drag your carts, hopeless, and spurned of all: these are the men by whom England lives.”—“Sesame and Lilies,” p. 68. By John Ruskin, LL.D. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1884.
Inventors, not statesmen, rule the world through their machines, which augment the powers of man and sharpen his senses. Steam has made all civilized countries prosperous and great by vastly increasing man’s powers—by making him hundred-handed.[28]
[28] “The causes which most disturbed or accelerated the normal progress of society in antiquity were the appearance of great men; in modern times they have been the appearance of great inventions.”—“History of European Morals,” Vol. I., p. 126. By William Edward Hartpole Lecky, M.A. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
In 1809 there was born to a distinguished baronet of Liverpool, England, a son. The boy was educated at Eton and Christ Church College, Oxford, graduating in 1831. In 1832 the young man entered parliament. In 1834 he took office under Sir Robert Peel. The name of the young man who commenced life under such auspicious circumstances was William Ewart Gladstone. For nearly half a century Mr. Gladstone was a prominent figure in English politics and administration. During that long period of time he was in the eye of the world, so to speak. He moulded the laws of an empire, repealed old statutes and made new statutes, largely influenced both the domestic and the foreign policy of a great nation, and exerted a considerable degree of control over the international affairs of the continent of Europe.
In 1813, four years after the birth of Mr. Gladstone, at Charlton, in Hertfordshire, England, Henry Bessemer was born. His father, Anthony Bessemer, had fled to England in 1792, a refugee from France. Henry Bessemer’s early training consisted of the rudiments of an ordinary education received in the parish school of the neighboring town of Hitchin. His father was a skilled mechanic and inventor, and Henry inherited the inventive faculty. He studied and practised the art of wood-turnery, producing, before arriving at the age of manhood, the most difficult patterns known to the art.
At the age of eighteen, in the year 1831—the year in which Mr. Gladstone completed his education—young Bessemer appeared in London, an obscure, unknown stranger. He, however, secured employment as a modeller and designer. His attention was soon directed to the imperfections of government stamps, in which there had been no improvement since the time of Queen Anne. He was informed by Sir Charles Persley, of the Stamp-office, that the frauds in stamps probably aggregated one hundred thousand pounds per annum. In the evenings of a few months he invented and made an improved stamp which obviated the objections to the one then in use. The invention was at once adopted by the Stamp-office, and in lieu of a stipulated sum in payment therefor, young Bessemer was asked “whether he would be satisfied with the position of superintendent of stamps, with five hundred or six hundred pounds per annum?” The suggested appointment he agreed to accept. Meantime, before the contemplated change occurred in the Stamp-office, the young inventor devised a further improvement in the new stamp, which not only made it much more perfect, but rendered it unnecessary for the government to employ a superintendent of stamps. In perfect good faith young Bessemer exhibited to the chief of the Stamp-office his new stamp, which was so palpably an improvement on the other that it was at once preferred and promptly adopted. What is more, the government not only declined to appoint the inventor to a place, but declined to give him a penny for his invention. This was in 1834, the year in which Mr. Gladstone began his long career as a representative of the British Crown. As young Mr. Gladstone entered the Treasury, its “junior lord,” young Mr. Bessemer retired from it an unsuccessful suitor for the just reward of genius and toil. He says, “Thus sad and dispirited, and with a burning sense of injustice overpowering all other feelings, I went my way from the Stamp-office, too proud to ask as a favor that which was indubitably my right.”[29]
[29] “The Creators of the Age of Steel,” p. 20. By W. T. Jeans. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.
From this point, both of time and event, there is a very wide divergence in the lives of these great men. The one is a man of ideas, the other a man of deeds. Mr. Gladstone thinks, talks, makes treaties and laws. He is constantly in the public eye, and his name ever on the public tongue. He is regarded as a great financier; he is certainly a great orator. He sways the multitude with his eloquence. He takes distinguished part in the wordy contests which occur every now and then in Parliament. These debates are much talked of. At the conclusion of one of them there is a vote of want of confidence, and Mr. Gladstone goes out of office and Mr. Disraeli comes in. At the conclusion of another of them there is a vote of want of confidence, and Mr. Disraeli goes out of office and Mr. Gladstone comes in. But whether Mr. Gladstone goes out and Mr. Disraeli comes in, or Mr. Disraeli goes out and Mr. Gladstone comes in, makes very little difference with the trade and commerce of the kingdom. The railway traffic continues in the one event or the other; the steamers continue to cross and recross the ocean; the “post” comes and goes; the electric current continues to act as messenger-boy; the telephone brings us face to face with our business correspondent or friend. There is, indeed, no reason why a vote of want of confidence in Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Disraeli should imply a want of confidence in steam or electricity, because neither Mr. Gladstone nor Mr. Disraeli ever had anything to do with the application of these great forces to the uses of man. They were entirely absorbed, the one in promoting the advancement of Liberalism, and the other in promoting the advancement of Toryism. And it is a curious fact, as showing the mutability of political opinion, that Mr. Disraeli entered public life as a Liberal, and subsequently became a great Tory leader; and Mr. Gladstone entered public life as a Tory, and subsequently became a great Liberal leader.
For twenty-two years after he retired empty-handed from the government Stamp-office Mr. Bessemer continued his career as an inventor and manufacturer, without, however, attracting any great share of public attention. But in 1856 he announced that he had made a discovery of vast importance in the process of steel making.[30] For a hundred years previously the Huntsman process had held the field. It yielded excellent steel but was very expensive. Mr. Bessemer announced that he could produce splendid cast-steel at about the cost of making iron! The announcement was received with much incredulity; but the “Bessemer converter” was exhibited, the new process shown, and the result seemed to confirm the verity of the claim of the inventor. Practical difficulties, however, postponed its complete success till 1860, when the new process supplanted all others.
[30] “The first patent of Sir H. Bessemer in which air is mentioned as the oxidizing agent is dated October 17, 1855, and other three months were spent in experimenting before the idea of introducing the air from the bottom of a large converter struck him. The patent embodying the latter idea is dated February 11, 1856.”—“The Creators of the Age of Steel,” note to p. 38. By W. T. Jeans. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.