Mr. Bessemer now stood at the head of the inventors of the world, and Mr. Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Palmerston, had come to be regarded as one of the most skilful governmental financiers in Europe, which meant that he was an adept in devising schemes of taxation calculated to yield the most revenue with the least popular discontent. When it is considered that it is necessary for the English Minister of Finance to draw from the British people more than a million dollars every morning of the year, including Sundays, before either the English lord or the English peasant can indulge in a free breakfast, the extreme delicacy of the duties devolving upon him will be understood and appreciated. If he proposes the repeal of the soap tax in order to extinguish the slave-trade, he must impose an additional penny in the pound on malt liquors in order to put an end to the vice of drunkenness. He is constantly between Scylla and Charybdis—in keeping off the one he is in danger of being swallowed up in the other. And if he can, at the end of the fiscal year, find a million dollars to apply to the liquidation of the public debt, he is extremely fortunate. From 1836, about the time Mr. Gladstone began his public career, down to 1877, the several chancellors of the English Exchequer, including Mr. Gladstone, contrived to save, in the aggregate, about twelve million pounds sterling for this purpose.
Let us recur a moment to the subject of the invention of Mr. Bessemer. It went into operation in 1860. The temptation to reproduce Mr. Bessemer’s own description of his process, which revolutionized the manufacture of steel, is irresistible. It is as follows:
“The converting vessel is mounted on an axis at or near its centre of gravity. It is constructed of boilerplates, and is lined either with fire-brick, road-drift, or gannister, which resists the heat better than any other material yet tried, and has also the advantage of cheapness. The vessel, having been heated, is brought into the requisite position to receive its charge of melted metal, without either of the tuyeres (or air-holes) being below the surface. No action can therefore take place until the vessel is turned up (so that the blast can enter through the tuyeres). The process is thus in an instant brought into full activity, and small though powerful jets of air spring upward through the fluid mass. The air, expanding in volume, divides itself into globules, or bursts violently upward, carrying with it some hundredweight of fluid metal, which again falls into the boiling mass below. Every part of the apparatus trembles under the violent agitation thus produced; a roaring flame rushes from the mouth of the vessel, and as the process advances it changes its violet color to orange, and finally to a voluminous pure white flame. The sparks, which at first were large, like those of ordinary foundery iron, change into small hissing points, and these gradually give way to soft floating specks of bluish light as the state of malleable iron is approached. There is no eruption of cinder as in the early experiments, although it is formed during the process; the improved shape of the converter causes it to be retained, and it not only acts beneficially on the metal, but it helps to confine the heat, which during the process has rapidly risen from the comparatively low temperature of melted pig-iron to one vastly greater than the highest known welding heats, by which malleable iron only becomes sufficiently soft to be shaped by the blows of the hammer; but here it becomes perfectly fluid, and even rises so much above the melting point as to admit of its being poured from the converter into a founder’s ladle, and from thence to be transferred to several successive moulds.”[31]
[31] “The Creators of the Age of Steel,” p. 71. By W. T. Jeans. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.
What is the value of this process? What is the extent of the service rendered by Mr. Bessemer to man? It is estimated that in the twenty-one years first elapsing after the successful working of the Bessemer process, the production of steel by it, notwithstanding its necessarily slow progress, amounted to twenty-five million tons. At $200 a ton, the alleged saving in cost as compared with the old process, this represents an aggregate saving of $5,000,000,000. In 1882 the world’s production was four million tons, which at the rate named yielded a saving of the enormous aggregate of $800,000,000 in a single year.[E7] These sums seem almost fabulous, especially so since they result from simply blowing air through crude melted iron for a quarter of an hour! But the radical character of the change wrought in the metal by the air-blowing process is shown by the fact that a steel rail is worth as much as twenty iron rails.[32]
[32] “At the Birmingham meeting of the British Association in 1865, Sir Henry Bessemer explained that at Chalk Farm steel rails were laid down on one side of the line and iron rails on the other, so that every engine and carriage there had to pass over both steel and iron rails at the same time. When the first face was worn off an iron rail it was turned the other way upward, and when the second face was worn out it was replaced by a new iron rail. When Sir Henry exhibited one of these steel rails at Birmingham only one face of it was nearly worn out, while on the opposite side of the line eleven iron rails had in the same time been worn out on both faces. It thus appeared that one steel rail was capable of doing the work of twenty-three iron ones.”—“The Creators of the Age of Steel,” p. 93. By W. T. Jeans. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.
All the governments of Europe honored Mr. Bessemer for his great invention, some by medals and orders of merit, and others by appropriating without compensation his process of steel-making. Of these latter Prussia stood in the front rank. England alone stood aloof. “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country and among his own kin.” From 1860 to 1872 England continued to load Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli with honors, but not until the latter year did the government recognize Mr. Bessemer, when the Prince of Wales presented him with the Albert gold medal, and in 1879 he was knighted by the Queen.
A comparison between the lives and services to man of two of the most distinguished statesmen of England, with the life and services, to man, of Sir Henry Bessemer, cannot fail to be of great value to every young man who possesses the power of just discrimination. But can just discrimination be expected of any young man entering upon the stage of active life when such discrimination is not possessed by the public at large? For example: The question being propounded, What is the value of the combined services to man of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, as compared with those of Sir Henry Bessemer? ninety-nine out of a hundred men of sound judgment would doubtless say, “The value of the services of the two statesmen is quite unimportant, while the value of the services of Mr. Bessemer is enormous, incalculable.” But how many of these ninety-nine men of sound judgment could resist the fascination of the applause accorded to the statesmen? How many of them would have the moral courage to educate their sons for the career of Mr. Bessemer instead of for the career of Mr. Disraeli or of Mr. Gladstone?* Not many in the present state of public sentiment. It will be a great day for man, the day that ushers in the dawn of more sober views of life, the day that inaugurates the era of the mastership of things in the place of the mastership of words.
Mr. Gladstone stands for politics and statesmanship at their best, and his career is the product of the old system of education at its best. Mr. Bessemer stands for science and art united, and his career is the product of the new education.