[E7] But the pecuniary value of Mr. Bessemer’s discovery is not the consideration of chief import. Its social influence extends to the remotest bounds of civilization, and includes the whole human race, because it abridges the period of labor necessary to the production of a given quantity of useful things, thereby enhancing the sum of life’s comforts and pleasures.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE INVENTORS, CIVIL ENGINEERS, AND MECHANICS OF ENGLAND, AND ENGLISH PROGRESS.
A Trade is better than a Profession. — The Railway, Telegraph, and Steamship are more Potent than the Lawyer, Doctor, and Priest. — Book-makers writing the Lives of the Inventors of last Century. — The Workshop to be the Scene of the Greatest Triumphs of Man. — The Civil Engineers of England the Heroes of English Progress. — The Life of James Brindley, the Canal-maker; his Struggles and Poverty. — The Roll of Honor. — Mr. Gladstone’s Significant Admission that English Triumphs in Science and Art were won without Government Aid. — Disregarding the Common-sense of the Savage, Legislators have chosen to learn of Plato, who declared that “The Useful Arts are Degrading.” — How Improvements in the Arts have been met by Ignorant Opposition. — The Power wielded by the Mechanic.
The young man with a mechanical trade is better equipped for the battle of life than the young man with a learned profession. The prizes may not be so dazzling, but they are more numerous, and they are within reach. The skilled mechanic, with industry and prudence, is sure of a cottage, and the cottage may grow into a mansion, while the man of letters struggles so often in vain to mount the steps of a palace. The railroad, the telegraph, and the steamship exert a more potent influence upon the destinies of mankind than the lawyer, the doctor, and the priest. The giants, steam and electricity, which bear the great burdens of commerce, have to be harnessed to enable them to do their work; and to make this harness, the furnace, the forge, and the shop are brought into requisition. The railroad alone taxes to the utmost nearly every department of the useful arts. To the construction of the passenger-coach, for instance, more than a hundred trades contribute the varied cunning and skill of their workmanship.
This is the age of steel, and he who knows how to mould the king of metals into puissant forms has his hand nearest the rod of empire. Who would not rather be able to construct a Corliss engine than learn the trick of drawing a bill in chancery?
There was a time, not long ago, when inventors and discoverers were little recognized and poorly compensated for their splendid achievements. But that time is past. The book-makers of to-day are groping about the old shops where the inventors of last century worked, and the cottages where they lived, in order to tell the simple story of their lives, and write their names in the temple of fame. Huntsman, who emerged from long seclusion over the furnace and crucible, and presented to his fellow-workmen a piece of steel which rivalled that of old Damascus, and drove from the British markets all other steels—how resplendent his name is now! How every incident in the life of Watt is sought for—his struggles, his disappointments, and his final success! And so of Mushet, Neilson, Bramah, Maudslay, Clement, Murray, Nasmyth, Stephenson, and Fulton. When Watt had devised his engine he found no workmen expert enough to make it. Then Maudslay, Clement, and Murray invented automatic iron hands and fingers, and endowed them with almost human intelligence, and far more than human precision, and Watt’s difficulty was removed.
The “greasy mechanics” did more to hasten the world’s progress in a century—1740 to 1840—than had been accomplished up to that time by all the statesmen of all the dead ages. But those heroes of the workshop had none of the opportunities afforded by the manual training school of the present age. They toiled many hours each day for a shilling or two, and lived in stuffy hovels, and puzzled over the a b c of mechanics by the light of a tallow-candle. Some of them gained fortunes, while others were robbed of the fruits of genius, and slept in unknown graves; but all their names are treasured and honored now. The world moves, and in this age it moves always toward a higher appreciation of the value of the useful arts. This country is destined to become a vast workshop, and in this workshop the best energies, the strongest vital forces of the American people are eventually to be exerted. How necessary, then, to educate the hands as well as the brain of the youth of the country.[E8]
Mr. Smiles, in his “Lives of the Engineers,” has shown us the true springs of English greatness. In telling the story of the struggles and triumphs of the canal-makers, the bridge-builders, the coal-miners, the millwrights, the road-makers, the harbor and dock makers, the ship-builders, the iron and steel makers, and the railway-builders—in telling this story of persistence, of nerve, and “pluck,” he has sketched the career of the real heroes of English progress. A brief sketch of the life of James Brindley will serve to show how these noble men wrought, how they suffered, and how they conquered.
James Brindley was born in 1716. His parents were poor. His father was a ne’er-do-well. His mother taught him to be honest and industrious. James worked as a common laborer till he was seventeen years of age. In 1733 he became a millwright’s apprentice—bound for seven years. He was a dull boy, learning slowly, but before the end of his “bound” term he became the best workman in the neighborhood. He helped the now celebrated Wedgwoods out of a difficulty by inventing and constructing flint-mills for their works. He invented and constructed pumps for clearing the Clifton coal-mines of water—an entirely new device that opened coal chambers which had long been completely drowned out. His compensation for this class of work—the work of genius—was two shillings a day!
In 1755 he built a silk-mill, in which he made several important improvements in machinery, etc. But this man, who possessed inventive genius of a high order and large executive ability, could neither write legibly nor spell correctly, and his charge for almost inestimable services was still, in 1757, only two to four shillings a day. His struggles to improve the steam-engine form a curious chapter in the story of his life. It was to him that the Duke of Bridgewater owed his success in canal-making.