In every movement having for its object the promotion of the interests and well-being of Glasgow, Sir James has taken an active and useful part. Politically, his support and influence have had an important bearing upon the fortunes of the Conservative party in the West of Scotland; and to the Established Church, of which he has all along been a steadfast and warm adherent, he has contributed unwearied service.
On the 14th January, 1868, Sir James was entertained at a banquet in the Corporation Galleries in recognition of his private worth and his public services as a citizen of Glasgow. The banquet was so far official that the Lord Provost occupied the chair, and he was supported by most of the leading men of Glasgow. In proposing the health of Sir James, the Lord Provost (Sir James Lumsden) declared that he had "for many years taken an active part, and still takes a deep interest in all municipal affairs;" and added, "he is well known as a warm and attached friend, a judicious counsellor, ever ready not only to lend his name and open his purse in the furtherance of all measures leading to the improvement of his fellow-citizens, but by taking such an active part in their management as shows his earnestness in accomplishing whatever he takes in hand." In the course of his speech, the Lord Provost also mentioned the interesting fact that, entering the Council in 1831, Sir James was one of the four surviving members of that body who presided over municipal affairs prior to the passing of the Borough Reform Bill—Mr. William Smith, Mr. William Brown, and Mr. Thomas Douglas being the other three.
Lady Campbell is a daughter of the late Mr. Henry Bannerman of Manchester, founder of the well-known firm of Henry Bannerman & Sons. It is a coincidence worthy of notice that the progenitors of the Bannerman family, with whom throughout the greater part of his life Sir James has been so closely identified, were also Perthshire farmers, occupying a comparatively humble rank in life.
Of Sir James Campbell's family, the eldest son, Mr. James A. Campbell, younger of Stracathro (who is married to a daughter of Sir Morton Peto, the eminent contractor), now administers his father's interest in the business. His other and younger son, Mr. Henry Campbell, has, since 1868, represented the Stirling Burghs in Parliament, and now occupies a responsible post in the Government of his country as Financial Secretary in the War Office.
In his private capacity, Sir James is genial, accessible, and full of dry, pawky humour. He is in his proper element when entertaining a company of his friends, either at his town residence in Bath Street, or at his more delightful country mansion of Stracathro, near Brechin. Although upwards of eighty years of age, he is in the full possession of all his faculties, his sight alone excepted, and even his sense of vision is sufficiently retained to enable him to find his way in the most crowded thoroughfares of the city.
MR. JAMES YOUNG OF KELLY.
The whole range of industrial biography does not present a more signally successful career than that of Mr. James Young; nor can we find, in all the annals of aspiring genius, a more wonderful example of the ultimate triumph of mind over matter.
The origin of the inventor of paraffin oil was comparatively obscure. He was born in the Drygate of Glasgow—a street on which the operations of the City Improvement Trust have effected a wonderful transformation—where his father was a working cabinetmaker. After receiving what little schooling his parents were able to afford, Mr. Young commenced to assist his father—who had by this time established himself as his own master in the Calton—and while so employed he took to the study of Chemistry. For some time he attended the lectures of Professor Graham, the late Master of the Mint (to whom a monument has been erected by his illustrious pupil in George Square) at the Andersonian University, and he showed such aptitude for science, that in a remarkably short time he became Mr. Graham's class assistant. In this capacity Mr. Young continued for seven years, and, as his subsequent career amply showed, he did not fail to improve his opportunities. After leaving the Andersonian, he followed Mr. Graham to London, when the latter was appointed to the Professorship of Chemistry in London University, and he continued to be associated with his old friend and master until he accepted the position of manager of Muspratt's Chemical Works at Newton, near Liverpool. Here he continued for four-and-a-half years, improving, of course, his acquaintance with the practical bearings of his favourite science, especially in regard to the manufacture of alkali and bleaching powder, the staple products of Muspratt's works. Mr. Young afterwards removed to Manchester, where he undertook a responsible position in Tennant's Chemical Works—a branch of Tennant's of Glasgow. This would be in the year 1843. While employed in Manchester he received from Dr. Lyon Playfair, whose acquaintance he had made while in the Andersonian University, a communication with reference to the existence of a petroleum spring in Derbyshire. This may almost be said to have been the turning point in Mr. Young's career. Dr. Playfair stated that in his brother-in-law's coal mine in Derbyshire there was a large quantity of petroleum, and he proposed that Mr. Young should investigate the mine, and judge if anything could be made out of it. A commission so responsible, and involving the exercise of so much scientific skill, was just suited to Mr. Young's fancy. He went and examined the springs, found petroleum dropping from the roof of the mine over the coal, and the result was that he took a lease of the spring, and worked the petroleum with the view to making it profitable. We may here explain that petroleum is of different kinds, although in all its diverse forms it retains the same qualities. It is an oleagenous substance, naturally evolved from the earth, and may be found in all degrees of thickness, from a very light substance found in some parts of Persia, to a thick viscid substance more indigenous to Britain. Before taking a lease of the petroleum spring, Mr. Young suggested the advisability of Tennant's people taking it up, but they said it was too small a matter for them. Mr. Young, however, in 1848, commenced to work the spring for himself, producing two different oils—one a thick oil for lubricating, and the other a thin oil for lamp burning. In course of time it became evident that the petroleum was almost worked out, and Mr. Young directed his attention to finding an artificial substitute for the natural oil. He had previously held the idea that the petroleum might be produced by the action of heat on the coal and the vapour going up into the sandstone to be condensed. He made a great many experiments in retorts, with the view of testing the practicability of this idea, and the results obtained were very various. He had no fixed data to guide him, and he sometimes got one thing, sometimes another. At last, however, success rewarded his labours, and he was entitled to exclaim—"Eureka!" Out of a cannel that came to be mixed with soda ash he obtained a quantity of liquid that contained paraffin. In the beginning of 1850, Mr. Bartholomew, of the City and Suburban Gas Works, Glasgow, showed Mr. Young some specimens of the Boghead coal, with which he renewed his experiments, distilling the mineral at a low temperature, until he evolved a considerable quantity of crude paraffin. Ultimately, Mr. Young, Mr. Meldrum, and Mr. Binney, to whom the discovery was imparted at the Edinburgh meeting of the British Association, in 1850, resolved on erecting works at Bathgate, in the centre of the Torbanehill coal district, for the manufacture of paraffin. Before setting out on this venture, however, Mr. Young took care to protect his invention by securing a patent. In 1851 the Bathgate works, which originally consisted of only two or three retorts, were set agoing, and from that time until the present hour their success has been uninterrupted. It is worth while mentioning that Mr. Young, during the whole course of his experiments, derived no advice or assistance whatever from the experience or conclusions of others who had preceded him in the same phase of chemical science, and that he had never either heard of or seen Reichenbach's letter to Dumas, upon which the claims of the German chemist to have been the original discoverer of paraffin were based. It is now generally admitted that Reichenbach was the real discoverer of paraffin. He found it as an ingredient in the tar obtained by distilling beechwood, as far back as 1830. What Reichenbach only dreamed about and hoped for, however, Mr. Young practically realised; and to our townsman is due the credit of having been the first to prepare paraffin as a commercial article from mineral sources.
The exact nature and properties of shale was the subject of a remarkable trial in the Court of Session soon after Mr. Young began to work the raw material at Bathgate. The proprietor of the estate of Torbanehill, Mr. Gillespie, disputed with the lessee, Mr. Russell, of Falkirk, affirming that the valuable mineral called shale was not coal, and that the working of it was therefore not included in Mr. Russell's lease. Subsequently, Mr. Young had several lawsuits against parties who had infringed his patent, one being an action against the Clydesdale Chemical Company, in which, the jury gave a unanimous verdict for Mr. Young, the defendants paying large sums as costs and damages. Another was an action against Mr. E. W. Ferney, of Saltney, near Chester, who had established works on Mr. Young's principle, and would not be bound by the decisions pronounced in previous cases. In the spring of 1864, after a trial which lasted nearly forty days, judgment was again given in favour of Mr. Young, who claimed £15,000 of professional expenses alone, in addition to a royalty of 3d. per gallon of oil made in contravention of his patent rights.