Of the Gartsherrie Ironworks—the largest establishment of its kind in Scotland—it may be interesting to state that it gives employment to 3200 men and boys, and turns out 100,000 tons of pig iron per annum. The consumpt of coal at Gartsherrie is upwards of 1000 tons per day. Ever since 1826 Messrs. Baird have been working coal in Gartsherrie estate, so that a considerable part of the coal consumed has been found adjoining the works. Pits are still being worked to some extent there, but it is now found necessary to look elsewhere for coal. We understand the future supply is to be derived mainly from the district of Bothwell, where there is a very large virgin field of coal—indeed, evidently the most important in Scotland—from which the public must ere long begin to draw their principal supplies. The ironstone for the Gartsherrie works is now brought from a considerable distance; formerly it was found within from one to five miles from the furnaces. It is a distinctive peculiarity of the huge establishment that it is divided by the Monkland Canal, the blast furnaces standing in two parallel rows on each side of that highway. Taking the whole of their works together, the Messrs. Baird employ fully 9000 men and boys, and if we multiply this number by three, which is a moderate figure, we get 27,000 souls as the number dependent on the works of the firm. It is quite within the record to declare that the Messrs. Baird, who turn out annually one-fourth of the entire production of Scotland, are the largest pig iron makers in the world.
As landed proprietors, the Messrs. Baird have attained a pre-eminent position in the West of Scotland. Besides his estate of Cambusdoon in Ayrshire, which he purchased in 1853 for the sum of £22,000, Mr. James Baird owns the estate of Knoydart, in Inverness-shire, for which in 1857 he paid £90,000. In 1863 he purchased the estate of Muirkirk, at the price of £135,000, and he owns other properties in Ayrshire of considerable value. On the death of his brother Robert, who died in 1856, he acquired the estate of Auchmedden, Aberdeenshire, which three years previously had been purchased for the sum of £60,000. The other members of the family have found an equally conspicuous place in "Burke's Landed Gentry." William, who died in March, 1864, was proprietor of the estates of Rosemount, in Ayrshire, and Elie, in Fifeshire, the former purchased in 1853 for £47,000, and the latter in the same year for £155,000. John was proprietor of the estates of Lochwood, in Lanarkshire, and Ury, in Kincardineshire, the latter being a gift from his brothers, by arrangement with William, who inherited it from his father, by whom it was purchased in 1826; while Ury was bequeathed by his brother Alexander, who purchased it in 1854 for the sum of £120,000. Douglas, the sixth son, acquired the estate of Closeburn, in Dumfriesshire, for the sum of £225,000. George, a still younger member of the family, was proprietor of the estate of Strichen, in Aberdeenshire, and Stichell, in Roxburghshire—the former purchased in 1865 for the sum of £145,000, and the latter inherited from his brother David, who purchased it in 1853 for the sum of £150,000. The family thus own estates representing in round numbers nearly two millions of capital, in addition to what they hold as a company in the shape of mineral fields.
Although it is probably in the annals of commerce that the Messrs. Baird will find their most lasting monument, they have not been unknown in the arena of politics. William sat in Parliament for the Falkirk District of Burghs from 1841 till 1846, when he accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, and Lord Lincoln reigned in his stead. In 1851, however, the seat again became vacant, consequent upon Lincoln succeeding to the title and estates of the Duke of Newcastle. James Baird then took the field in opposition to Mr. Loch, factor to the Duke of Sutherland, and was returned by a majority of 55 votes. In the course of the following year a general election took place, and James again came forward as a candidate. This time he was opposed by Mr. Anderson, of London. The result of the election was a majority of 50 in favour of Mr. Baird. At the general election of 1857, he retired from the representation of Falkirk, and was succeeded by Mr. Hamilton, of Dalzeill, and afterwards by Mr. Merry, who has since continued to retain the seat. The politics of the family have always tended towards Conservatism, and for the support of the "good old cause" Mr. James Baird has exercised all his influence, both moral and material.
The educational interests of the West of Scotland owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Baird family, who have made provision in various ways for the instruction of upwards of 4000 children. In addition to having established schools in almost every locality where their workmen are employed, they have built and supported schools other than those connected with their works. One of the latter is now in progress of erection at Townhead, Glasgow, a poor and populous locality, with but a limited access to the means of education. Another school is just in course of being erected at the east end of Coatbridge, the expenses of which will be entirely defrayed by Mr. James Baird, who has all along taken on active interest in the progress of education. On the 20th December, 1871, he presided at the meeting held in the City Hall, Glasgow, with the view of recommending the continuance of religious instruction in day schools. On that occasion he pleaded eloquently and ably for a programme which contained three leading propositions—(1) the maintenance of the religious instruction that had hitherto been the use and wont of the country; (2) the management of the parochial and other schools of Scotland by the people themselves, instead of by a Board in London, which could know but little respecting the educational wants of the country; and (3) that a proper training in secular and religious knowledge be provided for the teachers, along with a due remuneration for their labours. Mr. Baird then proceeded to show that there was a danger of allowing the education of the country to become secularised, and that the word religion, which only appeared twice in the Education Bill, was inserted in the sense of forbidding it to be taught at all. With reference to the support of education, Mr. Baird expressed a clearly defined opinion, of which we quote the ipsissima verba. "I have," he said, "a strong and conscientious objection that any of my money, whether exacted from me by rates and taxes, should be expended in teaching secular knowledge unless it is permeated by religion, and I believe I shall be joined by an overwhelming majority of the people of Scotland in that objection." ... "Religious and Scriptural education is what we are contending for, and religious education we must have, even should the State withdraw its support, which is a thing not likely to be done." These are the words of one who has evidently "read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested" the whole subject of education, and is prepared, at whatever sacrifice or cost, to stand up for a system of instruction that shall embrace preparation not only for the duties and exigencies of this life but also for that which is to come. And the views of such a man have all the more weight that they accompany and flow from a sincere desire and a tangible readiness to afford practical support to the cause of education.
But if education owes much to the generosity and practical sympathy of the Messrs. Baird, the Church has still more reason to register their names in its roll of attached friends. With reference to Mr. James Baird, it may be fitly said that he is "a pillar in Israel." He is conservative to the extent of maintaining unimpaired all the institutions of the Church; but patronage, and other plague-spots in her bright and noble constitution, he would utterly abolish. Progress has long been his watchword, but it is in the direction of building up and not of pulling down. He is not an iconoclast for the mere sake of change. But he would remove out of the pathway of the Church all that would hinder from the efficient discharge of her mission. Above all, he is averse to a policy of laissez faire. Believing that the Church has failed to meet the increasing wants of the people, he is an eager advocate and a liberal and intelligent supporter of missionary schemes. At an ordination dinner held in Glasgow in 1868, Mr. Baird delivered an address, in the course of which he pointed out that the missions of the Church were in a languid state, and dragged along a dreary and miserable existence. Although there were from 12,000 to 15,000 young men and women arriving in Glasgow every year at an age when they should become members of some church, the Establishment was getting barely sufficient from that multitude to maintain its old numbers. He was afraid, he added, that a great many had not the chance of joining any church, as none of the churches were increasing in proportion to the population of the city; and that, therefore, they would go on to swell the ranks of heathenism and materialism. The results of the investigations recently carried out in this city, amply vindicate Mr. Baird's almost prophetic remarks. Mr. Johnston's pamphlets on the religious wants of Glasgow; pamphlets issued on the same subject by Mr. Alexander Whitelaw, Mr. Baird's hearty coadjutor in every good word and work; and the inquiries made under the auspices of the association established for the purpose of inquiring into the religious destitution of Glasgow, all tend to prove that there are from 100,000 to 160,000 souls living without the means of grace, and in a state of practical heathenism, in a city that can boast of a Knox, a Chalmers, and other apostles of Christianity. Thus, although Mr. Baird's figures appeared startling, and although his forebodings may have seemed unnecessary, they have turned out to be rather under than beyond the mark. But the zeal of Mr. Baird did not stop at merely pointing out the evil. He exerted himself most assiduously to provide a remedy. We believe he was one of the promoters of a society formed for the purpose of extending the church accommodation of Glasgow, and especially for the building of new churches in neglected and necessitous localities. That society has already done the Church some service. It aims at removing from the Establishment the stigma that she has failed to keep pace with the requirements of the population; and, despite the difficult and arduous character of the work which it has assigned itself, the association is likely to succeed in making "rough places plain and crooked paths straight."
We may add that Mr. Baird has been twice married. His first marriage was in 1852, to Charlotte Lockhart of Cambusnethan, who died at Nice, in Italy, in 1857. In 1859 he espoused Isabella Agnew Hay, daughter of the late Admiral Hay. Although he is still the principal of the firm, Mr. Baird takes no very active part in the conduct of the business, the management devolving upon the other partners.
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON.
The world-wide reputation, as a mathematician and physicist, which Sir William Thomson has acquired, is a sufficient plea for giving him the foremost place in our sketches of University professors. Born in Belfast in June, 1824, Sir William has entered upon the forty-eighth year of his age. His father, Dr. James Thomson, was the author of several mathematical text-books, and occupied for some time the position of lecturer on mathematics at the Royal Academical Institute in Belfast, from whence he was transferred to the mathematical professorship of Glasgow University. The subject of our present sketch commenced his University life at the early age of eleven years. Both in the chemistry classes of Dr. Thomas Thomson, and in the astronomical lectures of Dr. Nichol, he showed himself an exceedingly apt student, and gained numerous prizes. In 1845, he graduated as second wrangler and first Smith's prizeman at Cambridge University. On Sir William's career as a Cambridge student we find the following interesting paragraph in an article recently supplied to one of the leading magazines:—"When quite a boy at Cambridge, still in his teens, he was a contributor to mathematical journals both in France and England. It might have been supposed that he was a lonely student, dwelling in a tower, like Erasmus or Roger Bacon, quite cut off from the unsympathetic mob of his brother collegians. On the contrary, Thomson was one of the best oarsmen of his day, and an immense favourite with his brother under-graduates. This taste for the water has always accompanied him. He had made many valuable excursions in his beautiful yacht Lalla Rookh; and his knowledge of the theory and practice of sailing is said to be extraordinary. The occasion of his taking his degree proved an ovation still recollected, and recorded in the annals of Cambridge. There was not the least doubt in the University but that the youthful Peterhouse man was the mathematical genius of the day. 'Eclipse was first and the rest nowhere.' But the rumour arose that there was a 'dark man' at St. John's, who possessed a wonderful power of throwing off paper-work at examinations with the regularity of a machine. One of the examiners subsequently described himself as petrified at the papers thrown off, as if by the velocity of a steam-engine, on the part of the Johnian. At the Cambridge Senate House examinations speed is everything; and when two men are pretty evenly balanced the muscular power of the wrist settles the day. Thomson was Second Wrangler, and a little more time for writing would have made him Senior Wrangler. For the Smith's Prize he of course distanced the Senior Wrangler and all other competitors. The worthy Johnian, who supplanted him for the blue ribbon of the University, was, irrationally enough, very unpopular, and has subsequently been lost sight of in scientific history. Before Sir William Thomson there was a great career. At twenty-one he was a fellow of his college. At twenty-two he was a Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. When little more than out of his teens, Sir William Thomson became editor of the Cambridge and Dublin Mathematical Journal, through which a great impetus was given to the study of pure and applied mechanics; and before the era of the Atlantic Cable he contributed many papers on telegraphy to the Royal Society, in connection with which he made the acquaintance and enjoyed the esteem of such men as Faraday and Brewster. The Natural Philosophy Chair in Glasgow University he has raised to a high rank—perhaps the highest of its kind in the world, and students come from far and near to sit at the feet of this Gamaliel among the physicists of his day and generation."
The Bakerian lecture, entitled "The Electro-Dynamic Properties of Metal," was delivered by Sir William Thomson in 1855, and by that and kindred contributions to scientific literature he was rapidly laying the foundation of his great reputation. In 1854 he published a series of investigations, by which he shows that the capacity of the conducting wire for the electric charge depends on the ratio of its diameter to that of the gutta percha covering; and in the face of much opposition he established what is now known as the "law of squares," which asserts that the rate of transmission is inversely as the square of the length of the cable. These results were of much utility in their bearing on the working of submarine cables, and it is not too much to affirm that it was to Sir William Thomson's counsel that the success of the Atlantic Cable is in great part due. His mirror galvanometer was the first instrument that could be applied with anything like satisfactory results to submarine telegraphy. More recently, however, he has invented and patented another instrument, called the "syphon recorder," which was exhibited publicly for the first time at the opening of the British India Submarine Telegraph. The special feature of the "syphon recorder" is a minute capillary syphon, which, while it continually discharges ink against a moving paper, is by means of a delicate electro-magnetic arrangement caused to move from side to side according to the electric pulses passed through the cable, and from the record thus obtained of these motions the message is deciphered. From trials lately made on the Falmouth, Gibraltar, and Malta lines, it has been ascertained that 25 words per minute can be registered through a cable 800 miles long. It is also a recommendation to the "syphon recorder" that it can be worked by very low battery power, and therefore tends to the preservation of the cable. Among Sir William's other inventions we may specially mention an electrometer, which has now assumed a very complete form. His divided-ring electrometer admitted of accurate measurements, in skilled hands, of fractions of a Daniell's cell; his portable electrometer admits of readings from 10 or 20 cells upwards; but his new reflecting electrometer gives as much as 100 divisions on the scale for one single cell of the battery. In Mr. Varley's patent of 1860, he describes a method which he employed to make the one plate charge itself, and on this principle he constructed a large electrical machine, which he exhibited at a soiree of the Royal Society of 1869-70. This machine has been adopted by Sir William Thomson for maintaining the charge in his electrometer. The new electrometer is really a combination of three inventions—of Sir William Thomson's portable electrometer to indicate whether or no the instrument is sufficiently charged; of the replenisher by Mr. Varley for charging or discharging; and of the quadrant electrometer for reading off the minute tensions measured. The instrument is in its present form so practically useful that it has been largely used in connection with telegraphic cables, and Mr. Varley has calculated tables to enable any electrician at a glance to infer from two readings by this electrometer the insulating power of any telegraphic cable.