Labour and the Popular Welfare

by W. H. Mallock

◆3 Reynolds and the two Craneges, and others;

◆¹ The first of these was a certain Dud Dudley, who procured a patent in the year 1620 for smelting iron ore “with coal, in furnaces with bellows”; and his process was so far successful, that at length from a single furnace he produced for a time seven tons of iron weekly. For reasons, however, which will be mentioned presently Dudley’s invention died with himself; and for fifty years after his death the application of coal to smelting was as much a lost art as it would have been had he never lived. ◆² Between the years 1718 and 1735 it was again discovered by a father and son—the Darbys of Coalbrookdale. A further step, and one of almost equal importance, ◆³ was achieved by two of their foremen—brothers of the name of Cranege—assisted by Reynolds, who had married the younger Darby’s daughter, and this was the application of coal to the process which succeeds smelting, namely, the conversion of crude iron into bar-iron, or iron that is malleable. Other inventors might be mentioned by whom these men were assisted, but it will be quite enough to consider the case of these. As related to the age, as related to the society round him, the one thing most striking in the life of each of them is not that he represented that society, but that he was in opposition to it, and had to fight a way for his inventions through neglect, ridicule, and persecution. The nation at large was absolutely ignorant of the very nature of the objects which these men had in view; whilst the ironmasters of the day, as a body, though not equally ignorant, disbelieved that the objects were practicable until they were actually accomplished. It is true that these great inventors were not alone in their efforts; for where they succeeded, others attempted and failed: but these failures do but show in a stronger light how rare and how great were the faculties which success demanded.

◆1 The details of whose several lives are signal illustrations of what has just been said.

◆¹ Let us take each case separately. Dudley’s life as an ironmaster was one long succession of persecution at the hands of his brothers in the trade. They petitioned the king to put a stop to his manufacture; they incited mobs to destroy his bellows and his furnaces; they harassed him with law-suits, ruined him with legal expenses; they succeeded at last in having him imprisoned for debt; and by thus crippling the inventor, they at last killed his invention. It is true that meanwhile a few men—a very few—believed in his ideas, and attempted to work them out independently; and amongst these was Oliver Cromwell himself. He and certain partners protected themselves with a patent for the purpose, and actually bought up the works of the ruined Dudley; but all their attempts ended in utter failure. Two more adventurers, named Copley and Proger, were successively granted patents during the reign of Charles II. for this same purpose, and likewise failed ignominiously. One man alone in the whole nation had proved himself capable of accomplishing this new conquest for industry; whilst the nation as a whole, and the masters of the iron trade in particular, remained as they were—stationary in their old invincible ignorance. The two Darbys, the two Craneges, and Reynolds, though not encountering, as Dudley did, the hostility of their contemporaries, yet achieved their work without the slightest encouragement or assistance from them. The younger Darby, solitary as Columbus on his quarter-deck, watched all night by his furnace as he was bringing his process to perfection. His workmen, like the sailors of Columbus, obeyed their orders blindly; and in hardly a brain but his own did there exist the smallest consciousness that one man was laying, in secret, the foundation of his country’s greatness. With regard to Reynolds and the Craneges, who imitated, though they did not perfect, the further use of coal for the production of iron that is malleable, we have similar evidence that is yet more circumstantial. Reynolds distinctly declares in a letter written to a friend that the conception of this process was so entirely original with the Craneges that it had never for a moment occurred to himself as being possible, and that they had had to convince him that it was so, against his own judgment. But when once his conversion was completed, he united his Ability with theirs; and within a very short time the second great step in our iron industry had been taken triumphantly by these three unaided men.

Were it necessary, and would space permit of it, we might extend this history further. We might cite the inventions of Huntsman, of Onions, of Cort, and Neilson, and show how each of these was conceived, was perfected, and was brought into practical use, whilst the nation as a whole remained inert, passive, and ignorant, and the experts of the trade were hostile, and sometimes equally ignorant. Huntsman perfected his process in a secrecy as carefully guarded as that of a mediæval necromancer hiding himself from the vigilance of the Church; whilst James Neilson, the inventor of the hot-blast, had at first to encounter the united ridicule and hostility of all the shrewdest and most experienced iron-masters in the kingdom.

◆1 The history of the cotton manufacture does so with equal force;

◆¹ The history of the cotton manufacture offers precisely similar evidence. Almost every one of those great improvements made in it, by which Ability has multiplied the power of Labour, had to be forced by the able men on the acceptance of adverse contemporaries. Hay was driven from the country; Hargreaves from his native town; Arkwright’s mill, near Chorley, was burnt down by a mob; Peel, who used Arkwright’s machinery, was at one time in danger of his life. Nor was it only the hostility of the ignorant that the inventors had to encounter. They had to conquer Capital before they could conquer Labour; for the Capitalists at the beginning were hardly more friendly to them than the labourers. The first Capitalists who assisted Arkwright, and had Ability enough to discover some promise in his invention, had not enough Ability to see their way through certain difficulties, and withdrew their help from him at the most critical moment. The enterprising men who at last became his partners, and with the aid of whose Capital his invention became successful, represented their age just as little as Arkwright did. He and they, indeed, had the same opportunities as the society round them; but they stand contrasted to the society by the different use they made of them.

◆1 Also the history of the steam-engine, as a very curious anecdote will show.

◆¹ And now, lastly, let us come to the history of the steam-engine. We need not go over ground we have already trodden, and prove once more that in this case, as in the others, the age, in the sense of the majority of the community, had as little to do with the work of the great inventors as Hannibal had to do with the beheading of Charles I. It will be enough to insist on the fact that the scientific minority amongst whom the inventors lived, and who were busied with the same pursuits, were, as a body, concerned in it just as little. The whole forward movement, the step after step of discovery by which the power of steam has become what it now is, was due to individuals—to a minority of a minority; and this smaller minority was so far from representing the larger, or from merely marching a few steps ahead of it, that the large minority always hung back incredulous, till, in spite of itself, it was converted by the accomplished miracle. One example is enough to illustrate this. Watt, when he was perfecting his steam-engine, was in partnership with Dr. Roebuck, who advanced the money required to patent the invention, and whose energy and encouragement helped him over many practical difficulties. When the engine was almost brought to completion, Roebuck found himself so much embarrassed for money, on account of expense incurred by him in an entirely different enterprise, that he was forced to sell a large part of his property; and amongst other things with which he parted was his interest in Watt’s patent. This he transferred to the celebrated engineer Boulton; and the patent for that invention which has since revolutionised the world was valued by Roebuck’s creditors at only one farthing.

◆1 The average man, if cross-examined at the Day of Judgment, would be forced to give his testimony to the same effect.