Captains of Industry

J >> James Parton >> Captains of Industry

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From tending sheep on his father's farm, he was sent away at ten years
of age to a cheap Yorkshire boarding-school, similar in character to the
Dotheboys Hall described by Dickens many years after in "Nicholas
Nickleby." Five miserable years he spent at that school, ill-fed,
harshly treated, badly taught, without once going home, and permitted
to write to his parents only once in three months. In after life he
could not bear to speak of his life at school; nor was he ever quite the
genial and happy man he might have been if those five years had been
spent otherwise.

But here again we see that hardship does not so radically injure a child
as unwise indulgence. At fifteen he entered as a clerk into the
warehouse of an uncle in London, an uncomfortable place, from which,
however, he derived substantial advantages. The great city itself was
half an education to him. He learned French in the morning before going
to business. He bought cheap and good little books which are thrust upon
the sight of every passer-by in cities, and, particularly, he obtained a
clear insight into the business of his uncle, who was a wholesale dealer
in muslins and calicoes.

From clerk he was advanced to the post of commercial traveler, an
employment which most keenly gratified his desire to see the world. This
was in 1826, before the days of the railroad, when commercial travelers
usually drove their own gigs. The ardent Cobden accomplished his average
of forty miles a day, which was then considered very rapid work. He
traversed many parts of Great Britain, and not only increased his
knowledge of the business, but found time to observe the natural
beauties of his country, and to inspect its ancient monuments. He spent
two or three years in this mode of life, being already the chief
support of his numerous and unusually helpless family.

At the early age of twenty-four he thought the time had come for him to
sell his calicoes and muslins on his own account. Two friends in the
same business and himself put together their small capitals, amounting
to five hundred pounds, borrowed another five hundred, rode to
Manchester on the top of the coach named the Peveril of the Peak, boldly
asked credit from a wealthy firm of calico manufacturers, obtained it,
and launched into business. It proved to be a good thing for them all.
In two years the young men were selling fifty or sixty thousand pounds'
worth of the old men's calicoes every six months. In after years Cobden
often asked them how they could have the courage to trust to such an
extent three young fellows not worth two hundred pounds apiece. Their
answer was:--

"We always prefer to trust young men with connections and with a
knowledge of their trade, if we know them to possess character and
ability, to those who start with capital without these advantages, and
we have acted on this principle successfully in all parts of the world."

The young firm gained money with astonishing rapidity, one presiding
over the warehouse in London, one remaining in Manchester, and the other
free to go wherever the interests of the firm required. Cobden visited
France and the United States. He was here in 1835, when he thought the
American people were the vainest in the world of their country. He said
it was almost impossible to praise America enough to satisfy the people.
He evidently did not think much of us then. American men, he thought,
were a most degenerate race. And as for the women:--

"My eyes," said he, "have not found one resting place that deserves to
be called a wholesome, blooming, pretty woman, since I have been here.
One fourth part of the women look as if they had just recovered from a
fit of the jaundice, another quarter would in England be termed in a
stage of decided consumption, and the remainder are fitly likened to our
fashionable women when haggard and jaded with the dissipation of a
London season."

This was forty-nine years ago. Let us hope that we have improved since
then. I think I could now find some American ladies to whom no part of
this description would apply.

After a prosperous business career of a few years he left its details
more and more to his partners, and devoted himself to public affairs.

Richard Cobden, I repeat, was a public man by nature. He belonged to
what I call the natural nobility of a country; by which I mean the
individuals, whether poor or rich, high or low, learned or unlearned,
who have a true public spirit, and take care of the public weal. As soon
as he was free from the trammels of poverty he fell into the habit of
taking extensive journeys into foreign countries, a thing most
instructive and enlarging to a genuine nobleman. His first public act
was the publication of a pamphlet called, "England, Ireland and
America," in which he maintained that American institutions and the
general policy of the American government were sound, and could safely
be followed; particularly in two respects, in maintaining only a very
small army and navy, and having no entangling alliances with other
countries.

"Civilization," said the young pamphleteer, "is _peace_; war is
barbarism. If the great states should devote to the development of
business and the amelioration of the common lot only a small part of the
treasure expended upon armaments, humanity would not have long to wait
for glorious results."

He combated with great force the ancient notion that England must
interfere in the politics of the continent; and if England was not
embroiled in the horrible war between Russia and Turkey, she owes it in
part to Richard Cobden. He wrote also a pamphlet containing the results
of his observations upon Russia, in which he denied that Russia was as
rich as was generally supposed. He was the first to discover what all
the world now knows, that Russia is a vast but poor country, not to be
feared by neighboring nations, powerful to defend herself, but weak to
attack. In a word, he adopted a line of argument with regard to Russia
very similar to that recently upheld by Mr. Gladstone. Like a true
American, he was a devoted friend to universal education, and it was in
connection with this subject that he first appeared as a public speaker.
Mr. Bright said in his oration:--

"The first time I became acquainted with Mr. Cobden was in connection
with the great question of education. I went over to Manchester to call
upon him and invite him to Rochdale to speak at a meeting about to be
held in the school-room of the Baptist chapel in West Street. I found
him in his counting-house. I told him what I wanted. His countenance
lighted up with pleasure to find that others were working in the same
cause. He without hesitation agreed to come. He came and he spoke."

Persons who heard him in those days say that his speaking then was very
much what it was afterward in Parliament--a kind of conversational
eloquence, simple, clear, and strong, without rhetorical flights, but
strangely persuasive. One gentleman who was in Parliament with him
mentioned that he disliked to see him get up to speak, because he was
sure that Cobden would convince him that his own opinion was erroneous;
"and," said he, "a man does not like that to be done."

Soon after coming upon the stage of active life, he had arrived at the
conclusion that the public policy of his country was fatally erroneous
in two particulars, namely, the protective system of duties, and the
habit of interfering in the affairs of other nations. At that time even
the food of the people, their very bread and meat, was shopped at the
custom houses until a high duty was paid upon them, for the "protection"
of the farmers and landlords. In other words, the whole population of
Great Britain was taxed at every meal, for the supposed benefit of two
classes, those who owned and those who tilled the soil.

Richard Cobden believed that the policy of protection was not beneficial
even to the protected classes, while it was most cruel to people whose
wages were barely sufficient to keep them alive. For several years,
aided by Mr. Bright and many other enlightened men, he labored by tongue
and pen, with amazing tact, vigor, persistence, and good temper, to
convince his countrymen of this.

The great achievement of his life, as all the world knows, was the
repeal of those oppressive Corn Laws by which the duty on grain rose as
the price declined, so that the poor man's loaf was kept dear, however
abundant and cheap wheat might be in Europe and America. It was in a
time of deep depression of trade that he began the agitation. He called
upon Mr. Bright to enlist his cooeperation, and he found him overwhelmed
with grief at the loss of his wife, lying dead in the house at the time.
Mr. Cobden consoled his friend as best he could; and yet even at such a
time he could not forget his mission. He said to Mr. Bright:--

"There are thousands and thousands of homes in England at this moment,
where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger! Now when the
first paroxysm of your grief is past, I would advise you to come with
me, and we will never rest until the Corn Laws are repealed."

Mr. Bright joined him. The Anti-Corn-Law-League was formed; such an
agitation was made as has seldom been paralleled; but, so difficult is
it to effect a change of this kind against _interested_ votes, that,
after all, the Irish famine was necessary to effect the repeal. As a
writer remarks:--

"It was hunger that at last ate through those stone walls of
protection!"

Sir Robert Peel, the prime minister, a protectionist, as we may say,
from his birth, yielded to circumstances as much as to argument, and
accomplished the repeal in 1846. When the great work was done, and done,
too, with benefit to every class, he publicly assigned the credit of the
measure to the persuasive eloquence and the indomitable resolution of
Richard Cobden.

Mr. Cobden's public labors withdrew his attention from his private
business, and he became embarrassed. His friends made a purse for him of
eighty thousand pounds sterling, with which to set him up as a public
man. He accepted the gift, bought back the farm upon which he was born,
and devoted himself without reserve to the public service. During our
war he was the friend and champion of the United States, and he owed
his premature death to his zeal and friendly regard for this country.
There was a ridiculous scheme coming up in Parliament for a line of
fortresses to defend Canada against the United States. On one of the
coldest days of March he went to London for the sole purpose of speaking
against this project. He took a violent cold, under which he sank. He
died on that Sunday, the second of April, 1865, when Abraham Lincoln,
with a portion of General Grant's army, entered the city of Richmond. It
was a strange coincidence. Through four years he had steadily foretold
such an ending to the struggle; but though he lived to see the great day
he breathed his last a few hours before the news reached the British
shore.

There is not in Great Britain, as Mr. Bright observed, a poor man's home
that has not in it a bigger and a better loaf through Richard Cobden's
labors. His great measure relieved the poor, and relieved the rich. It
was a good without alloy, as free trade will, doubtless, be to all
nations when their irrepressible Cobdens and their hungry workmen force
them to adopt it.

The time is not distant when we, too, shall be obliged, as a people, to
meet this question of Free Trade and Protection. In view of that
inevitable discussion I advise young voters to study Cobden and Bright,
as well as men of the opposite school, and make up their minds on the
great question of the future.

HENRY BESSEMER.

Nervous persons who ride in sleeping-cars are much indebted to Henry
Bessemer, to whose inventive genius they owe the beautiful steel rails
over which the cars glide so steadily. It was he who so simplified and
cheapened the process of making steel that it can be used for rails.

Nine people in ten, I suppose, do not know the chemical difference
between iron and steel. Iron is iron; but steel is iron mixed with
carbon. But, then, what is carbon? There is no substance in nature of
which you can pick up a piece and say, This is carbon. And hence it is
difficult to explain its nature and properties. Carbon is the principal
ingredient in coal, charcoal, and diamond. Carbon is not diamond, but a
diamond is carbon crystallized. Carbon is not charcoal, but in some
kinds of charcoal it is almost the whole mass. As crystallized carbon or
diamond is the hardest of all known substances, so also the blending of
carbon with iron hardens it into steel.

The old way of converting iron into steel was slow, laborious, and
expensive. In India for ages the process has been as follows: pieces of
forged iron are put into a crucible along with a certain quantity of
wood. A fire being lighted underneath, three or four men are incessantly
employed in blowing it with bellows. Through the action of the heat the
wood becomes charcoal, the iron is melted and absorbs carbon from the
charcoal. In this way small pieces of steel were made, but made at a
cost which confined the use of the article to small objects, such as
watch-springs and cutlery. The plan pursued in Europe and America, until
about twenty-five years ago, was similar to this in principle. Our
machinery was better, and pure charcoal was placed in the crucible
instead of wood; but the process was long and costly, and only small
pieces of steel were produced at a time.

Henry Bessemer enters upon the scene. In 1831, being then eighteen years
of age, he came up to London from a country village in Hertfordshire to
seek his fortune, not knowing one person in the metropolis. He was, as
he has since said, "a mere cipher in that vast sea of human enterprise."
He was a natural inventor, of studious and observant habits. As soon as
he had obtained a footing in London he began to invent. He first devised
a process for copying bas-reliefs on cardboard, by which he could
produce embossed copies of such works in thousands at a small expense.
The process was so simple that in ten minutes a person without skill
could produce a die from an embossed stamp at a cost of one penny.

When his invention was complete he thought with dismay and alarm that,
as almost all the expensive stamps affixed to documents in England are
raised from the paper, any of them could be forged by an office-boy of
average intelligence. The English government has long obtained an
important part of its revenue by the sale of these stamps, many of which
are high priced, costing as much as twenty-five dollars. If the stamp on
a will, a deed, or other document is not genuine, the document has no
validity. As soon as he found what mischief had been done, he set to
work to devise a remedy. After several months' experiment and reflection
he invented a stamp which could neither be forged nor removed from the
document and used a second time. A large business, it seems, had been
done in removing stamps from old parchments of no further use, and
selling them to be used again.

The inventor called at the stamp office and had an interview with the
chief, who frankly owned that the government was losing half a million
dollars a year by the use of old stamps; and he was then considering
methods of avoiding the loss. Bessemer exhibited his invention, the
chief feature of which was the perforation of the stamp in such a way
that forgery and removal were equally impossible. The commissioner
finally agreed to adopt it. The next question was as to the compensation
of the young inventor, and he was given his choice either to accept a
sum of money or an office for life in the stamp office of four thousand
dollars a year. As he was engaged to be married, he chose the office,
and went home rejoicing, feeling that he was a made man. Nor did he long
delay to communicate the joyful news to the young lady. To her also he
explained his invention, dwelling upon the fact that a five-pound stamp
a hundred years old could be taken off a document and used a second
time.

"Yes," said she, "I understand that; but, surely, if all stamps had a
DATE put upon them they could not at a future time be used again without
detection."

The inventor was startled. He had never thought of an expedient so
simple and so obvious. A lover could not but be pleased at such
ingenuity in his affianced bride; but it spoiled his invention! His
perforated stamp did not allow of the insertion of more than one date.
He succeeded in obviating this difficulty, but deemed it only fair to
communicate the new idea to the chief of the stamp office. The result
was that the government simply adopted the plan of putting a date upon
all the stamps afterwards issued, and discarded Bessemer's fine scheme
of perforation, which would have involved an expensive and troublesome
change of machinery and methods. But the worst of it was that the
inventor lost his office, since his services were not needed. Nor did he
ever receive compensation for the service rendered.

Thus it was that a young lady changed the stamp system of her country,
and ruined her lover's chances of getting a good office. She rendered
him, however, and rendered the world, a much greater service in throwing
him upon his own resources. They were married soon after, and Mrs.
Bessemer is still living to tell how she married and made her husband's
fortune.

Twenty years passed, with the varied fortune which young men of energy
and talent often experience in this troublesome world. We find him then
experimenting in the conversion of iron into steel. The experiments were
laborious as well as costly, since his idea was to convert at one
operation many tons' weight of iron into steel, and in a few minutes. As
iron ore contains carbon, he conceived the possibility of making that
carbon unite with the iron during the very process of smelting. For
nearly two years he was building furnaces and pulling them down again,
spending money and toil with just enough success to lure him on to spend
more money and toil; experimenting sometimes with ten pounds of iron
ore, and sometimes with several hundredweight. His efforts were at
length crowned with such success that he was able to make five tons of
steel at a blast, in about thirty-five minutes, with comparatively
simple machinery, and with a very moderate expenditure of fuel.

This time he took the precaution to patent his process, and offered
rights to all the world at a royalty of a shilling per hundredweight.
His numerous failures, however, had discouraged the iron men, and no one
would embark capital in the new process. He therefore began himself the
manufacture of steel on a small scale, and with such large profit, that
the process was rapidly introduced into all the iron-making countries,
and gave Mrs. Bessemer ample consolation for her early misfortune of
being too wise. Money and gold medals have rained in upon them. At the
French Exhibition of 1868 Mr. Bessemer was awarded a gold medal weighing
twelve ounces. His process has been improved upon both by himself and
others, and has conferred upon all civilized countries numerous and
solid benefits. We may say of him that he has added to the resources of
many trades a new material.

The latest device of Henry Bessemer, if it had succeeded, would have
been a great comfort to the Marquis of Lorne and other persons of weak
digestion who cross the ocean. It was a scheme for suspending the cabin
of a ship so that it should swing free and remain stationary, no matter
how violent the ship's motion. The idea seems promising, but we have not
yet heard of the establishment of a line of steamers constructed on the
Bessemer principle. We may yet have the pleasure of swinging from New
York to Liverpool.

JOHN BRIGHT.

MANUFACTURER.

Forty-five years ago, when John Bright was first elected to the British
Parliament, he spoke thus to his constituents:--

"I am a working man as much as you. My father was as poor as any man in
this crowd. He was of your own body entirely. He boasts not, nor do I,
of birth, nor of great family distinctions. What he has made, he has
made by his own industry and successful commerce. What I have comes from
him and from my own exertions. I come before you as the friend of my own
class and order, as one of the people."

When these words were spoken, his father, Jacob Bright, a Quaker, and
the son of a Quaker, was still alive, a thriving cotton manufacturer of
Rochdale, ten miles from Manchester. Jacob Bright had been a "Good
Apprentice," who married one of the daughters of his master, and had
been admitted as a partner in his business. He was a man of much force
and ability, who became in a few years the practical head of the
concern, finally its sole proprietor, and left it to his sons, who
have carried it on with success for about half a century longer.

[Illustration:

John Bright.
August 10. 1883]

Four years ago, on the celebration of John Bright's seventieth birthday,
he stood face to face with fifteen hundred persons in the employment of
his firm, and repeated in substance what he had said once before, that,
during the seventy-three years of the firm's existence, there had been,
with one brief exception, uninterrupted harmony and confidence between
his family and those who had worked for them.

He made another remark on that birthday which explains a great deal in
his career. It was of particular interest to me, because I have long
been convinced that no man can give himself up to the service of the
public, with advantage to the public, and safety to himself, unless he
is practically free from the burdens and trammels of private business.

"I have been greatly fortunate," said Mr. Bright, "in one respect--that,
although connected with a large and increasing and somewhat intricate
business, yet I have been permitted to be free from the employments and
engagements and occupations of business by the constant and undeviating
generosity and kindness of my brother, Thomas Bright."

The tribute was well deserved. Certainly, no individual can successfully
direct the industry of fifteen hundred persons, and spend six months of
the year in London, working night and day as a member of Parliament.
Richard Cobden tried it, and brought a flourishing business to ruin by
the attempt, and probably shortened his own life. Even with the aid
rendered him by his brother, Mr. Bright was obliged to withdraw from
public life for three years in order to restore an exhausted brain.

John Bright enjoyed just the kind of education in his youth which
experience has shown to be the best for the development of a leader of
men. At fifteen, after attending pretty good Quaker schools in the
country, where, besides spelling and arithmetic, he learned how to swim,
to fish, and to love nature, he came home, went into his father's
factory, and became a man of business. He had acquired at school love of
literature, particularly of poetry, which he continued to indulge during
his leisure hours. You will seldom hear Mr. Bright speak twenty minutes
without hearing him make an apt and most telling quotation from one of
the poets. He possesses in an eminent degree the talent of quotation,
which is one of the happiest gifts of the popular orator. It is worthy
of note that this manufacturer, this man of the people, this Manchester
man, shows a familiarity with the more dainty, outlying, recondite
literature of the world than is shown by any other member of a house
composed chiefly of college-bred men.

In his early days he belonged to a debating society, spoke at temperance
meetings, was an ardent politician, and, in short, had about the sort
of training which an American young man of similar cast of mind would
have enjoyed. John Bright, in fact, is one of that numerous class of
Americans whom the accident of birth and the circumstances of their lot
have prevented from treading the soil of America. In his debating
society he had good practice in public speaking, and on all questions
took what we may justly call _the Quaker side_, _i. e._, the side which
he thought had most in it of humanity and benevolence. He sided against
capital punishment, against the established church, and defended the
principle of equal toleration of all religions.

Next to Mr. Gladstone, the most admired speaker in Great Britain is John
Bright, and there are those who even place him first among the living
orators of his country. His published speeches reveal to us only part of
the secret of his power, for an essential part of the equipment of an
orator is his bodily attributes, his voice, depth of chest, eye,
demeanor, presence.

The youngest portrait of him which has been published represents him as
he was at the age of thirty-one. If an inch or two could have been added
to his stature he would have been as perfect a piece of flesh and blood
as can ordinarily be found. His face was strikingly handsome, and bore
the impress both of power and of serenity. It was a well-balanced face;
there being a full development of the lower portion without any bull-dog
excess. His voice was sonorous and commanding; his manner tranquil and
dignified. As he was never a student at either university, he did not
acquire the Cambridge nor the Oxford sing-song, but has always spoken
the English language as distinctly and naturally as though he were a
native American citizen.

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