Captains of Industry

J >> James Parton >> Captains of Industry

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The usual course of his day was this: He was up in the morning very
early, at any time from three to six, according to his plans for the
after part of the day. He kneaded his bread, worked the dough into
loaves, put the whole into the oven, waited till it was baked, and drew
it out. His work was then usually done for the day. The old housekeeper
sold it as it was called for, and, in case her master did not get home
in time, she could set the sponge in the evening. Usually, he could get
away from the bake-shop soon after the middle of the day, and he had
then all the afternoon, the evening, and the night for studying nature
in Caithness. His profits were small, but his wants were few, and during
the greater part of his life he was able to spare a small sum per annum
for the purchase of books.

If this man had enjoyed the opportunities he would have had but for his
mother's death, he might have been one of the greatest naturalists that
ever lived. Nature had given him every requisite: a frame of iron,
Scotch endurance, a poet's enthusiasm, the instinct of not believing
anything in science till he was _sure_ of it, till he had put it to the
test of repeated observation and experiment. Although a great reader, he
derived most of his knowledge directly from nature's self. He began by
merely picking up shells, as a child picks them up, because they were
pretty; until, while still a lad, he had a very complete collection all
nicely arranged in a cabinet and labeled. Youth being past, the shy and
lonely young man began to study botany, which he pursued until he had
seen and felt everything that grew in Caithness. Next he studied
insects, and studied with such zeal that in nine months he had
collected, of beetles alone, two hundred and fifty-six specimens. There
are still in the Thurso museum two hundred and twenty varieties of
bees, and two hundred and forty kinds of butterflies, collected by him.

Early in life he was powerfully attracted to astronomy, and read
everything he could find upon the subject. But he was one of those
students whom books alone can never satisfy; and as a telescope was very
far beyond his means he was obliged to devote himself to subjects more
within his own reach. He contrived out of his small savings to buy a
good microscope, and found it indispensable. Geology was the subject
which occupied him longest and absorbed him most. He pursued it with
untiring and intelligent devotion for thirty years. He found the books
full of mistakes, because, as he said, so many geologists study nature
from a gig and are afraid to get a little mud on their trousers.

"When," said he, "I want to know what a rock is, I go to it; I hammer
it; I dissect it. I then know what it really is.... The science of
geology! No, no; we must just work patiently on, _collect facts_, and in
course of time geology may develop into a science."

I suppose there never was a man whose love of knowledge was more
disinterested. He used to send curious specimens to Hugh Miller, editor
of "The Witness" as well as a geologist, and Mr. Miller would
acknowledge the gifts in his paper; but Robert Dick entreated him not to
do so.

"I am a quiet creature," he wrote, "and do not like to see myself in
print at all. So leave it to be understood who found the old bones, and
let them guess who can."

As long as he was in unimpaired health he continued this way of life
cheerfully enough, refusing all offers of assistance. His brother-in-law
once proposed to send him a present of whiskey.

"No," said he in reply, "spirits never enter this house save when I
cannot help it."

His brother-in-law next offered to send him some money. He answered:--

"God grant you more sense! I want no sovereigns. It's of no use sending
anything down here. Nothing is wanted. Delicacies would only injure
health. _Hardy_ is the word with working people. Pampering does no good,
but much evil."

And yet the latter days of this great-souled man were a woeful tragedy.
He was the best baker in the place, gave full weight, paid for his flour
on the day, and was in all respects a model of fair dealing. But his
trade declined. Competition reduced his profits and limited his sales.
When the great split occurred in Scotland between the old and the free
church, he stuck to the old, merely saying that the church of his
forefathers was good enough for him. But his neighbors and customers
were zealous for the free church; and one day, when the preacher aimed a
sermon at him for taking his walks on Sunday, he was offended, and
rarely went again. And so, for various reasons, his business declined;
some losses befell him; and he injured his constitution by exposure and
exhausting labors in the study of geology.

There were rich and powerful families near by who knew his worth, or
would have known it if they had themselves been worthy. They looked on
and saw the noblest heart in Scotland break in this unequal strife. They
should have set him free from his bake-shop as soon as he had given
proof of the stuff he was made of. He was poet, artist, philosopher,
hero, and they let him die in his bakehouse in misery. After his death
they performed over his body the shameful mockery of a pompous funeral,
and erected in his memory a paltry monument, which will commemorate
their shame as long as it lasts. His name has been rescued from oblivion
by the industry and tact of Samuel Smiles, who, in writing his life, has
revealed to us a rarer and higher kind of man than Robert Burns.

JOHN DUNCAN,

WEAVER AND BOTANIST.

Many young men ask nowadays what is the secret of "success." It were
better to inquire also how to do without success, since that is the
destiny of most of us, even in the most prosperous communities.

Could there be imagined a more complete "failure" than this John Duncan,
a Scottish weaver, always very poor, at last a pauper, short-sighted,
bent, shy, unlettered, illegitimate, dishonored in his home, not
unfrequently stoned by the boys of the roadside, and in every
particular, according to the outward view, a wretched fag-end of human
nature!

Yet, redeemed and dignified by the love of knowledge, he passed, upon
the whole, a joyous and even a triumphant life. He had a pursuit which
absorbed his nobler faculties, and lifted him far above the mishaps and
inconveniences of his lowly lot. The queen of his country took an
interest in his pursuits, and contributed to the ease of his old age.
Learned societies honored him, and the illustrious Charles Darwin
called him "my fellow botanist."

[Illustration: John Duncan]

The mother of John Duncan, a "strong, pretty woman," as he called her,
lived in a poor tenement at Stonehaven, on the Scottish coast, and
supported herself by weaving stockings at her own home, and in the
summer went into the harvest field. He always held his mother in honor
and tenderness, as indeed he ought, for she stood faithfully by the
children she ought not to have borne.

As a boy the future botanist developed an astonishing faculty of
climbing. There was a famous old castle upon the pinnacle of a cliff,
inaccessible except to cats and boys. He was the first to gain access to
the ancient ruin, and after him the whole band of boys explored the
castle, from the deep dungeons to the topmost turret.

His first employment led him directly to what became a favorite pursuit
of his lifetime. By way of adding to the slender gains of his mother, he
extracted the white pith from certain rushes of the region, which made
very good lamp-wicks for the kind of lamps then in use in Scotland.
These wicks of pith he sold about the town in small penny bundles. In
order to get his supply of rushes he was obliged to roam the country far
and wide, and along the banks of streams. When he had gathered as many
as he could carry he would bring them home to be stripped. To the end of
his days, when he knew familiarly every plant that grew in his native
land, he had a particular fondness for all the varieties of rush, and
above all for the kind that gave him his first knowledge.

Then he went to a farmer's to tend cattle, and in this employment he
experienced the hard and savage treatment to which hired boys were so
frequently subjected at that day. Drenched with rain after tending his
herd all day, the brutal farmer would not permit him to go near the fire
to dry his clothes. He had to go to his miserable bed in an out-house,
where he poured the water from his shoes, and wrung out his wet clothes
as dry as he could. In that foggy climate his garments were often as wet
in the morning as he left them in the evening, and so days would pass
without his having a dry thread upon him.

But it did not rain always. Frequently his herd was pastured near the
old castle, which, during the long summer days, he studied more
intelligently, and in time learned all about its history and
construction. And still he observed the flowers and plants that grew
about his feet. It seemed natural to him to observe them closely and to
learn their names and uses.

In due time he was apprenticed to a weaver. This was before the age of
the noisy, steaming factory. Each weaver then worked at home, at his own
loom, and could rent, if he chose, a garden and a field, and keep a cow,
and live a man's life upon his native soil. Again our poor, shy
apprentice had one of the hardest of masters. The boy was soon able to
do the work of a man, and the master exacted it from him. On Saturdays
the loom was usually kept going till midnight, when it stopped at the
first sound of the clock, for this man, who had less feeling for a
friendless boy than for a dog or a horse, was a strict Sabbatarian. In
the depth of the Scotch winter he would keep the lad at the river-side,
washing and wringing out the yarn, a process that required the arms to
be bare and the hands to be constantly wet. His hands would be all
chilblains and frost-bitten.

But again we may say it was not always winter. In the most dismal lot
there are gleams of sunshine. The neighbors pitied and comforted him.
His tyrant's wife was good to him as far as she dared. It was she,
indeed, who inspired him with the determination to learn to read, and
another friendly woman gave him regular instruction. He was sixteen
years old when he learned his alphabet. A school-girl, the daughter of
another weaver, would come into his shop to hear him read his lesson,
and tell him how to pronounce the hard words. This bright, pretty girl
of twelve would take her seat on the loom beside the bashful, lanky boy,
who, with the book close to his eyes and his finger on the page, would
grope his way through the paragraph.

Other children helped him, and he was soon able to get the meanings from
the few books at his command. His solitary walks were still cheered by
his observation of nature, although as yet he did not know there was
such a thing as a science of botany. He could give no account of the
interest he took in plants, except that he "loved the pretty little
things," and liked to know their names, and to classify in his rude way
those that were alike.

The exactions of his despot wore out at length even his astonishing
patience. He ran away at twenty, and entered upon the life which he
lived all the rest of his days, that of a weaver, wandering about
Scotland according to his need of work. At this period he was not the
possessor of a single book relating to his favorite pursuit, and he had
never seen but one, an old-fashioned work of botany and astrology, of
nature and superstition, by the once famous Culpepper. It required extra
work for months, at the low wages of a hand-loom weaver, to get the
money required for the purchase of this book, about five dollars. The
work misled him in many ways, but it contained the names and properties
of many of his favorite herbs. Better books corrected these errors by
and by, and he gradually gathered a considerable library, each volume
won by pinching economy and hard labor.

The sorrow of his life was his most woeful, disastrous marriage. His
wife proved false to him, abandoned his home and their two daughters,
and became a drunken tramp. Every now and then she returned to him,
appealing to his compassion for assistance. I think Charles Dickens must
have had John Duncan's case in his mind when he wrote those powerful
scenes of the poor man cursed with a drunken wife in "Hard Times."

But the more miserable his outward life, the more diligently he resorted
for comfort to his darling plants. For many years he groped in the dark;
but at length he was put upon the right path by one of those
accomplished gardeners so common in Scotland, where the art of gardening
is carried to high perfection. He always sought the friendship of
gardeners wherever he went. Nevertheless he was forty years old before
he became a scientific botanist.

During the rest of his life of forty-four years, besides pursuing his
favorite branch, he obtained a very considerable knowledge of the
kindred sciences and of astronomy. Being obliged to sell his watch in a
time of scarcity, he made for himself a pocket sun-dial, by which he
could tell the time to within seven or eight minutes.

During this period steam was gaining every year upon hand power; his
wages grew less and less; and, as his whole heart was in science, he had
no energy left for seeking more lucrative employment. When he was past
eighty-three he would walk twelve miles or more to get a new specimen,
and hold on his way, though drenched with a sudden storm.

At length, old age and lack of work reduced him to actual suffering for
the necessaries of life. Mr. William Jolly, a contributor to
periodicals, heard his story, sought him out, and found him so poor as
to be obliged to accept out-door relief, of which the old man was
painfully ashamed. He published a brief history of the man and of his
doings in the newspapers.

"The British people," says Voltaire, "may be very stupid, but they know
how to give."

Money rained down upon the old philosopher, until a sum equal to about
sixteen hundred dollars had reached him, which abundantly sufficed for
his maintenance during the short residue of his life. For the first time
in fifty years he had a new and warm suit of clothes, and he again sat
down by his own cheerful fire, an independent man, as he had been all
his life until he could no longer exercise his trade.

He died soon after, bequeathing the money he had received for the
foundation of scholarships and prizes for the encouragement of the study
of natural science among the boys and girls of his country. His valuable
library, also, he bequeathed for the same object.

JAMES LACKINGTON,

SECOND-HAND BOOKSELLER.

It would seem not to be so very difficult a matter to buy an article for
fifty cents and sell it for seventy-five. Business men know, however,
that to live and thrive by buying and selling requires a special gift,
which is about as rare as other special gifts by which men conquer the
world. In some instances, it is easier to make a thing than to sell it,
and it is not often that a man who excels in the making succeeds equally
well in the selling. General George P. Morris used to say:--

"I know a dozen men in New York who could make a good paper, but among
them all I do not know one who could sell it."

The late Governor Morgan of New York had this talent in a singular
degree even as a boy. His uncle sent him to New York, to buy, among
other things, two or three hundred bushels of corn. He bought two
cargoes, and sold them to advantage in Hartford on his way from the
stage office to his uncle's store, and he kept on doing similar things
all his life. He knew by a sort of intuition when it was safe to buy
twenty thousand bags of coffee, or all the coffee there was for sale in
New York, and he was very rarely mistaken; he had a genius for buying
and selling.

I have seen car-boys and news-boys who had this gift. There are boys who
will go through a train and hardly ever fail to sell a book or two. They
improve every chance. If there is a passenger who wants a book, or can
be made to think he wants one, the boy will find him out.

Now James Lackington was a boy of that kind. In the preface to the
Memoirs which he wrote of his career he described himself as a person
"who, a few years since, began business with five pounds, and now sells
one hundred thousand volumes annually." But in fact he did not begin
business with five pounds, but with nothing at all.

He was the son of a drunken shoemaker who lived in an English country
town, and he had no schooling except a few weeks at a dame's school, at
twopence a week. He had scarcely learned his letters at that school when
his mother was obliged to take him away to help her in tending his
little brothers and sisters. He spent most of his childhood in doing
that, and, as he remarks, "in running about the streets getting into
mischief." When he was ten years old he felt the stirring of an inborn
genius for successful traffic.

He noticed, and no doubt with the hungry eyes of a growing boy, an old
pie-man, who sold his pies about the streets in a careless, inefficient
way, and the thought occurred to him that, if he had pies to sell, he
could sell more of them than the ancient pie-man. He went to a baker and
acquainted him with his thoughts on pie-selling, and the baker soon sent
him out with a tray full of pies. He showed his genius at once. The
spirited way in which he cried his pies, and his activity in going about
with them, made him a favorite with the pie-buyers of the town; so that
the old pie-man in a few weeks lost all his business, and shut up his
shop. The boy served his baker more than a year, and sold so many pies
and cakes for him as to save him from impending bankruptcy. In the
winter time he sold almanacs with such success that the other dealers
threatened to do him bodily mischief.

But this kind of business would not do to depend on for a lifetime, and
therefore he was bound apprentice to a shoemaker at the age of fourteen
years, during which a desire for more knowledge arose within him. He
learned to read and write, but was still so ashamed of his ignorance
that he did not dare to go into a bookstore because he did not know the
name of a single book to ask for. One of his friends bought for him a
little volume containing a translation from the Greek philosopher
Epictetus, a work full of wise maxims about life and duty. Then he
bought other ancient authors, Plato, Plutarch, Epicurus, and others. He
became a sort of Methodist philosopher, for he heard the Methodist
preachers diligently on Sundays, and read his Greek philosophy in the
evenings. He tells us that the account of Epicurus living in his garden
upon a halfpenny a day, and considering a little cheese on his bread as
a great treat, filled him with admiration, and he began forthwith to
live on bread and tea alone, in order to get money for his books. After
ending his apprenticeship and working for a short time as a journeyman,
he married a buxom dairymaid, with whom he had been in love for seven
years. It was a bold enterprise, for when they went to their lodgings
after the wedding they searched their pockets carefully to discover the
state of their finances, and found that they had one halfpenny to begin
the world with. They had laid in provisions for a day or two, and they
had work by which to procure more, so they began their married life by
sitting down to work at shoemaking and singing together the following
stanza:

"Our portion is not large indeed,
But then how little do we need!
For nature's wants are few.
In this the art of living lies,
To want no more than may suffice,
And make that little do."

They were as happy as the day was long. Twenty times, reports this jolly
shoemaker, he and his wife sang an ode by Samuel Wesley, beginning:--

"No glory I covet, no riches I want,
Ambition is nothing to me;
The one thing I beg of kind Heaven to grant
Is a mind independent and free."

They needed their cheerful philosophy, for all they had to spend on food
and drink for a week was a sum about equal to one of our dollars. Even
this small revenue grew smaller, owing to the hard times, and poor James
Lackington saw his young wife pining away under insufficient food and
sedentary employment. His courage again saved him. After enduring
extreme poverty for three years, he got together all the money he could
raise, gave most of it to his wife, and set out for London, where he
arrived in August, 1774, with two and sixpence in his pocket.

It was a fortunate move for our brave shoemaker. He obtained work and
good wages at once, soon sent for his wife, and their united earnings
more than supplied their wants. A timely legacy of ten pounds from his
grandfather gave them a little furniture, and he became again a
frequenter of second-hand bookstores. He could scarcely resist the
temptation of a book that he wanted. One Christmas Eve he went out with
money to buy their Christmas dinner, but spent the whole sum for a copy
of Young's "Night Thoughts." His wife did not relish this style of
Christmas repast.

"I think," said he to his disappointed spouse, "that I have acted
wisely; for had I bought a dinner we should have eaten it to-morrow, and
the pleasure would have been soon over; but should we live fifty years
longer we shall have the 'Night Thoughts' to feast upon."

It was his love of books that gave him abundant Christmas dinners for
the rest of his life. Having hired a little shop in which to sell the
shoes made by himself and his wife, it occurred to him that he could
employ the spare room in selling old books, his chief motive being to
have a chance to read the books before he sold them. Beginning with a
stock of half a hundred volumes, chiefly of divinity, he invested all
his earnings in this new branch, and in six months he found his stock of
books had increased fivefold. He abandoned his shoemaking, moved into
larger premises, and was soon a thriving bookseller. He was scrupulous
not to sell any book which he thought calculated to injure its readers,
although about this time he found the Methodist Society somewhat too
strict for him. He makes a curious remark on this subject:--

"I well remember," he says, "that some years before, Mr. Wesley told his
society at Bristol, in my hearing, that he could never keep a bookseller
six months in his flock."

His trade increased with astonishing rapidity, and the reason was that
he knew how to buy and sell. He abandoned many of the old usages and
traditions of the book trade. He gave no credit, which was itself a
startling innovation; but his master-stroke was selling every book at
the lowest price he could afford, thus giving his customers a fair
portion of the benefit of his knowledge and activity. He appears to have
begun the system by which books have now become a part of the furniture
of every house. He bought with extraordinary boldness, spending
sometimes as much as sixty thousand dollars in an afternoon's sale.

As soon as he began to live with some liberality kind friends foretold
his speedy ruin. Or, as he says:--

"When by the advice of that eminent physician, Dr. Lettsom, I purchased
a horse, and saved my life by the exercise it afforded me, the old
adage, 'Set a beggar on horseback and he'll ride to the devil,' was
deemed fully verified."

But his one horse became two horses, and his chaise a chariot with
liveried servants, in which vehicle, one summer, he made the round of
the places in which he had lived as a shoemaker, called upon his old
employers, and distributed liberal sums of money among his poor
relations. So far from being ashamed of his business, he caused to be
engraved on all his carriage doors the motto which he considered the
secret of his success:--

SMALL PROFITS DO GREAT THINGS.

In his old age he rejoined his old friends the Methodists, and he
declares in his last edition that, if he had never heard the Methodists
preach, in all probability he should have remained through life "a poor,
ragged, dirty cobbler."

HORACE GREELEY'S START.

I have seldom been more interested than in hearing Horace Greeley tell
the story of his coming to New York in 1831, and gradually working his
way into business there.

He was living at the age of twenty years with his parents in a small
log-cabin in a new clearing of Western Pennsylvania, about twenty miles
from Erie. His father, a Yankee by birth, had recently moved to that
region and was trying to raise sheep there, as he had been accustomed to
do in Vermont. The wolves were too numerous there.

It was part of the business of Horace and his brother to watch the flock
of sheep, and sometimes they camped out all night, sleeping with their
feet to the fire, Indian fashion. He told me that occasionally a pack of
wolves would come so near that he could see their eyeballs glare in the
darkness and hear them pant. Even as he lay in the loft of his father's
cabin he could hear them howling in the fields. In spite of all their
care, the wolves killed in one season a hundred of his father's sheep,
and then he gave up the attempt.

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