Captains of Industry

J >> James Parton >> Captains of Industry

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Wire is made by drawing a rod of soft, hot iron through a hole which is
too small for it. If a still smaller sized wire is desired, it is drawn
through a smaller hole, and this process is repeated until the required
size is attained. Considerable power is needed to draw the wire through,
and the hole through which it is drawn is soon worn larger. The first
wire machine that Washburn ever saw was arranged with a pair of
self-acting pincers which drew a foot of wire and then had to let go and
take a fresh hold. By this machine a man could make fifty pounds of
coarse wire in a day. He soon improved this machine so that the pincers
drew fifteen feet without letting go; and by this improvement alone the
product of one man's labor was increased about eleven times. A good
workman could make five or six hundred pounds a day by it. By another
improvement which Washburn adopted the product was increased to
twenty-five hundred pounds a day.

He was now in his element. He always had a partner to manage the
counting-room part of the business, which he disliked.

"I never," said he, "had taste or inclination for it, always preferring
to be among the machinery, doing the work and handling the tools I was
used to, though oftentimes at the expense of a smutty face and greasy
hands."

His masterpiece in the way of invention was his machinery for making
steel wire for pianos,--a branch of the business which was urged upon
him by the late Jonas Chickering, piano manufacturer, of Boston. The
most careless glance at the strings of a piano shows us that the wire
must be exquisitely tempered and most thoroughly wrought, in order to
remain in tune, subjected as they are to a steady pull of many tons.
Washburn experimented for years in perfecting his process, and he was
never satisfied until he was able to produce a wire which he could
honestly claim to be the best in the world. He had amazing success in
his business. At one time he was making two hundred and fifty thousand
yards of crinoline wire every day. His whole daily product was seven
tons of iron wire, and five tons of steel wire.

This excellent man, in the midst of a success which would have dazzled
and corrupted some men, retained all the simplicity, the modesty, and
the generosity of his character. He felt, as he said, nowhere so much at
home as among his own machinery, surrounded by thoughtful mechanics,
dressed like them for work, and possibly with a black smudge upon his
face. In his person, however, he was scrupulously clean and nice, a
hater of tobacco and all other polluting things and lowering influences.

Rev. H. T. Cheever, the editor of his "Memorials," mentions also that he
remained to the end of his life in the warmest sympathy with the natural
desires of the workingman. He was a collector of facts concerning the
condition of workingmen everywhere, and for many years cherished a
project of making his own business a cooeperative one.

"He believed," remarks Mr. Cheever, "that the skilled and faithful
manual worker, as well as the employer, was entitled to a participation
in the net proceeds of business, over and above his actual wages. He
held that in this country the entire people are one great working class,
working with brains, or hands, or both, who should therefore act in
harmony--the brain-workers and the hand-workers--for the equal rights of
all, without distinction of color, condition, or religion. Holding that
capital is accumulated labor, and wealth the creation of capital and
labor combined, he thought it to be the wise policy of the large
capitalists and corporations to help in the process of elevating and
advancing labor by a proffered interest."

These were the opinions of a man who had had long experience in all the
grades, from half-frozen apprentice to millionaire manufacturer.

He died in 1868, aged seventy-one years, leaving an immense estate;
which, however, chiefly consisted in his wire-manufactory. He had made
it a principle not to accumulate money for the sake of money, and he
gave away in his lifetime a large portion of his revenue every year. He
bequeathed to charitable associations the sum of four hundred and
twenty-four thousand dollars, which was distributed among twenty-one
objects. His great bequests were to institutions of practical and homely
benevolence: to the Home for Aged Women and Widows, one hundred thousand
dollars; to found a hospital and free dispensary, the same amount;
smaller sums to industrial schools and mission schools.

It was one of his fixed convictions that boys cannot be properly fitted
for life without being both taught and required to use their hands, as
well as their heads, and it was long his intention to found some kind of
industrial college. Finding that something of the kind was already in
existence at Worcester, he made a bequest to it of one hundred and ten
thousand dollars. The institution is called the Worcester County Free
Institute of Industrial Science.

ELIHU BURRITT,

THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH.

Elihu Burritt, with whom we have all been familiar for many years as the
Learned Blacksmith, was born in 1810 at the beautiful town of New
Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hartford. He was the
youngest son in an old-fashioned family of ten children. His father
owned and cultivated a small farm; but spent the winters at the
shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom of Connecticut in
that day. When Elihu was sixteen years of age, his father died and the
lad soon after apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in his native
village.

He was an ardent reader of books from childhood up; and he was enabled
to gratify this taste by means of a small village library, which
contained several books of history, of which he was naturally fond. This
boy, however, was a shy, devoted student, brave to maintain what he
thought right, but so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar
when his parents were going to have company.

As his father's long sickness had kept him out of school for some time,
he was the more earnest to learn during his apprenticeship; particularly
mathematics, since he desired to become, among other things, a good
surveyor. He was obliged to work from ten to twelve hours a day at the
forge; but while he was blowing the bellows he employed his mind in
doing sums in his head. His biographer gives a specimen of these
calculations which he wrought out without making a single figure:--

"How many yards of cloth, three feet in width, cut into strips an inch
wide, and allowing half an inch at each end for the lap, would it
require to reach from the centre of the earth to the surface, and how
much would it all cost at a shilling a yard?"

He would go home at night with several of these sums done in his head,
and report the results to an elder brother who had worked his way
through Williams College. His brother would perform the calculations
upon a slate, and usually found his answers correct.

When he was about half through his apprenticeship he suddenly took it
into his head to learn Latin, and began at once through the assistance
of the same elder brother. In the evenings of one winter he read the
AEneid of Virgil; and, after going on for a while with Cicero and a few
other Latin authors, he began Greek. During the winter months he was
obliged to spend every hour of daylight at the forge, and even in the
summer his leisure minutes were few and far between. But he carried his
Greek grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting
for a large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black
fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjective or part of a verb,
without being noticed by his fellow-apprentices.

So he worked his way until he was out of his time, when he treated
himself to a whole quarter's schooling at his brother's school, where he
studied mathematics, Latin and other languages. Then he went back to the
forge, studying hard in the evenings at the same branches, until he had
saved a little money; when he resolved to go to New Haven, and spend a
winter in study. It was far from his thoughts, as it was from his means,
to enter Yale College; but he seems to have had an idea that the very
atmosphere of the college would assist him. He was still so timid that
he determined to work his way without asking the least assistance from a
professor or tutor.

He took lodgings at a cheap tavern in New Haven, and began the very next
morning a course of heroic study. As soon as the fire was made in the
sitting-room of the inn, which was at half-past four in the morning, he
took possession, and studied German until breakfast-time, which was
half-past seven. When the other boarders had gone to business, he sat
down to Homer's Iliad, of which he knew nothing, and with only a
dictionary to help him.

"The proudest moment of my life," he once wrote, "was when I had first
gained the full meaning of the first fifteen lines of that noble work. I
took a short triumphal walk in favor of that exploit."

Just before the boarders came back for their dinner, he put away all his
Greek and Latin books, and took up a work in Italian, because it was
less likely to attract the notice of the noisy crowd. After dinner he
fell again upon his Greek, and in the evening read Spanish until
bed-time. In this way he lived and labored for three months, a solitary
student in the midst of a community of students; his mind imbued with
the grandeurs and dignity of the past, while eating flapjacks and
molasses at a poor tavern.

Returning to his home in New Britain, he obtained the mastership of an
academy in a town near by: but he could not bear a life wholly
sedentary; and, at the end of a year, abandoned his school and became
what is called a "runner" for one of the manufacturers of New Britain.
This business he pursued until he was about twenty-five years of age,
when, tired of wandering, he came home again, and set up a grocery and
provision store, in which he invested all the money he had saved. Soon
came the commercial crash of 1837, and he was involved in the widespread
ruin. He lost the whole of his capital, and had to begin the world anew.

He resolved to return to his studies in the languages of the East.
Unable to buy or find the necessary books, he tied up his effects in a
small handkerchief, and walked to Boston, one hundred miles distant,
hoping there to find a ship in which he could work his passage across
the ocean, and collect oriental works from port to port. He could not
find a berth. He turned back, and walked as far as Worcester, where he
found work, and found something else which he liked better. There is an
Antiquarian Society at Worcester, with a large and peculiar library,
containing a great number of books in languages not usually studied,
such as the Icelandic, the Russian, the Celtic dialects, and others. The
directors of the Society placed all their treasures at his command, and
he now divided his time between hard study of languages and hard labor
at the forge. To show how he passed his days, I will copy an entry or
two from a private diary he then kept:--

"Monday, June 18. Headache; 40 pages Cuvier's Theory of the Earth; 64
pages French; 11 hours forging.

"Tuesday, June 19. 60 lines Hebrew; 30 pages French; 10 pages of Cuvier;
8 lines Syriac; 10 lines Danish; 10 lines Bohemian; 9 lines Polish; 15
names of stars; 10 hours forging.

"Wednesday, June 20. 25 lines Hebrew; 8 lines Syriac; 11 hours forging."

He spent five years at Worcester in such labors as these. When work at
his trade became slack, or when he had earned a little more money than
usual, he would spend more time in the library; but, on the other hand,
when work in the shop was pressing, he could give less time to study.
After a while, he began to think that he might perhaps earn his
subsistence in part by his knowledge of languages, and thus save much
waste of time and vitality at the forge. He wrote a letter to William
Lincoln, of Worcester, who had aided and encouraged him; and in this
letter he gave a short history of his life, and asked whether he could
not find employment in translating some foreign work into English. Mr.
Lincoln was so much struck with his letter that he sent it to Edward
Everett, and he having occasion soon after to address a convention of
teachers, read it to his audience as a wonderful instance of the pursuit
of knowledge under difficulties. Mr. Everett prefaced it by saying that
such a resolute purpose of improvement against such obstacles excited
his admiration, and even his veneration.

"It is enough," he added, "to make one who has good opportunities for
education hang his head in shame."

All this, including the whole of the letter, was published in the
newspapers, with eulogistic comments, in which the student was spoken of
as the Learned Blacksmith. The bashful scholar was overwhelmed with
shame at finding himself suddenly famous. However, it led to his
entering upon public life. Lecturing was then coming into vogue, and he
was frequently invited to the platform. Accordingly, he wrote a lecture,
entitled "Application and Genius," in which he endeavored to show that
there is no such thing as genius, but that all extraordinary attainments
are the results of application. After delivering this lecture sixty
times in one season, he went back to his forge at Worcester, mingling
study with labor in the old way.

On sitting down to write a new lecture for the following season, on the
"Anatomy of the Earth," a certain impression was made upon his mind,
which changed the current of his life. Studying the globe, he was
impressed with the _need_ that one nation has of other nations, and one
zone of another zone; the tropics producing what assuages life in the
northern latitudes, and northern lands furnishing the means of
mitigating tropical discomforts. He felt that the earth was made for
friendliness and cooeperation, not for fierce competition and bloody
wars.

Under the influence of these feelings, his lecture became an eloquent
plea for peace, and to this object his after life was chiefly devoted.
The dispute with England upon the Oregon boundary induced him to go to
England, with the design of traveling on foot from village to village,
preaching peace, and exposing the horrors and folly of war. His
addresses attracting attention, he was invited to speak to larger
bodies, and, in short, he spent twenty years of his life as a lecturer
upon peace, organizing Peace Congresses, advocating low uniform rates of
ocean postage, and spreading abroad among the people of Europe the
feeling which issued, at length, in the arbitration of the dispute
between the United States and Great Britain; an event which posterity
will, perhaps, consider the most important of this century. He heard
Victor Hugo say at the Paris Congress of 1850:--

"A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just
as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be amazed that such
a thing could ever have been."

If he had sympathetic hearers, he produced upon them extraordinary
effects. Nathaniel P. Rogers, one of the heroes of the Anti-slavery
agitation, chanced to hear him in Boston in 1845 on his favorite subject
of Peace. He wrote soon after:--

"I had been introduced to Elihu Burritt the day before, and was much
interested in his original appearance, and desirous of knowing him
further. I had not formed the highest opinion of his liberality. But on
entering the hall my friends and I soon forgot everything but the
speaker. The dim-lit hall, the handful audience, the contrast of both
with the illuminated chapel and ocean multitude assembled overhead,
bespeak painfully the estimation in which the great cause of peace is
held in Christendom. I wish all Christendom could have heard Elihu
Burritt's speech. One unbroken, unabated stream it was of profound and
lofty and original eloquence. I felt riveted to my seat till he finished
it. There was no oratory about it, in the ordinary sense of that word;
no graces of elocution. It was mighty thoughts radiating off from his
heated mind like the sparkles from the glowing steel on his own anvil,
getting on as they come out what clothing of language they might, and
thus having on the most appropriate and expressive imaginable. Not a
waste word, nor a wanting one. And he stood and delivered himself in a
simplicity and earnestness of attitude and gesture belonging to his
manly and now honored and distinguished trade. I admired the touch of
rusticity in his accent, amid his truly splendid diction, which
betokened, as well as the vein of solid sense that ran entirely through
his speech, that he had not been educated at the college. I thought of
ploughman Burns as I listened to blacksmith Burritt. Oh! what a dignity
and beauty labor imparts to learning."

Elihu Burritt spent the last years of his life upon a little farm which
he had contrived to buy in his native town. He was never married, but
lived with his sister and her daughters. He was not so very much richer
in worldly goods than when he had started for Boston with his property
wrapped in a small handkerchief. He died in March, 1879, aged sixty-nine
years.

MICHAEL REYNOLDS,

ENGINE-DRIVER.

Literature in these days throws light into many an out-of-the-way
corner. It is rapidly making us all acquainted with one another. A
locomotive engineer in England has recently written a book upon his art,
in order, as he says, "to communicate that species of knowledge which it
is necessary for an engine-driver to possess who aspires to take high
rank on the footplate!" He magnifies his office, and evidently regards
the position of an engineer as highly enviable.

"It is very _natural_," he remarks, "for those who are unacquainted with
locomotive driving to admire the life of an engine-man, and to imagine
how very pleasant it must be to travel on the engine. But they do not
think of the gradations by which alone the higher positions are reached;
they see only on the express engine the picturesque side of the result
of many years of patient observation and toil."

This passage was to me a revelation; for I had looked upon an engineer
and his assistant with some compassion as well as admiration, and have
often thought how extremely disagreeable it must be to travel on the
engine as they do. Not so Michael Reynolds, the author of this book, who
has risen from the rank of fireman to that of locomotive inspector on
the London and Brighton railroad. He tells us that a model engineer "is
possessed by a master passion--a passion for the monarch of speed." Such
an engineer is distinguished, also, for his minute knowledge of the
engine, and nothing makes him happier than to get some new light upon
one of its numberless parts. So familiar is he with it that his ear
detects the slightest variation in the beats of the machinery, and can
tell the shocks and shakes which are caused by a defective road from
those which are due to a defective engine. Even his nose acquires a
peculiar sensitiveness. In the midst of so much heat, he can detect that
which arises from friction before any mischief has been done. At every
rate of speed he knows just how his engine ought to sound, shake, and
smell.

Let us see how life passes on a locomotive, and what is the secret of
success in the business of an engineer. The art of arts in
engine-driving is the management of the fire. Every reader is aware that
taking care of a fire is something in which few persons become expert.
Most of us think that we ourselves possess the knack of it, but not
another individual of our household agrees with us. Now, a man born
with a genius for managing a locomotive is one who has a high degree of
the fire-making instinct. Mr. Reynolds distinctly says that a man may be
a good mechanic, may have even built locomotives, and yet, if he is not
a good "shovel-man," if he does not know how to manage his fire, he will
never rise to distinction in his profession. The great secret is to
build the fire so that the whole mass of fuel will ignite and burn
freely without the use of the blower, and so bring the engine to the
train with a fire that will last. When we see an engine blowing off
steam furiously at the beginning of the trip, we must not be surprised
if the train reaches the first station behind time, since it indicates a
fierce, thin fire, that has been rapidly ignited by the blower. An
accomplished engineer backs his engine to the train without any sign of
steam or smoke, but with a fire so strong and sound that he can make a
run of fifty miles in an hour without touching it.

The engineer, it appears, if he has an important run to make, comes to
his engine an hour before starting. His first business, on an English
railroad, is to read the notices, posted up in the engine house, of any
change in the condition of the road requiring special care. His next
duty is to inspect his engine in every part: first, to see if there is
water enough in the boiler, and that the fire is proceeding properly;
then, that he has the necessary quantity of water and coal in the
tender. He next gets into the pit under his engine, with the proper
tools, and inspects every portion of it, trying every nut and pin within
his reach from below. Then he walks around the engine, and particularly
notices if the oiling apparatus is exactly adjusted. Some parts require,
for example, four drops of oil every minute, and he must see that the
apparatus is set so as to yield just that quantity. He is also to look
into his tool-box, and see if every article is in its place. Mr.
Reynolds enumerates twenty-two objects which a good engineer will always
have within his reach, such as fire implements of various kinds,
machinist tools, lamps of several sorts, oiling vessels, a quantity of
flax and yarn, copper wire, a copy of the rules and his time-table; all
of which, are to be in the exact place designed for them, so that they
can be snatched in a moment.

One of the chief virtues of the engineer and his companion, the fireman,
is one which we are not accustomed to associate with their profession;
and that is cleanliness. On this point our author grows eloquent, and he
declares that a clean engineer is almost certain to be an excellent one
in every particular. The men upon a locomotive cannot, it is true, avoid
getting black smudge upon their faces. The point is that both the men
and their engines should be clean in all the essential particulars, so
that all the faculties of the men and all the devices of the engine
shall work with ease and certainty.

"There is something," he remarks, "so very degrading about dirt, that
even a poor beast highly appreciates clean straw. Cleanliness hath a
charm that hideth a multitude of faults, and it is not difficult to
trace a connection between habitual cleanliness and a respect for
general order, for punctuality, for truthfulness, for all placed in
authority."

Do you mark that sentence, reader? The spirit of the Saxon race speaks
in those lines. You observe that this author ranks among the virtues "a
respect for all placed in authority." That, of course, may be carried
too far; nevertheless, the strong races, and the worthy men of all
races, do cherish a respect for lawful authority. A good soldier is
_proud_ to salute his officer.

On some English railroads both engineers and engines are put to tests
much severer than upon roads elsewhere. Between Holyhead and Chester, a
distance of ninety-seven miles, the express trains run without stopping,
and they do this with so little strain that an engine performed the duty
every day for several years. A day's work of some crack engineers is to
run from London to Crewe and back again in ten hours, a distance of
three hundred and thirty miles, stopping only at Rugby for three minutes
on each trip. There are men who perform this service every working day
the whole year through, without a single delay. This is a very great
achievement, and can only be done by engineers of the greatest skill and
steadiness. It was long, indeed, before any man could do it, and even
now there are engineers who dare not take the risk. On the Hudson River
road some of the trains run from New York to Poughkeepsie, eighty miles,
without stopping, but not every engineer could do it at first, and very
often a train stopped at Peekskill to take in water. The water is the
difficulty, and the good engineer is one who wastes no water and no
coal.

Mr. Reynolds enumerates all the causes of accidents from the engine,
many of which cannot be understood by the uninitiated. As we read them
over, and see in how many ways an engine can go wrong, we wonder that a
train ever arrives at its journey's end in safety. At the conclusion of
this formidable list, the author confesses that it is incomplete, and
notifies young engineers that _nobody_ can teach them the innermost
secrets of the engine. Some of these, he remarks, require "years of
study," and even then they remain in some degree mysterious.
Nevertheless, he holds out to ambition the possibility of final success,
and calls upon young men to concentrate all their energies upon the
work.

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