Captains of Industry

J >> James Parton >> Captains of Industry

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"Self-reliance," he says, "is a grand element of character: it has won
Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship with men who
have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world's memory. Let
the master passion of the soul evoke undaunted energy in pursuit of the
attainment of one end, aiming for the highest in the spirit of the
lowest, prompted by the burning thought of reward, which sooner or later
will come."

We perceive that Michael Reynolds possesses one of the prime requisites
of success: he believes in the worth and dignity of his vocation; and in
writing this little book he has done something to elevate it in the
regard of others. To judge from some of his directions, I should suppose
that engineers in England are not, as a class, as well educated or as
intelligent as ours. Locomotive engineers in the United States rank very
high in intelligence and respectability of character.

MAJOR ROBERT PIKE,

FARMER.

I advise people who desire, above all things, to have a comfortable time
in the world to be good conservatives. Do as other people do, think as
other people think, swim with the current--that is the way to glide
pleasantly down the stream of life. But mark, O you lovers of inglorious
ease, the men who are remembered with honor after they are dead do not
do so! They sometimes _breast_ the current, and often have a hard time
of it, with the water splashing back in their faces, and the easy-going
crowd jeering at them as they pant against the tide.

This valiant, stalwart Puritan, Major Robert Pike, of Salisbury,
Massachusetts, who was born in 1616, the year in which Shakespeare died,
is a case in point. Salisbury, in the early day, was one of the frontier
towns of Massachusetts, lying north of the Merrimac River, and close to
the Atlantic Ocean. For fifty years it was a kind of outpost of that
part of the State. It lay right in the path by which the Indians of
Maine and Canada were accustomed to slink down along the coast, often
traveling on the sands of the beaches, and burst upon the settlements.
During a long lifetime Major Pike was a magistrate and personage in that
town, one of the leading spirits, upon whom the defense of the frontier
chiefly devolved.

Others were as brave as he in fighting Indians. Many a man could acquit
himself valiantly in battle who would not have the courage to differ
from the public opinion of his community. But on several occasions, when
Massachusetts was wrong, Major Pike was right; and he had the courage
sometimes to resist the current of opinion when it was swollen into a
raging torrent. He opposed, for example, the persecution of the Quakers,
which is such a blot upon the records both of New England and old
England. We can imagine what it must have cost to go against this policy
by a single incident, which occurred in the year 1659 in Robert Pike's
own town of Salisbury.

On a certain day in August, Thomas Macy was caught in a violent storm of
rain, and hurried home drenched to the skin. He found in his house four
wayfarers, who had also come in for shelter. His wife being sick in bed,
no one had seen or spoken to them. They asked him how far it was to
Casco Bay. From their dress and demeanor he thought they might be
Quakers, and, as it was unlawful to harbor persons of that sect, he
asked them to go on their way, since he feared to give offense in
entertaining them. As soon as the worst of the storm was over, they
left, and he never saw them again. They were in his house about three
quarters of an hour, during which he said very little to them, having
himself come home wet, and found his wife sick.

He was summoned to Boston, forty miles distant, to answer for this
offense. Being unable to walk, and not rich enough to buy a horse, he
wrote to the General Court, relating the circumstances, and explaining
his non-appearance. He was fined thirty shillings, and ordered to be
admonished by the governor. He paid his fine, received his reprimand,
and removed to the island of Nantucket, of which he was the first
settler, and for some time the only white inhabitant.

During this period of Quaker persecution, Major Pike led the opposition
to it in Salisbury, until, at length, William Penn prevailed upon
Charles II. to put an end to it in all his dominions. If the history of
that period had not been so carefully recorded in official documents, we
could scarcely believe to what a point the principle of authority was
then carried. One of the laws which Robert Pike dared openly to oppose
made it a misdemeanor for any one to exhort on Sunday who had not been
regularly ordained. He declared that the men who voted for that law had
broken their oaths, for they had sworn on taking their seats to enact
nothing against the just liberty of Englishmen. For saying this he was
pronounced guilty of "defaming" the legislature, and he was sentenced to
be disfranchised, disabled from holding any public office, bound to good
behavior, and fined twenty marks, equal to about two hundred dollars in
our present currency.

Petitions were presented to the legislature asking the remission of the
severe sentence. But even this was regarded as a criminal offense, and
proceedings were instituted against every signer. A few acknowledged
that the signing was an offense, and asked the forgiveness of the court,
but all the rest were required to give bonds for their appearance to
answer.

Another curious incident shows the rigor of the government of that day.
According to the Puritan law, Sunday began at sunset on Saturday
evening, and ended at sunset on Sunday evening. During the March thaw of
1680, Major Pike had occasion to go to Boston, then a journey of two
days. Fearing that the roads were about to break up, he determined to
start on Sunday evening, get across the Merrimac, which was then a
matter of difficulty during the melting of the ice, and make an early
start from the other side of the river on Monday morning. The gallant
major being, of course, a member of the church, and very religious, went
to church twice that Sunday. Now, as to what followed, I will quote the
testimony of an eye-witness, his traveling companion:--

"I do further testify that, though it was pretty late ere Mr. Burrows
(the clergyman) ended his afternoon's exercise, yet did the major stay
in his daughter's house till repetition of both forenoon and afternoon
sermons was over, and the duties of the day concluded with prayer; and,
after a little stay, to be sure the sun was down, then we mounted, and
not till then. The sun did indeed set in a cloud, and after we were
mounted, I do remember the major spake of lightening up where the sun
set; but I saw no sun."

A personal enemy of the major's brought a charge against him of
violating the holy day by starting on his journey _before_ the setting
of the sun. The case was brought for trial, and several witnesses were
examined. The accuser testified that "he did see Major Robert Pike ride
by his house toward the ferry upon the Lord's day when the sun was about
half an hour high." Another witness confirmed this. Another testified:--

"The sun did indeed set in a cloud, and, a little after the major was
mounted, there appeared a light where the sun went down, which soon
vanished again, possibly half a quarter of an hour."

Nevertheless, there were two witnesses who declared that the sun was not
down when the major mounted, and so this worthy gentleman, then
sixty-four years of age, a man of honorable renown in the commonwealth,
was convicted of "profaning the Sabbath," fined ten shillings, and
condemned to pay costs and fees, which were eight shillings more. He
paid his fine, and was probably more careful during the rest of his life
to mount on Sunday evenings by the almanac.

The special glory of this man's life was his steadfast and brave
opposition to the witchcraft mania of 1692. This deplorable madness was
in New England a mere transitory panic, from which the people quickly
recovered; but while it lasted it almost silenced opposition, and it
required genuine heroism to lift a voice against it. No country of
Europe was free from the delusion during that century, and some of its
wisest men were carried away by it. The eminent judge, Sir William
Blackstone, in his "Commentaries," published in 1765, used this
language:--

"To deny the existence of witchcraft is to flatly contradict the
revealed word of God, and the thing itself is a truth to which every
nation has in its turn borne testimony."

This was the conviction of that age, and hundreds of persons were
executed for practicing witchcraft. In Massachusetts, while the mania
lasted, fear blanched every face and haunted every house.

It was the more perilous to oppose the trials because there was a
mingling of personal malevolence in the fell business, and an individual
who objected was in danger of being himself accused. No station, no age,
no merit, was a sufficient protection. Mary Bradbury, seventy-five years
of age, the wife of one of the leading men of Salisbury, a woman of
singular excellence and dignity of character, was among the convicted.
She was a neighbor of Major Pike's, and a life-long friend.

In the height of the panic he addressed to one of the judges an argument
against the trials for witchcraft which is one of the most ingenious
pieces of writing to be found among the documents of that age. The
peculiarity of it is that the author argues on purely Biblical grounds;
for he accepted the whole Bible as authoritative, and all its parts as
equally authoritative, from Genesis to Revelation. His main point was
that witchcraft, whatever it may be, cannot be certainly proved against
any one. The eye, he said, may be deceived; the ear may be; and all the
senses. The devil himself may take the shape and likeness of a person or
thing, when it is not that person or thing. The truth on the subject, he
held, lay out of the range of mortal ken.

"And therefore," he adds, "I humbly conceive that, in such a difficulty,
it may be more safe, for the present, to let a guilty person live till
further discovery than to put an innocent person to death."

Happily this mania speedily passed, and troubled New England no more.
Robert Pike lived many years longer, and died in 1706, when he was
nearly ninety-one years of age. He was a farmer, and gained a
considerable estate, the whole of which he gave away to his heirs before
his death. The house in which he lived is still standing in the town of
Salisbury, and belongs to his descendants; for on that healthy coast
men, families, and houses decay very slowly. James S. Pike, one of his
descendants, the well-remembered "J. S. P." of the "Tribune's" earlier
day, and now an honored citizen of Maine, has recently written a little
book about this ancient hero who assisted to set his fellow-citizens
right when they were going wrong.

GEORGE GRAHAM,

CLOCK-MAKER, BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

It is supposed that the oldest clock in existence is one in the ancient
castle of Dover, on the southern coast of England, bearing the date,
1348. It has been running, therefore, five hundred and thirty-six years.
Other clocks of the same century exist in various parts of Europe, the
works of which have but one hand, which points the hour, and require
winding every twenty-four hours. From the fact of so many large clocks
of that period having been preserved in whole or in part, it is highly
probable that the clock was then an old invention.

But how did people measure time during the countless ages that rolled
away before the invention of the clock? The first time-measurer was
probably a post stuck in the ground, the shadow of which, varying in
length and direction, indicated the time of day, whenever the sun was
not obscured by clouds. The sun-dial, which was an improvement upon
this, was known to the ancient Jews and Greeks. The ancient Chinese and
Egyptians possessed an instrument called the Clepsydra (water-stealer),
which was merely a vessel full of water with a small hole in the bottom
by which the water slowly escaped. There were marks in the inside of the
vessel which showed the hour. An improvement upon this was made about
two hundred and thirty-five years before Christ by an Egyptian, who
caused the escaping water to turn a system of wheels; and the motion was
communicated to a rod which pointed to the hours upon a circle
resembling a clock-face. Similar clocks were made in which sand was used
instead of water. The hour-glass was a time-measurer for many centuries
in Europe, and all the ancient literatures abound in allusions to the
rapid, unobserved, running away of its sands.

The next advance was the invention of the wheel-and-weight-clock, such
as has been in use ever since. The first instrument of this kind may
have been made by the ancients; but no clear allusion to its existence
has been discovered earlier than 996, when Pope Sylvester II. is known
to have had one constructed. It was Christian Huygens, the famous Dutch
philosopher, who applied, in 1658, the pendulum to the clock, and thus
led directly to those more refined and subtle improvements, which render
our present clocks and watches among the least imperfect of all human
contrivances.

George Graham, the great London clock-maker of Queen Anne's and George
the First's time, and one of the most noted improvers of the clock, was
born in 1675. After spending the first thirteen years of his life in a
village in the North of England, he made his way to London, an
intelligent and well-bred Quaker boy; and there he was so fortunate as
to be taken as an apprentice by Tompion, then the most celebrated
clock-maker in England, whose name is still to be seen upon ancient
watches and clocks. Tompion was a most exquisite mechanic, proud of his
work and jealous of his name. He is the Tompion who figured in
Farquhar's play of "The Inconstant;" and Prior mentions him in his
"Essay on Learning," where he says that Tompion on a watch or clock was
proof positive of its excellence. A person once brought him a watch to
repair, upon which his name had been fraudulently engraved. He took up a
hammer and smashed it, and then selecting one of his own watches, gave
it to the astonished customer, saying: "Sir, here is a watch of my
making."

Graham was worthy to be the apprentice of such a master, for he not only
showed intelligence, skill, and fidelity, but a happy turn for
invention. Tompion became warmly attached to him, treated him as a son,
gave him the full benefit of his skill and knowledge, took him into
partnership, and finally left him sole possessor of the business. For
nearly half a century George Graham, Clock-maker, was one of the best
known signs in Fleet Street, and the instruments made in his shop were
valued in all the principal countries of Europe. The great clock at
Greenwich Observatory, made by him one hundred and fifty years ago, is
still in use and could hardly now be surpassed in substantial
excellence. The mural arch in the same establishment, used for the
testing of quadrants and other marine instruments, was also his work.
When the French government sent Maupertuis within the polar circle, to
ascertain the exact figure of the earth, it was George Graham,
Clock-maker of Fleet Street, who supplied the requisite instruments.

But it was not his excellence as a mechanic that causes his name to be
remembered at the present time. He made two capital inventions in
clock-machinery which are still universally used, and will probably
never be superseded. It was a common complaint among clock-makers, when
he was a young man, that the pendulum varied in length according to the
temperature, and consequently caused the clock to go too slowly in hot
weather, and too fast in cold. Thus, if a clock went correctly at a
temperature of sixty degrees, it would lose three seconds a day if the
temperature rose to seventy, and three more seconds a day for every
additional ten degrees of heat. Graham first endeavored to rectify this
inconvenience by making the pendulum of several different kinds of
metal, which was a partial remedy. But the invention by which he
overcame the difficulty completely, consisted in employing a column of
mercury as the "bob" of the pendulum. The hot weather, which lengthened
the steel rods, raised the column of mercury, and so brought the centre
of oscillation higher. If the column of mercury was of the right length,
the lengthening or the shortening of the pendulum was exactly
counterbalanced, and the variation of the clock, through changes of the
temperature, almost annihilated.

This was a truly exquisite invention. The clock he himself made on this
plan for Greenwich, after being in use a century and a half, requires
attention not oftener than once in fifteen months. Some important
discoveries in astronomy are due to the exactness with which Graham's
clock measures time. He also invented what is called the "dead
escapement," still used, I believe, in all clocks and watches, from the
commonest five-dollar watch to the most elaborate and costly regulator.
Another pretty invention of his was a machine for showing the position
and motions of the heavenly bodies, which was exceedingly admired by our
grandfathers. Lord Orrery having amused himself by copying this machine,
a French traveler who saw it complimented the maker by naming it an
Orrery, which has led many to suppose it to have been an invention of
that lord. It now appears, however, that the true inventor was the Fleet
Street clock-maker.

The merits of this admirable mechanic procured for him, while he was
still little more than a young man, the honor of being elected a member
of the Royal Society, the most illustrious scientific body in the
world. And a very worthy member he proved. If the reader will turn to
the Transactions of that learned society, he may find in them twenty-one
papers contributed by George Graham. He was, however, far from regarding
himself as a philosopher, but to the end of his days always styled
himself a clock-maker.

They still relate an anecdote showing the confidence he had in his work.
A gentleman who bought a watch of him just before departing for India,
asked him how far he could depend on its keeping the correct time.

"Sir," replied Graham, "it is a watch which I have made and regulated
myself; take it with you wherever you please. If after seven years you
come back to see me, and can tell me there has been a difference of five
minutes, I will return you your money."

Seven years passed, and the gentleman returned.

"Sir," said he, "I bring you back your watch."

"I remember," said Graham, "our conditions. Let me see the watch. Well,
what do you complain of?"

"Why," was the reply, "I have had it seven years, and there is a
difference of more than five minutes."

"Indeed!" said Graham. "In that case I return you your money."

"I would not part with my watch," said the gentleman, "for ten times the
sum I paid for it."

"And I," rejoined Graham, "would not break my word for any
consideration."

He insisted on taking back the watch, which ever after he used as a
regulator.

This is a very good story, and is doubtless substantially true; but no
watch was ever yet made which has varied as little as five minutes in
seven years. Readers may remember that the British government once
offered a reward of twenty thousand pounds sterling for the best
chronometer, and the prize was awarded to Harrison for a chronometer
which varied two minutes in a sailing voyage from England to Jamaica and
back.

George Graham died in 1751, aged seventy-six years, universally esteemed
as an ornament of his age and country. In Westminster Abbey, among the
tombs of poets, philosophers, and statesmen, may be seen the graves of
the two clock-makers, master and apprentice, Tompion and Graham.

JOHN HARRISON,

EXQUISITE WATCH-MAKER.

He was first a carpenter, and the son of a carpenter, born and reared in
English Yorkshire, in a village too insignificant to appear on any but a
county map. Faulby is about twenty miles from York, and there John
Harrison was born in 1693, when William and Mary reigned in England. He
was thirty-five years of age before he was known beyond his own
neighborhood. He was noted there, however, for being a most skillful
workman. There is, perhaps, no trade in which the degrees of skill are
so far apart as that of carpenter. The difference is great indeed
between the clumsy-fisted fellow who knocks together a farmer's pig-pen,
and the almost artist who makes a dining-room floor equal to a piece of
mosaic. Dr. Franklin speaks with peculiar relish of one of his young
comrades in Philadelphia, as "the most exquisite joiner" he had ever
known.

It was not only in carpentry that John Harrison reached extraordinary
skill and delicacy of stroke. He became an excellent machinist, and was
particularly devoted from an early age to clock-work. He was a student
also in the science of the day. A contemporary of Newton, he made
himself capable of understanding the discoveries of that great man, and
of following the Transactions of the Royal Society in mathematics,
astronomy, and natural philosophy.

Clock-work, however, was his ruling taste as a workman, for many years,
and he appears to have set before him as a task the making of a clock
that should surpass all others. He says in one of his pamphlets that, in
the year 1726, when he was thirty-three years of age, he finished two
large pendulum clocks which, being placed in different houses some
distance apart, differed from each other only one second in a month. He
also says that one of his clocks, which he kept for his own use, the
going of which he compared with a fixed star, varied from the true time
only one minute in ten years.

Modern clock-makers are disposed to deride these extraordinary claims,
particularly those of Paris and Switzerland. We know, however, that John
Harrison was one of the most perfect workmen that ever lived, and I find
it difficult to believe that a man whose works were so true could be
false in his words.

In perfecting these amateur clocks he made a beautiful invention, the
principle of which is still employed in other machines besides
clock-work. Like George Graham, he observed that the chief cause of
irregularity in a well-made clock was the varying length of the
pendulum, which in warm weather expanded and became a little longer, and
in cold weather became shorter. He remedied this by the invention of
what is often called the gridiron pendulum, made of several bars of
steel and brass, and so arranged as to neutralize and correct the
tendency of the pendulum to vary in length. Brass is very sensitive to
changes of temperature, steel much less so; and hence it is not
difficult to arrange the pendulum so that the long exterior bars of
steel shall very nearly curb the expansion and contraction of the
shorter brass ones.

While he was thus perfecting himself in obscurity, the great world was
in movement also, and it was even stimulating his labors, as well as
giving them their direction.

The navigation of the ocean was increasing every year in importance,
chiefly through the growth of the American colonies and the taste for
the rich products of India. The art of navigation was still imperfect.
In order that the captain of a ship at sea may know precisely where he
is, he must know two things: how far he is from the equator, and how far
he is from a certain known place, say Greenwich, Paris, Washington.
Being sure of those two things, he can take his chart and mark upon it
the precise spot where his ship is at a given moment. Then he knows how
to steer, and all else that he needs to know in order to pursue his
course with confidence.

When John Harrison was a young man, the art of navigation had so far
advanced that the distance from the equator, or the latitude, could be
ascertained with certainty by observation of the heavenly bodies. One
great difficulty remained to be overcome--the finding of the longitude.
This was done imperfectly by means of a watch which kept Greenwich time
as near as possible. Every fine day the captain could ascertain by an
observation of the sun just when it was twelve o'clock. If, on looking
at this chronometer, he found that by Greenwich time it was quarter past
two, he could at once ascertain his distance from Greenwich, or in other
words, his longitude.

But the terrible question was, how near right is the chronometer? A
variation of a very few minutes would make a difference of more than a
hundred miles.

To this day, no perfect time-keeper has ever been made. From an early
period, the governments of commercial nations were solicitous to find a
way of determining the longitude that would be sufficiently correct.
Thus, the King of Spain, in 1598, offered a reward of a thousand crowns
to any one who should discover an approximately correct method. Soon
after, the government of Holland offered ten thousand florins. In 1714
the English government took hold of the matter, and offered a series of
dazzling prizes: Five thousand pounds for a chronometer that would
enable a ship six months from home to get her longitude within sixty
miles; seven thousand five hundred pounds, if within forty miles; ten
thousand pounds if within thirty miles. Another clause of the bill
offered a premium of twenty thousand pounds for the invention of any
method whatever, by means of which the longitude could be determined
within thirty miles. The bill appears to have been drawn somewhat
carelessly; but the substance of it was sufficiently plain, namely, that
the British Government was ready to make the fortune of any man who
should enable navigators to make their way across the ocean in a
straight line to their desired port.

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