SIR HENRY BESSEMER.
At eighteen years of age he went to London, "knowing no one," he says, "and myself unknown,—a mere cipher in a vast sea of human enterprise." He soon found a place to work as modeller and designer, engraving a large number of original designs on steel, with a diamond point, for patent-medicine labels. A year later he exhibited one of his models at the Royal Academy. His inventive brain and observing eye were always alert in some new direction. Having ascertained that the Government lost thousands of pounds annually by the transfer of adhesive stamps from old deeds to new ones, he determined to devise a stamp which could not be used twice.
For several months he worked earnestly, at night after his daily tasks were over, and in secret, thinking how richly the Government would reward him if he succeeded. At last he produced a die of unique design, which perforated a parchment deed with four hundred little holes. He hastened to the Stamp officials to show his work. They were greatly pleased, and asked him which he preferred for his reward, a sum of money, or the position of Superintendent of Stamps, with a salary of three or four thousand dollars a year. He delightedly chose the latter, as that would make him comfortable for life. There was another reason for his delight; for being engaged to be married, he would have no solicitude now about daily needs: life would flow on as smoothly as a river.
At once he visited the young lady, and told her of his great success. She listened eagerly, and then said, "Yes, I understand this; but surely, if all stamps had adateput upon them, they could not at a future time be used without detection." His spirits fell. He confessed afterward that, "while he felt pleased and proud of the clever and simple suggestion of the young lady, he saw also that all his more elaborate system, the result of months of toil, was shattered to pieces by it." What need for four hundred holes in a die, when a single date was more effective? He soon worked out a die with movable dates, and with frankness and honor presented it before the Government officials. They saw its preferableness: the new plan was adopted by Act of Parliament; the old stamps were called in and new ones issued; and then the young inventor was informed that his services as Superintendent of Stamps, at three thousand dollars a year, were not needed.
But surely the Government, which was to save a half million dollars a year, would repay him for his months of labor and thought! Associations, like individuals, are very apt to forget favors, when once the desired end is attained. The Premier had resigned; and, after various promises and excuses, a lawyer in the Stamp Office informed him that he made the new stamp of his own free will, and there was no money to be given him. "Sad and dispirited, and with a burning sense of injustice overpowering all other feelings," says young Bessemer, "I went my way from the Stamp Office, too proud to ask as a favor that which was indubitably my right."
Alas! that he must learn thus early the selfishness of the world! But he took courage; for, had he not made one real invention? and it must be in his power to make others. When he was twenty-five he produced a type-casting machine; but so opposed was it by the compositors, that it was finally abandoned. He also invented a machine for making figured Utrecht velvet; and some of his productions were used in the state apartments of Windsor Castle.
A little later his attention was accidentally called to bronze powder, he having bought a small portion to ornament his sister's album. The powder, made in Germany, cost only twenty-two cents a pound in the raw material, and sold for twenty-two dollars. Here was a wonderful profit. Why could he not discover the process of making it? He worked for eighteen months, trying all sorts of experiments, and failed. But failure to a great mind never really means failure; so, after six months, he tried again, and—succeeded. He knew little about patents, had been recently defrauded by the Government; and he determined that this discovery should be kept a secret. He made a small apparatus, and worked it himself, sending out a travelling-man with the product. That which cost him less than onedollar was sold for eighteen. A fortune seemed now really within his grasp.
A friend, assured of his success, put fifty thousand dollars into the business. Immediately Bessemer made plans of all the machinery required, sent various parts to as many different establishments, lest his secret be found out, and then put the pieces of his self-acting machines together. Five assistants were engaged at high wages, under pledge of secrecy. At first he made one thousand per cent profit; and now, in these later years, the profit is three hundred per cent. Three of the assistants have died; and Mr. Bessemer has turned over the business and the factory to the other two. The secret of making the bronze powder has never been told. Even Mr. Bessemer's oldest son had reached manhood before he ever entered the locked room where it was made.
For ten years the inventor now turned his attention to the construction of railway carriages, centrifugal pumps, etc. His busy brain could not rest. When frequent explosions in coal-mines occasioned discussion throughout the country, he made, at large expense, a working model for ventilating mines, and offered to explain it to a committee of the House of Commons. His offer was declined with thanks. A little investigation on the part of great statesmen would have been scarcely out of place.
At the great exhibition in London in 1851, he exhibited several machines,—one for grinding andpolishing plate glass, and another for draining, in an hour, an acre of land covered with water a foot deep. The crowd looked at them, called the inventor "the ingenious Mr. Bessemer," and passed on. Two years later he made some improvements in war implements, and submitted his plans to the Woolwich Arsenal; but they were declined, without thanks even. Some other men might have become discouraged; but Mr. Bessemer knew that obstacles only strengthen and develop men.
The improved ordnance having been brought to the knowledge of Napoleon III., he encouraged the inventor, and furnished the money to carry forward the experiments. While the guns were being tested at Vincennes, an officer remarked, "If you cannot get stronger metal for your guns, such heavy projectiles will be of little use." And then Mr. Bessemer began to ask himself if he could not improve iron. But he had never studied metallurgy. This, however, did not deter him; for he immediately obtained the best books on the subject, and visited the iron-making districts. Then he bought an old factory at Baxter House, where Richard Baxter used to live, and began to experiment for himself. After a whole year of labor he succeeded in greatly improving cast-iron, making it almost as white as steel.
Could he not improve steel also? For eighteen months he built and pulled down one furnace after another, at great expense. At last "the idea struckhim," he says, of making cast-iron malleable by forcing air into the metal when in a fluid state, cast-iron being a combination of iron and carbon. When oxygen is forced in, it unites with the carbon, and thus the iron is left nearly pure. The experiment was tried at the factory, in the midst of much trepidation, as the union of the compressed air and the melted iron produced an eruption like a volcano; but when the combustion was over, the result was steel.
Astonished and delighted, after two years and a half of labor, Bessemer at once took out a patent; and the following week, by request, Aug. 11, 1856, read a paper before the British Association, on "The manufacture of malleable iron and steel without fuel." There was great ridicule made beforehand. Said one leading steel-maker to another. "I want you to go with me this morning. There is a fellow who has come down from London to read a paper on making steel from cast-iron without fuel! Ha! ha! ha!"
The paper was published in the "Times," and created a great sensation. Crowds hastened to Baxter House to see the wonderful process. In three weeks Mr. Bessemer had sold one hundred thousand dollars worth of licenses to make steel by the new and rapid method. Fame, as well as great wealth, seemed now assured, when lo! in two months, it being found that only certain kinds of iron could be worked, the newspapers began to ridicule the new invention, and scientists and business men declared the method visionary, and worse than useless.
Mr. Bessemer collected a full portfolio of these scathing criticisms; but he was not the man to be disconcerted or cast down. Again he began the labor of experimenting, and found that phosphorus in the iron was the real cause of the failure. For three long years he pursued his investigations. His best friends tried to make him desist from what the world had proved to be an impracticable thing. Sometimes he almost distrusted himself, and thought he would give up trying, and then the old desire came back more strongly than ever. At last, success was really assured, but nobody would believe it. Every one said, "Oh, this is the thing which made such a blaze two or three years ago, and which was a failure."
Mr. Bessemer took several hundredweight of the new steel to some Manchester friends, that their workmen might try it, without knowing from whence it came. They detected no difference between this which cost thirty dollars a ton, and what they were then using at three hundred dollars a ton.
But nobody wanted to buy the new steel. Two years went by in this fruitless urging for somebody to take up the manufacture of the new metal. Finally, Bessemer induced a friend to unite with him, and they erected works, and began to make steel. At first the dealers would buy only twentyor thirty pounds; then the demand steadily increased. At last the large manufacturers awoke to the fact that Bessemer was underselling them by one hundred dollars a ton, and they hastened to pay a royalty for making steel by the new process.
But all obstacles were not yet overcome. The Government refused to make steel guns; the shipbuilders were afraid to touch it; and when the engineer of the London and North-western Railway was asked to use steel rails, he exclaimed, excitedly, "Mr. Bessemer, do you wish to see me tried for manslaughter?" Now, steel rails are used the world over, at the same cost as iron formerly, and are said to last twenty times as long as iron rails.
Prejudice at last wore away, and in 1866, the "Bessemer process," the conversion of crude iron into steel by forcing cold air through it for fifteen or twenty minutes, was bringing to its inventor an income of five hundred thousand dollars a year! Fame had now come, as well as wealth. In 1874, he was made President of the Iron and Steel Institute, to succeed the Duke of Devonshire. The Institute of Civil Engineers gave him the Telford Gold Medal; the Society of Arts, the Albert Gold Medal. Sweden made him honorary member of her Iron Board; Hamburg gave him the freedom of the city; and the Emperor of Austria conferred upon him the honor of Knight Commander of the Order of Francis Joseph, sending a complimentary letter in connection with the jewelled cross and circular collar of the order. Napoleon III. wished to give him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, but the English Government would not permit him to wear it; the Emperor therefore presented him in person with a gold medal weighing twelve ounces. Berlin and the King of Wurtemburg sent him gold medals. In 1879 he was made Fellow of the Royal Society, and the same year was knighted by Queen Victoria. In 1880 the freedom of the city of London was presented to him in a gold casket; the only other great discoverers who have received this distinction being Dr. Jenner, who introduced vaccination, and Sir Rowland Hill, the author of penny postage. In the United States, which gives no ribbons or decorations, Indiana has appropriately named a flourishing town after him.
It is estimated that Sir Henry Bessemer's one discovery of making steel has saved the world, in the last twenty-one years, above five thousand million dollars.
When his patent expired in 1870, he had received in royalties over five million dollars. In his steel works at Sheffield, after buying in all the licenses sold in 1856, when the new process seemed a failure, the profits every two months equalled the original capital, or in fourteen years the company increased the original capital eighty-one times by the profits.
How wise it proved that the country lad did not obtain the permanent position of superintendent of stamps, at three thousand dollars a year!
Rich beyond his highest hopes, the friend of such eminent and progressive men as the King of the Belgians, who visits Denmark Hill, Sir Henry has not ceased his inventions. Knowing the terrors of sea-sickness, he designed a great swinging saloon, seventy feet by thirty, in the midst of a sea-going vessel named the "Bessemer." The experiment cost one hundred thousand dollars, but has not yet proved successful. In 1877, when sixty-four years old, he began to devote himself to the study of Herschel's works on optics, and has since constructed an immense and novel telescope, which magnifies five thousand times. The instrument is placed in a comfortable observatory, so that the investigator can either sit or stand while making his observations. "The observing room, with its floor, windows, and dome, revolve and keep pace automatically with every motion of the telescope." This is accomplished by hydraulic power.
No wonder that Bessemer has been called the "great captain of modern civilization." He has revolutionized one of the most important of the world's industries; he has fought obstacles at every step,—poverty, the ridicule of the press, the indifference of his countrymen, and the cupidity of men who would steal his inventions or appropriate the results. He has earned leisure, but he rarely takes it. His has been a life of labor, prosecuted with indomitable will and energy. He has taken out one hundred and twenty patents, forwhich the specifications and drawings fill seven large volumes, all made by himself. The world had at last come to know and honor the boy who came to London at the age of eighteen, "a mere cipher in a vast sea of human enterprise." He made his way to greatness unaided, save by his helpful wife.
Sir Henry died on the fifteenth of March, 1898, leaving an immense fortune, which, nevertheless, was not inordinate when compared with the services rendered by him to mankind; and a stainless name. The unfair treatment which had embittered his earlier days had been atoned for by the Queen granting him a title in recognition of his invention accepted by the Post-Office, and he had come to be regarded as one of the greatest benefactors of modern times. Such a life, crowned with such a success, is calculated to be a mighty inspiration to every ambitious youth.
I spent a day, with great interest, in visiting the worsted mills and warehouses at Saltaire, just out from Bradford, England, which cover about ten acres. The history of the proprietor, Sir Titus Salt, reads like a romance. A poor boy, the son of a plain Yorkshire man, at nineteen in a loose blouse he was sorting and washing wool; a little later, a good salesman, a faithful Christian worker and the superintendent of a Sunday school.
At thirty-three, happening to be in Liverpool, he observed on the docks some huge pieces of dirty-looking alpaca wool. They had long lain in the warehouses, and becoming a nuisance to the owners, were soon to be reshipped to Peru. Young Salt took away a handful of the wool in his handkerchief, scoured and combed it, and was amazed at its attractive appearance. His father and friends advised him strongly to have nothing to do with the dirty stuff, as he could sell it to no one; and if he attempted to make cloth from it himself, he ran a great risk of failure. Finally he said, "I am going into this alpaca affair right and left, and I'll either make myself a man or a mouse."
SIR TITUS SALT.
Returning to Liverpool, he bought the whole three hundred bales for a small sum, and toiled diligently till proper machinery was made for the new material. The result was a great success. In three years over two million pounds of alpaca wool were imported, and now four million pounds are brought to Bradford alone. Employment was soon furnished to thousands, laborers coming from all over Great Britain and Germany. Ten years later Mr. Salt was made mayor of Bradford; ten years after this a member of Parliament, and ten years later still a baronet by Queen Victoria,—a great change from the boy in his soiled coarse blouse, but he deserved it all. He was a remarkable man in many ways. Even when worth his millions, and giving lavishly on every hand, he would save blank leaves and scraps of paper for writing, and lay them aside for future use. He was an early riser, always at the works before the engines were started. It used to be said of him, "Titus Salt makes a thousand pounds before others are out of bed." He was punctual to the minute, most exact, and unostentatious. After he was knighted, it was no uncommon thing for him to take a poor woman and her baby in the carriage beside him, or a tired workman, or scatter hundreds of tracts in a village where he happened to be. Once a gypsy, not knowing who he was, asked him to buy a broom. To her astonishment, he bought all she was carrying!
The best of his acts, one which he had thoughtout carefully, as he said, "to do good to his fellow-men," was the building of Saltaire for his four thousand workmen. When asked once what he had been reading of late, he replied. "Alpaca. If you had four or five thousand people to provide for every day, you would not have much time left for reading." Saltaire is a beautiful place on the banks of the river Aire, clean and restful. In the centre of the town stands the great six-story mill, well-ventilated, lighted, and warmed, five hundred and forty-five feet long, of light-colored stone, costing over a half million dollars. The four engines of eighteen hundred horse-power consume fifteen thousand tons of coal per year. The weaving shed, covering two acres, holds twelve hundred looms, which make eighteen miles of fabric per day.
The homes of the work-people are an honor to the capitalist. They are of light stone, like the mill, two stories high, each containing parlor, kitchen, pantry, and three bedrooms or more, well ventilated and tasteful. Flower beds are in every front yard, with a vegetable garden in the rear. No broken carts or rubbish are to be seen. Not satisfied to make Saltaire simply healthful, by proper sanitary measures, and beautiful, for which Napoleon III. made him one of the Legion of Honor, Mr. Salt provided school buildings at a cost of $200,000, a Congregational church, costing $80,000, Italian in style,—as are the other buildings,—a hospital for sick or injured, and forty-five pretty almshouses,like Italian villas, where the aged and infirm have a comfortable home. Each married man and his wife receive $2.50 weekly, and each single man or woman $1.87 for expenses. Once a year Mr. Salt and his family used to take tea with the inmates, which was a source of great delight.
Believing that "indoor washing is most pernicious, and a fruitful source of disease, especially to the young," he built twenty-four baths, at a cost of $35,000, and public wash-houses. These are supplied with three steam engines and six washing machines. Each person bringing clothes is provided with a rubbing and boiling tub, into which steam and hot and cold water are conveyed by pipes. The clothes are dried by hot air, and can be washed, dried, mangled, and folded in an hour. In Sweden, I found the same dislike to having washing done in the homes, and clothes are usually carried to the public wash-houses.
Perhaps the most interesting of all Mr. Salt's gifts to his workmen is the Saltaire Club and Institute, costing $125,000; a handsome building, with large reading-room supplied with daily papers and current literature, a library, lecture-hall for eight hundred persons, a "School of Art," with models, drawings, and good teachers, a billiard-room with four tables, a room for scientific study, each student having proper appliances for laboratory work, a gymnasium and drill-room nearly sixty feet square, an armory for rifle-practice, and a smoking-room,though Mr. Salt did not smoke. The membership fee for all this study and recreation is only thirty seven cents for each three months. Opposite the great mill is a dining-hall, where a plate of meat can be purchased for four cents, a bowl of soup for two cents, and a cup of tea or coffee for one cent. If the men prefer to bring their own food, it is cooked free of charge. The manager has a fixed salary, so that there is no temptation to scrimp the buyers.
Still another gift was made to the work-people; a park of fourteen acres, with croquet and archery grounds, music pavilion, places for boating and swimming, and walks with beautiful flowers. No saloon has ever been allowed in Saltaire. Without the temptation of the beer-shops, the boys have grown to intelligent manhood, and the girls to virtuous womanhood. Sir Titus Salt's last gift to his workmen was a Sunday-school building costing $50,000, where are held the "model Sunday schools of the country," say those who have attended the meetings. No wonder, at the death of this man, 40,000 people came to his burial,—members of Parliament, clergymen, workingmen's unions, and ragged schools. No wonder that statues have been erected to his memory, and that thousands go every year to Saltaire, to see what one capitalist has done for his laborers. No fear of strikes in his workshops; no socialism talked in the clean and pretty homes of the men; no squalid poverty, no depraving ignorance.
That capital is feeling its responsibility in this matter of homes for laborers is one of the hopeful signs of the times. We shall come, sometime, to believe with the late President Chadbourne, "The rule now commonly acted upon is that business must be cared for, and men must care for themselves. The principle of action, in the end, must be thatmen must be cared for, and business must be subservient to this great work."
If, as Spurgeon has well said, "Home is the grandest of all institutions," capital can do no better work than look to the homes of the laborer. It is not the mansion which the employer builds for himself, but the home which he builds for his employé, which will insure a safe country for his children to dwell in. If discontent and poverty surround his palace, its foundations are weak; if intelligence has been disseminated, and comfort promoted by his unselfish thought for others, then he leaves a goodly heritage for his children.
The small world which lives in elegant houses knows little of the great world in dingy apartments with bare walls and empty cupboards. Those who walk or ride in the sunshine often forget the darkness of the mines, or the tiresome treadmill of the factories.
Over a century ago, in Lyons, France, lived a man who desired to make the lives of the toilers brighter and happier. Joseph Jacquard, the son of a silk-weaver who died early, began his young manhood, the owner of two looms and a comfortable little home. He had married Claudine Boichon, the daughter of a goldsmith who expected to give his daughter a marriage portion, but was unable from loss of property. Jacquard loved her just as devotedly, however, as though she had brought him money. A pretty boy was born into their home, and no family was happier in all France. But the young loom-owner saw the poor weavers working from four in the morning till nine at night, in crowded rooms, whole families often bending over a loom, their chests shrunken and their cheeks sallowfrom want of air and sunlight; and their faces dull and vacant from the monotony of unvaried toil. There were no holidays, no walks in the fields among the flowers, no reading of books, nothing but the constant routine which wore out body and mind together. There was no home-life; little children grew pinched and old; and mothers went too early to their graves. If work stopped, they ate the bread of charity, and went to the almshouse. The rich people of Lyons were not hard-hearted, but they did notthink; they were too busy with their parties and their marriages; too busy buying and selling that they might grow richer. But Jacquard was always thinking how he could lighten the labor of the silk-weavers by some invention.
The manufacture of silk had become a most important industry. Seventeen hundred years before Christ the Chinese had discovered the making of silk from silk-worms, and had cultivated mulberry-trees. They forbade anybody to export the eggs or to disclose the process of making the fabric, under penalty of death. The Roman Emperor Justinian determined to wrest this secret from China, and thus revive the resources of his empire. He sent two monks, who ostensibly preached Christianity, but in reality studied silk-worms, and, secreting some eggs in two hollow reeds, returned to Justinian, and breaking these canes, laid the eggs on the lap of the beautiful Empress Theodora. From this the art spread into Italy, and thence into France.
The more Jacquard thought how he could help the silk-weavers of France the more he became absorbed, and forgot that money was needed to support his family. Soon the looms had to be sold at auction, with his small home. The world ridiculed, and his relatives blamed him; but Claudine his wife encouraged him, and prophesied great fame for him in the future. She sold her little treasures, and even her bed, to pay his debts. Finally, when there was no food in the house, with tears in his eyes, Jacquard left his wife and child, to become a laborer for a lime-burner in a neighboring town. Claudine went to work in a straw-bonnet factory; and for sixteen years they battled with poverty.
Then the French Revolution burst upon Lyons in 1793. Her crime before such murderers as Robespierre and Marat was that she was the friend of Louis XVI. Sixty thousand men were sent against her by the so-called Republicans, who were commanded to utterly destroy her, and write over the ruins, "Lyons made war upon liberty; Lyons is no more." Six thousand persons were put to death, their houses burned, and twelve thousand exiled; among them Jacquard.
His only child, a brave boy of sixteen, had joined the Republican ranks, that he might fight against the foreign armies of England, Austria, and Naples, who had determined, under Pitt, to crush out the new government. At the boy's earnest request his father enlisted with him, and together they marchedtoward the Rhine. In one of the first battles a cannon-ball struck the idolized son, who fell expiring in Jacquard's arms. Covered with the blood of his only child, he dug a grave for him on the battle-field; and exhausted and heart-broken went to the hospital till his discharge was obtained.
He returned to Lyons and sought his poor wife. At last he found her in the outskirts of the city, living in a hay-loft, and earning the barest pittance by spreading out linen for the laundresses to dry. She divided her crusts with her husband, while they wept together over their irreparable loss. She soon died of grief, but, with her last words, bade Jacquard go forward in developing his genius, and have trust in God, who would yet show him the way of success. Blessed Claudine! A sweet, beautiful soul, shining like a star in the darkness of the French Revolution.
Jacquard with all earthly ties severed went back to the seclusion of inventing. After his day's work was done as a laborer, he studied on his machine for silk-weaving. Finally, after seven years,—a long time to patiently develop an idea,—he had produced a loom which would decrease the number of workmen at each machine, by one person. The model was placed at the Paris Industrial Exposition in 1801; and the maker was awarded a bronze medal. In gratitude for this discovery he went to the image of the Virgin which stood on a high hill, and for nine days ascended daily the steps of thesacred place. Then he returned to his work, and seating himself before a Vaucanson loom, which contained the germ of his own, he consecrated himself anew to the perfecting of his invention.
Jacques de Vaucanson, who died when Jacquard was thirty years old, was one of the most celebrated mechanicians of France. His automatons were the wonder of the age. He exhibited a duck which, when moved, ate and drank like a live one. The figure would stretch out its neck for food, and swallow it: walk, swim, dabble in the water, and quack most naturally. His musician, playing the flageolet with the left hand, and beating thetambourinewith the right, executing many pieces of difficult music with great accuracy, was an astonishment to every body. He had been appointed inspector of silk-factories at Lyons, and, because he made some improvements in machines, he was pelted with stones by the workmen, who feared that they would thereby lose their labor. He revenged himself by making a machine which wove, brocaded, and colored at the same time, and was worked by a donkey!
It remained for Jacquard to make the Vaucanson loom of the utmost practical use to Lyons and to the world. After a time he was not only able to dispense with one workman at each loom, but he made machinery do the work of three men and two women at each frame. The city authorities sent a model of this machine to Paris, that the Emperor Napoleonmight examine it. So pleased was he that he at once sent for Jacquard to come to Paris. The latter had previously invented a machine for making fishing-nets, now used in producing Nottingham lace. When brought before Bonaparte, and Carnot the Minister of the Interior, the latter asked, "Is it you then, who pretend to do a thing which is impossible for man,—to make a knot upon a tight thread?"
Jacquard answered the brusque inquiry by setting up a machine, and letting the incredulous minister see for himself.
The Emperor made Jacquard welcome to theConservatoire des Arts et Metiers, where he could study books and machines to his heart's content, and gave him a pension of about twelve hundred dollars for his discovery. When he had, with his own hands, woven a magnificent brocaded silk dress for the Empress Josephine, he returned to Lyons to set up the Jacquard looms. His name began to be lauded everywhere. Claudine's prophecies had at last come true. She had given her life to help him; but she could not live to share his honors.
Soon, however, the tide of praise turned. Whole families found themselves forced into the street for lack of work, as the looms were doing what their hands had done. Bands of unemployed men were shouting, "Behold the traitor! Let him provide for our wives and children now driven as mendicants from door to door; or let him, the destroyer of thepeoples' labor, share in the death which he has prepared for us!" The authorities seemed unable to quell the storm, and by their orders the new loom was broken in pieces on the public square. "The iron," says Jacquard, "was sold as old iron; the wood, for fuel." One day he was seized by a crowd of starving workmen, who knocked him down, and dragged him to the banks of the Rhone, where he would have been drowned at once, had not the police rescued him, bleeding and nearly dead. He left the city overwhelmed with astonishment and sorrow. Soon Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and America were using the Jacquard looms, largely increasing the manufacture and sale of silk, and therefore the number of laborers. The poor men of Lyons awoke to the sad fact, that by breaking up Jacquard's machines, they had put the work of silk-weaving into other hands all over the world; and idleness was proving their ruin. They might have doubled and trebled the number of their factories, and benefited labor a thousand-fold.
The inventor refused to take out a patent for himself, nor would he accept any offers made him by foreigners, because he thought all his services belonged to France. He loved the working people, who, for twenty years, were too blind to see it.
He removed to a little home and garden at Oullins, near Lyons, the use of which had been given him for life, where he could hear the sound of his precious looms on which he had worked for sixtyyears, and which his city had at last adopted. Here he attended his garden, and went every morning to early church, distributing each day some small pieces of money to poor children. As old age came on, Lyons realized the gratitude due her great inventor. A silver medal was awarded him, and then the grand distinction of the cross of the Legion of Honor.
People from the neighboring towns visited Oullins, and pointed out with pride the noble old man at eighty-four, sitting by his garden-wall, dressed like a workman in his long black tunic, but wearing his broad red ribbon with his cross of honor. Illustrious travellers and statesmen visited him whose fame was now spread through Europe and America.
Toinette, a faithful servant who had known and loved Claudine, watched over the pure-hearted Jacquard till death came, Aug. 7, 1834. Six years after, Lyons, which once broke his machine and nearly killed him, raised a beautiful statue of him in the public square. The more than seventy thousand looms in the city, employing two hundred thousand workmen, are grander monuments even than the statue. The silk-weavers are better housed and fed than formerly. The struggling, self-sacrificing man, who might have been immensely rich as well as famous, was an untold blessing to labor and to the world.
Among the hills of New Hampshire, in a lonely, unpainted house, Horace Greeley was born, Feb. 3, 1811, the third of seven children. His father was a plain farmer, hard-working, yet not very successful, but aided by a wife of uncommon energy and good spirits, notwithstanding her many cares. Besides her housework, and spinning, and making the children's clothes, she hoed in the garden, raked and loaded hay to help her husband, laughing and singing all day long, and telling her feeble little son, Horace, stories and legends all the evening. Her first two children having died, this boy was especially dear. Mrs. Greeley was a great reader of such books as she could obtain, and remembered all she read. It requires no great discernment to see from whence Horace Greeley derived his intense love for reading, and his boundless energy.
HORACE GREELEY.
He learned to read, one can scarcely tell how. When two years old, he would pore over the Bible, as he lay on the floor, and ask questions about the letters; at three, he went to the "district school,"often carried through the deep snow on the shoulders of one of his aunts, or on the back of an older boy. He soon stood at the head of his little class in spelling and reading, "and took it so much to heart when he did happen to lose his place, that he would cry bitterly; so that some boys, when they had gained the right to get above him, declined the honor, because it hurt Horace's feelings so."
Before he was six years old he had read the Bible through, and "Pilgrim's Progress." Their home contained only about twenty books, and these he read and re-read. As he grew older, every book within seven miles was borrowed, and perused after the hard day's work of farming was over. He gathered a stock of pine knots, and, lighting one each night, lay down by the hearth, and read, oblivious to all around him. The neighbors came and made their friendly visits, and ate apples and drank cider, as was the fashion, but the lad never noticed their coming or their going. When really forced to leave his precious books for bed, he would repeat the information he had learned, or the lessons for the next day, to his brother, who usually, most ungraciously, fell asleep before the conversation was half completed.
When Horace was nearly ten years old, his father, who had speculated in a small way in lumber, became a bankrupt; his house and furniture were sold by the sheriff, and he was obliged to flee from the State to avoid arrest. Some of thesedebts were paid, thirty years afterward, by his noble son. Going to Westhaven, Vt., Mr. Greeley obtained work on a farm, and moved his family thither. They were very poor, the children sitting on the floor and eating their porridge together out of a tin pan; but they were happy in the midst of their hard work and plain food. The father and the boys chopped logs, and the little sisters, with the mother, gathered them in heaps, the voice of the latter, says Mr. James Parton, in his biography, "ringing out in laughter from the tangled brushwood in which she was often buried." Would there were thousands more of such women, who can laugh at disaster, and keep their children and themselves from getting soured with life. Everybody has troubles; and very wise are they who do not tell them, either in their faces or by their words.
Horace earned a few pennies all his own; sometimes by selling nuts, or bundles of the roots of pitch-pine for kindling, which he carried on his back to the store. This money he spent in books, buying Mrs. Hemans's poetry and "Shakspeare." No wonder that the minister of the town said, "Mark my words; that boy was not made for nothing."
He could go to school no longer, and must now support himself. From earliest childhood he had determined to be a printer; so, when eleven years of age, he walked nine miles to see the publisher of a newspaper, and obtain a situation. The editorlooked at the small, tow-haired boy, shook his head, and said, "You are too young." With a heavy heart the child walked the long nine miles back again. But he must do something; and, a little later, with seventy-five cents in his pocket, and some food tied in a bundle, which he hung on the end of a stick, slung over his shoulder, he walked one hundred and twenty miles back to New Hampshire, to see his relatives. After some weeks he returned, with a few more cents in his purse than when he started!
The father Greeley ought to have foreseen that such energy and will would produce results; but because Horace, in a fit of abstraction, tried to yoke the "off" ox on the "near" side, he said, "Ah! that boy will never get along in the world. He'll never know more than enough to come in when it rains." Alas! for the blindness of Zaccheus Greeley, whose name even would not be remembered but for his illustrious son.
When Horace was fourteen, he read in a newspaper that an apprentice was wanted in a printing-office eleven miles distant. He hastened thither, and, though unprepossessing, from his thin voice, short pantaloons, lack of stockings, and worn hat, he was hired on trial. The first day he worked at the types in silence. Finally the boys began to tease him with saucy remarks, and threw type at him; but he paid no attention. On the third day, one of the apprentices took a large black ball, usedto put ink on the type, and remarking that Horace's hair was too light, daubed his head four times. The pressman and editor both stopped their labors to witness a fight; but they were disappointed, for the boy never turned from his work. He soon left his desk, spent an hour in washing the ink from his hair, and returned to his duties. Seeing that he could not be irritated, and that he was determined to work, he became a great favorite.
When at his type, he would often compose paragraphs for the paper, setting up the words without writing them out. He soon joined a debating society, composed of the best-informed persons of the little town of East Poultney,—the minister, the doctor, the lawyer, the schoolteachers, and the like. What was their surprise to find that the young printer knew almost every thing, and was always ready to speak, or read an essay.
He was often laughed at because of his poor clothes, and pitied because, slender and pale as he was, he never wore an overcoat; but he used to say, "I guess I'd better wear my old clothes than run in debt for new ones." Ah! they did not know that every penny was saved and sent to the father, struggling to clear a farm in the wilderness in Pennsylvania. During his four years' apprenticeship he visited his parents twice, though six hundred miles distant, and walked most of the way.
Soon after he had learned his trade, the newspaper suspended, and he was thrown out of work.The people with whom he boarded gave him a brown overcoat, not new, and with moistened eyes said good-by to the poor youth whom they had learned to love as their own. He remained a few weeks with his family, then walked fifty miles east to a town in New York State, where he found plenty of work, but no money, and in six weeks returned to the log-cabin. After trying various towns, he found a situation in Erie, taking the place of a workman who was ill, and for seven months he did not lose a day. Out of his wages—eighty-four dollars—he had used only six, less than one dollar a mouth! Putting fifteen dollars in his pocket, he took the balance of sixty-three in a note, and gave it to his father. A noble son indeed, who would not buy a single garment for himself, but carried the money home, so as to make the poor ones a trifle more comfortable!
He had become tired of working in the small towns; he determined to go to the great city of New York, and "be somebody." He walked a part of the way by the tow-path along the canal, and sometimes rode in a scow. Finally, at sunrise, Friday, Aug. 18, 1831, he landed close to the Battery, with ten dollars in his pocket, knowing, he says, "no human being within two hundred miles." His first need was a boarding-place. Over a saloon, kept by an Irishman, he found room and board for two dollars and a half a week. Fortunately, though it was the almost universal custom to useliquors, Horace was a teetotaler, and despised chewing or smoking tobacco, which he regarded "as the vilest, most detestable abuse of his corrupted sensual appetites whereof depraved man is capable;" therefore he had no fear of temptation from these sources.
All day Friday and Saturday he walked the streets of New York, looking for work. The editor of the "Journal of Commerce" told him plainly that he was a runaway apprentice from the country, and he did not want him. "I returned to my lodging on Saturday evening, thoroughly weary, disheartened, disgusted with New York, and resolved to shake its dust from my feet next Monday morning, while I could still leave with money in my pocket, and before its almshouse could foreclose upon me." On Sunday he went to church, both morning and afternoon. Late in the day, a friend who called upon the owner of the house, learning that the printer wanted work, said he had heard of a vacancy at Mr. West's, 85 Chatham Street.
The next morning Horace was at the shop at half-past five! New York was scarcely awake; even the newsboys were asleep in front of the paper offices. He waited for an hour and a half,—a day, it seemed to him,—when one of the journey-men arrived, and, finding the door locked, sat down beside the stranger. He, too, was a Vermonter, and he determined to help young Greeley, if possible. He took him to the foreman, who decided to try him on a Polyglot Testament, with marginal references, such close work that most of the men refused to do it. Mr. West came an hour or two later, and said, in anger, "Did you hire that fool?"
"Yes; we need help, and he was the best I could get," said the foreman.
"Well, pay him off to-night, and let him go about his business."
When night came, however, the country youth had done more and better work, than anybody who had tried the Testament. By beginning his labors before six in the morning, and not leaving his desk till nine in the evening, working by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, he could earn six dollars a week. At first his fellow-workmen called him "the ghost," from his white hair and complexion; but they soon found him friendly, and willing to lend money, which, as a rule, was never returned to him; they therefore voted him to be a great addition to the shop. As usual, though always scrupulously clean, he wore his poor clothes, no stockings, and his wristbands tied together with twine. Once he bought a second-hand black suit of a Jew, for five dollars, but it proved a bad bargain. His earnings were sent, as before, to his parents.
After a year, business grew dull, and he was without a place. For some months he worked on various papers, when a printer friend, Mr. Story, suggested that they start in business, their combined capital being one hundred and fifty dollars. They did so, and their first work was the printing of a penny "Morning Post," which suspended in three weeks, they losing sixty dollars. The partner was drowned shortly after, and his brother-in-law took his place.
Young Greeley, now twenty-three, and deeply interested in politics, determined to start a weekly paper. Fifteen of his friends promised to subscribe for it. The "New Yorker" was begun, and so well conducted was it that three hundred papers throughout the country gave it complimentary notices. It grew to a subscription list of nine thousand persons; but much of the business was done on trust, times were hard, and, after seven years, the enterprise had to be abandoned. This was a severe trial to the hard-working printer, who had known nothing but struggles all his life. Years after this he wrote, "Through most of this time I was very poor, and for four years really bankrupt, though always paying my notes, and keeping my word, but living as poorly as possible. My embarrassments were sometimes dreadful; not that I feared destitution, but the fear of involving my friends in my misfortunes was very bitter.... I would rather be a convict in a State prison, a slave in a rice-swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow of debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable, but debt is infinitely worse thanthem all. Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence or famine. If you have but fifty cents, and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it, and live on it, rather than owe any man a dollar."
Meantime the young editor had married Miss Mary Y. Cheney, a schoolteacher of unusual mind and strength of character. It was, of course, a comfort to have some one to share his sorrows; but it pained his tender heart to make another help bear his burdens. Beside editing the "New Yorker," he had also taken charge of the "Jeffersonian," a weekly campaign paper published at Albany, and the "Log-Cabin," established to aid in the election of General Harrison to the Presidency. The latter paper was a great success, the circulation running up to ninety thousand, though very little money was made; but it gave Mr. Greeley a reputation in all parts of the country for journalistic ability.
President Harrison died after having been a month in office; and seven days after his death, Mr. Greeley started, April 10, 1841, a new paper, the "New York Tribune," with the dying words of Harrison as its motto: "I desire you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more." The paper had scarcely any money for its foundation,—only a thousand dollars loaned by a friend,—but it had atrue manat its head, strong in his hatred of slavery, and the oppression of the laboring man,and fearless in the advocacy of what he believed to be right.
Success did not come at first. Of the five thousand copies published and to be sold at a cent each, Mr. Greeley says, "We found some difficulty in giving them away." The expenses for the first week were five hundred and twenty-five dollars; receipts, ninety-two. But the boy who could walk nearly six hundred miles to see his parents, and be laughed at for poor clothes, while he saved his money for their use, was not to be overcome at thirty years of age, by the failure of one or of a dozen papers. Some of the New York journals fought the new sheet; but it lived and grew till, on the seventh week, it had eleven thousand subscribers. A good business-manager was obtained as partner. Mr. Greeley worked sixteen hours a day. He wrote four columns of editorial matter (his copy, wittily says Junius Henri Browne, "strangers mistook for diagrams of Boston"), dozens of letters, often forgot whether he had been to his meals, and was ready to see and advise with everybody. When told that he was losing time by thus seeing people, he said, "I know it; but I'd rather be beset by loafers, and stopped in my work, than be cooped up where I couldn't be got at by men who really wanted to and had a right to see me." So warm as this were his sympathies with all humanity!
In 1842, when he was thirty-one, he visitedWashington, Niagara, and his parents in Pennsylvania, and wrote delightful letters back to his paper. How proud the mother must have felt of the growing fame of her son! What did Zaccheus think now of his boy of whom he prophesied "would never know more than enough to come in when it rains"?
The years passed on. Margaret Fuller came upon the editorial staff; for Mr. Greeley was ever the advocate of the fullest liberty for woman in any profession, and as much pay for her work as for that of men. And now came a great sorrow, harder to bear than poverty. His little son Pickie, called "the glorious boy with radiant beauty never equalled," died suddenly. "When at length," he said, "the struggle ended with his last breath, and even his mother was convinced that his eyes would never again open upon the scenes of this world, I knew that the summer of my life was over; that the chill breath of its autumn was at hand; and that my future course must be along the down-hill of life." He wrote to Margaret Fuller in Italy, "Ah, Margaret, the world grows dark with us! You grieve, for Rome is fallen; I mourn, for Pickie is dead." His hopes were centered in this child; and his great heart never regained its full cheerfulness.
In 1848 he was elected to Congress for three months to fill out the unexpired term of a deceased member, and did most effective work with regard to the mileage system and the use of the public lands.To a high position had come the printer-boy. At this time he was also prominently in the lecture-field, speaking twice a week to large audiences all over the country. In 1850 his first book was published by the Harpers, "Hints toward Reform," composed of ten lectures and twenty essays. The following year he visited England as one of the "jury" in the awarding of prizes; and while there made a close study of philanthropic and social questions. He always said, "He, who by voice or pen strikes his best blow at the impostures or vices whereby our race is debased and paralyzed, may close his eyes in death, consoled and cheered by the reflection that he has done what he could for the emancipation and elevation of his kind."
In 1855 he again visited Europe; and four years later, California, where he was received with great demonstrations of honor and respect. In 1860 he was at the Chicago Convention, and helped to nominate Abraham Lincoln in preference to William H. Seward. Mr. Greeley had now become one of the leading men of the nation. His paper molded the opinions of hundreds of thousands. He had fought against slavery with all the strength of his able pen; but he advocated buying the slaves for four hundred million dollars rather than going to war,—a cheaper method than our subsequent conflict, with enormous loss of life and money. When he found the war inevitable, after General McClellan's defeat at the Chickahominy, he urged upon Mr. Lincoln immediate emancipation, which was soon adopted. The "New York World" said after his death, "Mr. Greeley will hold the first place with posterity on the roll of emancipation."
In the draft riots in New York, in 1863, the mob burst into the Tribune Building, smashing the furniture, and shouting, "Down with the old white coat!" Mr. Greeley always wore a coat and hat of this hue. Had he been present, doubtless he would have been killed at once. When urged to arm the office, he said, "No; all my life I have worked for the workingmen; if they would now burn my office and hang me, why, let them do it."
The same year he began his "History of the Civil War" for a Hartford publisher. Because so constantly interrupted, he went to the Bible House, and worked with an amanuensis from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon, and then to the "Tribune" office, and wrote on his paper till eleven at night. These volumes, dedicated to John Bright, have had a sale of several hundred thousand copies.
After the war Mr. Greeley, while advocating "impartial suffrage" for black as well as white, advocated also "universal amnesty." He believed nothing was to be gained by punishing a defeated portion of our nation, and wanted the past buried as quickly as possible. He was opposed to the hanging of Jefferson Davis; and with Gerritt Smith, a well-known abolitionist, and about twenty others, he signed Mr. Davis's bail-bond for one hundredthousand dollars, which released him from prison at Fortress Monroe, where he had been for two years. At once the North was aflame with indignation. No criticism was too scathing; but Mr. Greeley took the denunciations like a hero, because he had done what his conscience approved. He said, "Seeing how passion cools and wrath abates, I confidently look forward to the time when thousands who have cursed will thank me for what I have done and dared in resistance to their own sanguinary impulses.... Out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will select my going to Richmond and signing that bail-bond as the wisest act."
In 1872 considerable disaffection having arisen in the Republican party at the course pursued by President Grant at the South, the "Liberal Republicans," headed by Sumner, Schurz, and Trumbull, held a convention at Cincinnati, and nominated Horace Greeley for President. The Democratic party saw the hopelessness of nominating a man in opposition to Grant and Greeley, and accepted the latter as their own candidate. The contest was bitter and partisan in the extreme. Mr. Greeley received nearly three million votes, while General Grant received a half million majority.
No doubt the defeat was a great disappointment to one who had served his country and the Republican party for so many years with very little political reward. But just a month before the election camethe crushing blow of his life, in the death of his noble wife. He left his speech-making, and for weeks attended her with the deepest devotion. A few days before she died, he said, "I am a broken down old man. I have not slept one hour in twenty-four for a month. If she lasts, poor soul, another week, I shall go before her."
After her death he could not sleep at all, and brain-fever soon set in. Friday, Nov. 29, the end came. At noon he said distinctly, his only remaining children, Ida and Gabriella, standing by his bedside, "I know that my Redeemer liveth;" and at half-past three, "It is done." He was ready for the great change. He had written only a short time before, "With an awe that is not fear, and a consciousness of demerit which does not exclude hope, I await the opening, before my steps, of the gates of the eternal world." Dead at sixty-one! Overworked, not having had "a good night's sleep in fifteen years!"
When his death became known, the whole nation mourned for him. Newspapers from Maine to Louisiana gave touching tributes to his greatness, his purity, and his far-sightedness as a leader of the people. The Union League Club, the Lotos, the Typographical Society, the Associated Press, German and colored clubs, and temperance organizations passed resolutions of sorrow. Cornell University, of whose Board he was a member, did him honor. St. Louis, Albany, Indianapolis, Nashville, and other cities held memorial meetings. John Bright sent regrets over "our friend, Horace Greeley." Congress passed resolutions of respect for his "eminent services and personal purity and worth."
And then came the sad and impressive burial. In the governor's room in the City Hall, draped in black, surrounded by a guard of honor composed of the leading men of New York, the body of the great journalist lay in state. Over fifty thousand persons, rich and poor, maimed soldiers and working people, passed in one by one to look upon the familiar face. Said one workman, "It is little enough to lose a day for Horace Greeley, who spent many a day working for us." Just as the doors of the room were being closed for the night, a farmer made his way, saying, "I've come a hundred miles to be at the funeral of Horace Greeley. Can't you possibly let me in to have one last look?" The man stood a moment by the open coffin, and then, pulling his hat low down to hide the tears, was lost in the crowd.
From there the body was taken to Dr. Chapin's church, where it rested under a solid arch of flowers, with the words, "I know that my Redeemer liveth"; and in front of the pulpit, "It is done." The coffin was nearly hidden by floral gifts; one of the most touching being a plow made of white camelias on a ground of violets, from the "Tribune" workmen,—a gift to honor the man who honored labor, andennobled farm-life at his country home at Chappaqua, a few miles from New York.
And then through an enormous concourse of people, Fifth Avenue being blocked for a mile, the body was borne to Greenwood Cemetery. Stores were closed, and houses along the route were draped in black. Flags on the shipping, in the harbor, were at half-mast; and bells tolled from one to three o'clock. Two hundred and fifty carriages, containing the President of the United States, governors, senators, and other friends, were in the procession. By the side of his wife and their three little children the great man was laid to rest, the two daughters stepping into the vault, and laying flowers tenderly upon the coffin.
The following Sabbath clergymen all over the country preached about this wonderful life: its struggles succeeded by world-wide honor. Mr. Greeley's one great wish was gratified, "I cherish the hope that the journal I projected and established will live and flourish long after I shall have mouldered into forgotten dust; and that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future eyes the still intelligible inscription, 'Founder of theNew York Tribune.'"
For a great work God raises up a great man. Usually he is trained in the hard school of poverty, to give him courage and perseverance. Usually he stands alone among a great multitude, that he may have firmness and endurance.
William Lloyd Garrison was born to be preëminently the deliverer of the slave. For two hundred years the curse of African slavery had rested upon one of the fairest portions of our land. Everybody thought it an evil to keep four million human beings from even the knowledge of how to read and write, and a cruelty to sell children away from parents, to toil forever without home or kindred. Everybody knew that slavery was as ruinous almost to master as to slave; that labor was thereby despised, and that luxury was sapping the vigor of a race. But every slave meant money, and money is very dear to mankind.