Читать книгу The Romance of Industry and Invention - The Original Classic Edition - Cochrane Robert - Страница 1

The Rush for the Gold-fields.

the

Romance of Industry and

Invention

SELECTED BY ROBERT COCHRANE EDITOR OF

'GREAT THINKERS AND WORKERS,' 'BENEFICENT AND USEFUL LIVES,' 'ADVENTURE AND ADVENTURERS,' 'RECENT TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE,' 'GOOD

AND GREAT WOMEN,' 'HEROIC LIVES,' &C.

PHILADELPHIA

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

1897

Edinburgh:

Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.

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PREFACE.

Our national industries lie at the root of national progress. The first Napoleon taunted us with being a nation of shopkeepers; that, however, is now less true than that we are a nation of manufacturers--coal, iron, and steel, and our textile industries, taken along with our enormous carrying-trade, forming the backbone of the wealth of the country.

A romantic interest belongs to the rise and progress of most of our industries. Very often this lies in the career of the inventor, who struggled towards the perfection and recognition of his invention against heavy difficulties and discouragements; or it may lie in the interesting processes of manufacture. Every fresh labourer in the field adds some link to the chain of progress, and brings it nearer perfection. Some of the small beginnings have increased in a marvellous way. Such are chronicled under Bessemer and Siemens, who have vastly increased the possibilities of the steel industry; in the sections devoted to Krupp, of Essen; Sir W.G. Armstrong, of the Elswick Works, where 18,000 men are now employed alone in the arsenal; Maxim, of Maxim Gun fame; the rise and progress of the cycle industry; that of the gold and diamond mining industry; and the carrying-trade of the world.

Many of the chapters in this book have been selected from a wealth of such material contributed from time to time to the pages of

Chambers's Journal, but additions and fresh material have been added where necessary.

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CONTENTS.

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Page

CHAPTER I.

IRON AND STEEL.

Pioneers of the Iron and Steel Industry--Sir Henry Bessemer--Sir William Siemens--Werner von Siemens--The Krupps of Essen

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CHAPTER II.

POTTERY AND PORCELAIN.

Josiah Wedgwood and the Wedgwood Ware--Worcester Porcelain 51

CHAPTER III.

THE SEWING MACHINE.

Thomas Saint--Thimonnier--Hunt--Elias Howe--Wilson--Morey--Singer 72

CHAPTER IV.

WOOL AND COTTON.

Wool.--What is Wool?--Chemical Composition--Fibre--Antiquity of Shepherd Life--Varieties of Sheep--Introduction into Aus-

tralia--Spanish Merino--Wool Wealth of Australia--Imports and Exports of Wool and Woollen Produce--Woollen Manufacture

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Cotton.--Cotton Plant in the East--Mandeville's Fables about Cotton--Cotton in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt--Columbus finds

Cotton-yarn and Thread in 1492--In Africa--Manufacture of Cloth in England--The American Cotton Plant 91

CHAPTER V.

GOLD AND DIAMONDS.

Gold.--How widely distributed--Alluvial Gold-mining--Vein Gold-mining--Nuggets--Treatment of Ore and Gold in the [Pg

8]Transvaal--Story of South African Gold-fields--Gold-production of the World--Johannesburg the Golden City--Coolgardie

Gold-fields--Bayley's discovery of Gold there 102

Diamonds.--Composition--Diamond-cutting--Diamond-mining--Famous Diamonds--Cecil J. Rhodes and the Kimberley Mines

135

CHAPTER VI.

BIG GUNS, SMALL-ARMS, AND AMMUNITION.

Woolwich Arsenal--Enfield Small-arms Factory--Lord Armstrong and the Elswick Works--Testing Guns at Shoeburyness--Hiram

S. Maxim and the Maxim Machine Gun--The Colt Automatic Gun--Ironclads--Submarine Boats 152

CHAPTER VII.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CYCLE.

In praise of Cycling--Number of Cycles in Use--Medical Opinions--Pioneers in the Invention--James Starley--Cycling Tours

192

CHAPTER VIII.

STEAMERS AND SAILING-SHIPS.

Early Shipping--Mediterranean Trade--Rise of the P. and O. and other Lines--Transatlantic Lines--India and the East--Early Steamships--First Steamer to cross the Atlantic--Rise of Atlantic Shipping Lines--The Great Eastern and the New Cunarders Campania and Lucania compared--Sailing-ships 205

CHAPTER IX.

POST-OFFICE--TELEGRAPH--TELEPHONE--PHONOGRAPH.

Rowland Hill and Penny Postage--A Visit to the Post-office--The Post-office on Wheels--Early Telegraphs--Wheatstone and

Morse--The State and the Telegraphs--Atlantic Cables--Telephones--Edison and the Phonograph 247

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ROMANCE OF INDUSTRY AND

INVENTION.

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CHAPTER I.

IRON AND STEEL.

Pioneers of the Iron and Steel Industry--Sir Henry Bessemer--Sir William Siemens--Werner von Siemens--The Krupps of Essen.

rancis Horner, writing early in this century, said that 'Iron is not only the soul of every other manufacture, but the mainspring perhaps of civilised society.' Cobden has said that 'our wealth, commerce, and manufactures grew out of the skilled labour of men working in metals.' According to Carlyle, the epic of the future is not to be Arms and the Man, but Tools and the Man. We all know that iron was mined and smelted in considerable quantities in this island as far back as the time of the Romans; and we cherish a vague notion that iron must have been mined and smelted here ever since on a progressively increasing scale. We are so accustomed to think and speak of ourselves as first among all nations, at the smelting-furnace, in the smithy, and amid the Titanic labours of the mechanical workshop, that we open large eyes when we are told what a recent conquest all this superiority is!

[Pg 10]There was, indeed, some centuries later than the Roman occupation, a period coming down to quite modern times, during which English iron-mines were left almost unworked. In Edward III.'s reign, the pots, spits, and frying-pans of the royal kitchen were classed among his majesty's jewels. For the planners of the Armada the greater abundance and excellence of Spanish iron compared with English was an important element in their calculations of success. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the home market looked to Spain and Germany for its supply both of iron and steel. After that, Sweden came prominently forward; and from her, as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, no less than four-fifths of the iron used in this country was imported!

The reason of this marvellous neglect of what has since proved one of our main sources of wealth lay in the enormous consumption of timber which the old smelting processes entailed. The charcoal used in producing a single ton of pig-iron represented four loads of wood, and that required for a ton of bar-iron represented seven loads. Of course, the neighbourhood of a forest was an essential condition to the establishment of ironworks; but wherever such an establishment was effected, the forest disappeared with portentous rapidity. At Lamberhurst, on the borders of Kent and Sussex, with so trifling a produce as five tons per week, the annual consumption of wood was two hundred thousand cords. The timber wealth of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex--which counties were then the centres of our iron industry--seemed menaced with speedy annihilation. In the destruction of these great forests, that of our maritime power was supposed to be intimately involved; so that it is easy to understand how, in those days, the development of the iron manufac[Pg 11]ture came to be regarded in the light of a national calamity, and a fitting subject for restrictive legislation! Various Acts were passed towards the end of the sixteenth century prohibiting smelting-furnaces within twenty-two miles of London, and many of the Sussex masters found themselves compelled, in consequence, to break up their works. During the civil wars of the seventeenth century, a severe blow was given to the trade by the destruction of all furnaces belonging to royalists; and after the Restoration we find the crown itself demolishing its own works in the Forest of Dean, on the old plea that the supply of shipbuilding timber was thereby imperilled. Between 1720 and 1730 the ironworks of Worcestershire and the Forest of Dean consumed 17,350 tons of timber annually, or five tons for each furnace.

'From this time' (the Restoration), says Mr Smiles, 'the iron manufacture of Sussex, as of England generally, rapidly declined. In

1740 there were only fifty-nine furnaces in all England, of which ten were in Sussex; and in 1788 there were only two. A few years later, and the Sussex iron-furnaces were blown out altogether. Farnhurst in Western, and Ashburnham in Eastern Sussex, witnessed the total extinction of the manufacture. The din of the iron hammer was hushed, the glare of the furnace faded, the last blast of the bellows was blown, and the district returned to its original rural solitude. Some of the furnace-ponds were drained and planted with hops or willows; others formed beautiful lakes in retired pleasure-grounds; while the remainder were used to drive flour-mills, as the streams in North Kent, instead of driving fulling-mills, were employed to work paper-mills.' The plentifulness of timber in the Scot-tish Highlands explains the establishment of smelting-furnaces, in 1753, by an English company at Bunawe in Argyllshire, whither the iron was brought from Furness in Lancashire.[Pg 12]

Few of our readers can be unacquainted with the fact that iron-smelting at the present day is performed not with wood but with coal. It will readily, then, be understood that the substitution of the one description of fuel for the other must have formed the turning-point in the history of the British iron manufacture. This substitution, however, was brought about very slowly. The prejudice against coal was for a long period extreme; its use for domestic purposes was pronounced detrimental to health; and, even for purposes of manufacture, it was generally condemned. Nevertheless, as wood became scarcer and dearer, a closer examination into the capabilities of coal came naturally to be made; and here, as in almost every other industrial path, we find a foreigner acting as our pioneer. The Germans had long been experienced in mining and metallurgy; and it was a German, Simon Sturtevant, who first took out a patent for smelting iron with coal. But his process proved a failure, and the patent was cancelled. Other Germans, naturalised here, followed in Sturtevant's footsteps, but with no better results; until at last an Englishman, Dud Dudley (1599-1684), took up

the idea, and gave it practical success. The town of Dudley was even then a centre of the iron manufacture, and Dud's noble father,

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Lord Dudley, owned several furnaces. But here, also, the forest-wealth of the district was fast melting away, and the trade already languished under the dread of impending dissolution. In the immediate neighbourhood, meanwhile, coal was abundant, with iron-stone and limestone in close proximity to it. Dud, who, as a child, had haunted and scrutinised his father's ironworks with wondering delight, was placed just at this juncture in charge of a furnace and a couple of forges, and immediately turned his energetic mind to the question of smelting with coal. Some careful experiments succeeded so well that he wrote to his father,[Pg 13] requesting him

to take out a patent for the process; and this patent, registered in Lord Dudley's name, and dated the 22d February 1620, properly inaugurated the great metallurgic revolution which had made the English iron trade what it now is. Andrew Yarranton was another pioneer in the iron and tin-plate industry, and wrote a remarkable work on England's Improvement by Sea and Land (1677-81).

Nevertheless, even with this positive success on record, the inert insular mind long refused to follow the path cleared for it. Dud's discovery 'was neither appreciated by the iron-masters nor by the workmen;' and all schemes for smelting ore with any other fuel

than wood-charcoal were regarded with incredulity. His secret seems to have been bequeathed to no one, and for many years after his death the old, much-abused, forest-devouring system went tottering on. Stern necessity, however, taught its hard lesson at last, and a period insensibly arrived when the employment of coal in smelting processes became the rule rather than the exception, and might

be seen here and there on an unusually large scale--especially at the celebrated Coalbrookdale works, in the valley of the Severn, Shropshire.

The founder of the Coalbrookdale industries was a Quaker--Abraham Darby (1677-1717). A small furnace had existed on the spot ever since the days of the Tudors, and this small furnace formed the nucleus of that industrial activity which the visitor of Coalbrookdale surveys with such wonder at the present day.

In Darby's time, the principal cooking utensils of the poorer classes were pots and kettles made of cast-iron. But even this primitive ware was beyond native skill, and most of the utensils in question were imported from Holland. Exercising an effort of judgment, which, moderate as it was, seems to have been hitherto un[Pg 14]exampled, Darby resolved to pay that country a visit, and ascertain in person why it was that Dutch castings were so good and English so bad. The use of dry sand instead of clay for the moulds comprised, he found, the whole secret.

On returning to England, Darby took out a patent for the new process, and his castings soon acquired repute. The use of pit-coal in the Coalbrookdale furnaces is not supposed, however, to have become general until the worthy Abraham had been succeeded by his son; but when it once did become so, the impetus thereby given to the iron trade and to coal-mining was immense. It is the latter industry which may pre-eminently claim to have called the steam-engine into existence. The demand for pumping-power adequate

to the drainage of deep mines set Newcomen's brain to work; and the engine rough-sketched by his ingenuity, and perfected by the genius of Watt, soon increased enormously the production of iron by rendering coal more accessible and the blast-furnace more efficient.

A son-in-law of Abraham Darby's, Richard Reynolds by name, made a great stride towards the modern railway by substituting iron for wood on the tramways which connected the different works at Coalbrookdale; and it was a grandson of the same Abraham who designed and erected the first iron bridge.

England, we have seen, borrowed the idea of her smelting processes and iron-castings from Germany and Holland; but the discovery of that important material, cast-steel, belongs, at least, to one of her own sons. Yet even here the relationship is a merely conventional one, for Benjamin Huntsman (1704-1776) was the child of German parents who had settled in Lincolnshire.

Huntsman's original calling was that of a clock-maker; but his remarkable mechanical skill, his shrewdness, and[Pg 15] his practical sense, soon gave him the repute of the 'wise man' of the district, and brought neighbours to consult him not only as to the repair of every ordinary sort of machinery, but also of the human frame--the most complex of all machines! It was his daily experience of

the inferior quality of the tools at his command that led him to make experiments in the manufacture of steel. What his experiments were we have no record to show; but that they must have been conducted with Teutonic patience and thoroughness there can be no doubt, from the formidable nature of the difficulties overcome.

England, however, long refused to make use of Huntsman's precious material, although produced in her very midst. The Sheffield cutlers would have nothing to do with a substance so much harder than anything they were accustomed to, and Huntsman was actually compelled to look for his market abroad! All the cast-steel he could manufacture was sent over to France, and the merit of employing this material for general purposes belongs originally to that country. The inventions of Henry Cort (1740-1800) for refining and rolling iron (1785) were the mainspring of the malleable iron trade, and made Great Britain independent of Russia and Sweden for supplies of manufactured iron. One authority has stated that since 1790, when Cort's improvements were entirely established, the value of landed property in England had doubled. But he was unfortunate in business life, and in 1811 upwards of forty iron firms subscribed towards a fund for the assistance of his widow and nine orphan children. David Mushet (1772-1847) did much for the ex-

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pansion of the iron trade in Scotland by his preparation of steel from bar-iron by a direct process, combining the iron with carbon, and by his discovery of the effect of manganese on steel.

Steel is the material of which the instruments of labour[Pg 16] are essentially made. Upon the quality of the material, that of the instrument naturally depends, and upon the quality of the instrument, that, in great measure, of the work. Watt's marvellous invention ran great risk, at one time, of being abandoned, for the simple reason that the mechanical capacities of the age were not 'up' to its embodiment. Even after Watt had secured the aid of Boulton's best workmen, Smeaton gave it as his opinion that the steam-engine could never be brought into general use, because of the difficulty of getting its various parts made with the requisite precision.

The execution by machinery of work ordinarily executed by hand-tools has been a gigantic stride in the path of material civilisation. The earliest phase of the great modern movement in this direction is represented, probably, by the sawmill. A sawmill was erected near London as long ago as 1663--by a foreigner--but was shortly abandoned in consequence of the determined hostility of the sawyers; and more than a century elapsed before another mill was put up. But the sawmill is comparatively a rude structure, and

the material it operates upon is easily treated, even by the hand. When we come to deal, however, with such substances as iron and steel, the benefit of machinery becomes incalculable. Without our recent machine-tools, indeed, the stupendous iron creations of the present day would have been impossible at any cost; for no amount of hand-labour could ever attain that perfect exactitude of construction without which it would be idle to attempt fitting the component parts of these colossal structures together.

The first impulse, however, to the improvement of machine-tools for ironwork was given by a difficulty born not of mass but of minuteness.

Up to the end of the last century, the locks in common[Pg 17] use among us were of the rudest description, and afforded scarcely any security against thieves. To meet this universal want, Joseph Bramah set his remarkable inventive faculties to work, and speedily contrived a lock so perfect, that it held its ground for many a day. But Bramah's locks are machines of the most delicate kind, depending for their efficiency upon the precision with which their component parts are finished; and, at that time, the attainment of this precision, at such a price as to render the lock an article of extensive commerce, seemed an insuperable difficulty. In his

dilemma, Bramah's attention was directed to a youngster in the Woolwich Arsenal smithy, named Henry Maudsley, whose reputation for ingenuity was already great among his fellows. Bramah was at first almost ashamed to take such a mere lad into his counsels; but a preliminary conversation convinced him that his confidence would not be misplaced. He persuaded Maudsley to enter his employment, and the result was the invention, between them, of the planing-machine, applicable either to wood or metal, as also of certain improvements in the old lathe, more particularly of that known as the 'slide-rest.'

In the old-fashioned lathe, the workman guided his cutting-tool by sheer muscular strength, and the slightest variation in the pressure necessarily led to an irregularity of surface. The rest for the hand is in this case fixed, and the tool held by the workman travels along it. Now, the principle of the slide-rest is the opposite of this. The rest itself holds the tool firmly fixed in it, and slides along the bench in a direction parallel with the axis of the work. All that the workman has to do, therefore, is to turn a screw-handle, by means of which the cutter is carried along with the smallest possible expenditure of strength; and even this trifling labour has been since

got rid of, by making the rest self-acting.[Pg 18]

Simple and obvious as this improvement seems, its importance cannot be overrated. The accuracy it insured was precisely the desideratum of the day! By means of the slide-rest, the most delicate as well as the most ponderous pieces of machinery can be turned with mathematical precision; and from this invention must date that extraordinary development of mechanical power and production which is a characteristic of the age we live in. 'Without the aid of the vast accession to our power of producing perfect mechanism which it at once supplied,' says a first-class judge in matters of the kind, 'we could never have worked out into practical and profitable forms the conceptions of those master-minds who, during the past half-century, have so successfully pioneered the way for mankind. The steam-engine itself, which supplies us with such unbounded power, owes its present perfection to this most admirable means of giving to metallic objects the most precise and perfect geometrical forms. How could we, for instance, have good steam-engines if we had not the means of boring out a true cylinder, or turning a true piston-rod, or planing a valve-face?'

It would perhaps be impossible to cite any more authoritative estimate of Maudsley's invention than the above. The words placed between inverted commas are the words of James Nasmyth, the inventor of that wonderful steam-hammer which Professor Tomlin-son characterises as 'one of the most perfect of artificial machines and noblest triumphs of mind over matter that modern English engineers have yet developed.'[Pg 19]

Nasmyth's Steam-hammer.

This machine enlarged at one bound the whole scale of working in iron, and permitted Maudsley's lathe to develop its entire range of capacity. The old 'tilt-hammer' was so constructed that the more voluminous the material submitted to it, the less was the power attainable; so that as soon as certain dimensions had been [Pg 20] exceeded, the hammer became utterly useless. When the Great

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Western steamship was in course of construction, tenders were invited from the leading mechanical firms for the supply of the enormous paddle-shaft required for her engines. But a forging of the size in question had never been executed, and no firm in England would undertake the contract. In this dilemma, Mr Nasmyth was applied to, and the result of his study of the problem was this marvellous steam-hammer--so powerful that it will forge an Armstrong hundred-pounder as easily as a farrier forges a horse-shoe, and so delicately manageable that it will crack a nut without bruising its kernel!

BESSEMER STEEL.

In 1722, Reaumur produced steel by melting three parts of cast-iron with one part of wrought iron (probably in a crucible) in a com-mon forge; he, however, failed to produce steel in this manner on a working scale. This process has many points in common with the Indian Wootz-steel manufacture.

As we have seen, to Benjamin Huntsman, a Doncaster artisan, belongs the credit of first producing cast-steel upon a working scale, as he was the first to accomplish the entire fusion of converted bar-iron (that is, blister-steel) of the required degree of hardness, in crucibles or clay pots, placed among the coke of an air-furnace. This process is still carried on at Sheffield and elsewhere, and is what is generally known as the crucible or pot-steel process. It was mainly supplementary to the cementation process, as formerly blister-steel was alone melted in the crucibles; but latterly, and at the present time, the crucible mode of manufacture embraces the fusion of[Pg 21] other varieties and combinations of metal, producing accordingly different classes and qualities of steel.

In 1839, Josiah Marshall Heath patented the important application of carburet of manganese to steel in the crucible, which application imparted to the resulting product the properties of varying temper and increased forgeability. He subsequently found out that a separate operation was not necessary to form the carburet--which is produced by heating peroxide of manganese and carbon to a high temperature--but that the same result could be attained by simply in the first instance adding the carbon and oxide of manganese direct to the metal in the crucible. He unsuspectingly communicated this after-discovery to his agent--by name Unwin--who took advantage of the fact that it was not incorporated in the wording of the patent, and so was unprotected, to make use of it for his own advantage. The result was one of the most remarkable patent trials on record, extending over twelve years, and terminating in 1855 against the patentee--a remarkable instance of the triumph of legal technicalities over the moral sense of right.

A very important development of the manufacture of steel followed the introduction of the 'Bessemer process,' by means of which a low carbon or mild cast-steel can be produced at about one-tenth of the cost of crucible steel. It is used for rails, for the tires of the wheels of railway carriages, for ship-plates, boiler-plates, for shafting, and a multitude of constructional and other purposes to which only wrought iron was formerly applied, besides many for which no metal at all was used.

Sir Henry Bessemer's process for making steel, which is now so largely practised in England, on the continent of Europe, and in

America, was patented in 1856. It was first applied to the making of malleable iron, but this has never been successfully made by

the Bessemer method.[Pg 22] For the manufacture of a cheap but highly serviceable steel, however, its success has been so splendid that no other metallurgical process has given its inventor so great a renown. Although the apparatus actually used is somewhat costly and elaborate, yet the principle of the operation is very simple. A large converting vessel, with openings called tuyeres in its bottom, is partially filled up with from 5 to 10 tons of molten pig-iron, and a blast of air, at a pressure of from 18 to 20 lb. per square inch,

is forced through this metal by a blowing engine. Pig-iron contains from 3 to 5 per cent. of carbon, and, if it has been smelted with charcoal from a pure ore, as is the case with Swedish iron, the blast is continued till only from .25 to 1 per cent. of the carbon is left in the metal, that is to say, steel is produced. Sometimes, however, the minimum quantity of carbon is even less than .25 per cent.

In England, where a less pure but still expensive cast-iron--viz. haematite pig--is used for the production of steel in the ordinary Bessemer converter, the process differs slightly. In this case the whole of the carbon is oxidised by the blast of air, and the requisite quantity of this element is afterwards restored to the metal by pouring into the converter a small quantity of a peculiar kind of cast-iron, called spiegeleisen, which contains a known quantity of carbon. But small quantities of manganese and silicon are also present in Bessemer steel. The 'blow' lasts from 20 to 30 minutes. Steel made from whatever kind of pig-iron, either by this or by the 'basic' process, is not sufficiently dense, at least for most purposes, and it is accordingly manipulated under the steam-hammer and rolled into a variety of forms. Bessemer steel is employed, as we have said, for heavy objects, as rails, tires, rollers, boiler-plates, ship-plates, and for many other purposes for which malleable iron was formerly used.[Pg 23]

Basic steel is now largely made from inferior pig-iron, such as the Cleveland, by the Thomas-Gilchrist process patented in 1878.

It is, however, only a modification of the Bessemer process to the extent of substituting for the siliceous or 'acid' lining generally used, a lime or 'basic' lining for the converter. Limestone, preferably a magnesian limestone in some form, is commonly employed for the lining. By the use of a basic lining, phosphorus is eliminated towards the end of the 'blow.' Phosphorus is a very deleterious substance in steel, and is present, sometimes to the extent of 2 per cent., in pig-iron smelted from impure ore.

The four inventions of this century which have given the greatest impetus to the manufacture of iron and steel were--the introduc-

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tion of the hot blast into the blast-furnace for the production of crude iron, made by J. B. Neilson, of the Glasgow Gas-works, in

1827; the application of the cold blast in the Bessemer converter which we have just described; the production of steel direct from the ore, by Siemens, in the open hearth; and the discovery of a basic lining by which phosphorus is eliminated and all kinds of iron converted into steel. This last was the discovery of G. J. Snelus, of London, and it was made a practical success by the Thomas & Gilchrist process just described. In 1883, Mr Snelus was awarded the Bessemer gold medal of the Iron and Steel Institute 'as the first man who made pure steel from impure iron in a Bessemer converter lined with basic materials.'

SIR HENRY BESSEMER.

Sir Henry Bessemer, the inventor of the modern process of making steel from iron, which has just been described, was the son of

Anthony Bessemer,[Pg 24] who escaped from France in 1792, and found employment in the English Mint. He was born in 1813, at Charlton, Herts, where his father had an estate, was to a great extent self-taught, and his favourite amusement was in modelling buildings and other objects in clay. He came up to London 'knowing no one, and no one knowing me--a mere cipher in this vast sea of enterprise.' He first earned his living by engraving a large number of elegant and original designs on steel with a diamond point, for patent medicine labels. He found work also as designer and modeller. He has been a prolific inventor, as the volumes issued by

the Patent Office show. It has been said that he has paid in patent stamp duties alone as much as PS10,000. At twenty he invented a mode of taking copies from antique and modern basso-relievos in such a way that they might be stamped on card-board, thousands being produced at a small cost.

His inventive faculty also devised a ready method whereby those who were defrauding the government by detaching old stamps from leases, money-bills, and agreements, and by using them over again, could be defeated in their purpose.

His first pecuniary success was obtained by his invention of machinery for the manufacture of Bessemer gold and bronze powders, which was not patented, but the nature of which was long kept secret. Another successful invention was a machine for making Utre-cht velvet. He also interested himself in the manufacture of paints, oils, and varnishes, sugar, railway carriages, ordnance, projectiles, and the ventilation of mines. In the Exhibition of 1851 he exhibited an ingenious machine for grinding and polishing plate-glass.

Like Lord Armstrong, Bessemer turned his attention to the subject of the improvement of projectiles when there was a prospect of a European war in 1853. He[Pg 25] invented a mode of firing elongated projectiles from smooth-bore guns, but received no counte-nance from the officials at Woolwich.

Commander Minie, who had charge of the experiments which Bessemer was making on behalf of the Emperor of the French, said:

'Yes, the shots rotate properly; but if we cannot get something stronger for our guns, these heavy projectiles will be of little use.' This started Bessemer thinking and experimenting further, and led up, as we will see, to the great industrial revolution with which his name stands identified. He informed the Emperor that he intended to study the whole subject of metals suitable for artillery purposes. He built experimental works at St Pancras, but made many failures, furnace after furnace being pulled down and rebuilt. His prolonged and expensive experiments in getting a suitable ordnance metal were meanwhile using up his capital; but he was on the eve of a great discovery, and began to see that the refinement of iron might go on until pure malleable iron or steel could be obtained. His wife aided and encouraged him at this time as only a true wife can. After a year and a half, in which he patented many

improvements in the existing systems of manufacture, it occurred to him to introduce a blast of atmospheric air into the fluid metal, whereby the cast-iron might be made malleable. He found that by blowing air through crude iron in a fluid state, it could thus be rendered malleable. He next tried the method of having the air blown from below by means of an air-engine. Molten iron being poured into the vessel, and air being forced in from below, resulted in a surprising combustion, and the iron in the vessel was transformed into steel. The introduction of oxygen through the fluid iron, induced a higher heat, and burned up the impurities. Feeling that he

had succeeded in his experiment, he acquainted Mr George Rennie with the result. The[Pg 26] latter said to him: 'This must not be hid under a bushel. The British Association meets next week at Cheltenham; if you have patented your invention, draw up an account of it in a paper, and have it read in Section G.' Accordingly Bessemer wrote an account of his process, and in August 1856, he read his paper before the British Association 'On the Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel without Fuel,' which startled the iron trade of the country.

On the morning of the day on which his paper was to be read, Bessemer was sitting at breakfast in his hotel, when an iron-master to whom he was unknown, laughingly said to a friend: 'Do you know that there is somebody come down from London to read us a paper on making steel from cast-iron without fuel? Did you ever hear of such nonsense?'

Amongst those who spoke generously and enthusiastically of Bessemer's new process was James Nasmyth, to whom the inventor offered one-third share of the value of the patent, which would have been another fortune to him. Nasmyth had made money enough by this time, however, and declined.

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In a communication to Nasmyth, Sir Henry Bessemer thanked him for his early patronage, and described his discovery: 'I shall ever feel grateful for the noble way in which you spoke at the meeting at Cheltenham of my invention. If I remember rightly, you held up a piece of malleable iron, saying words to this effect: "Here is a true British nugget! Here is a new process that promises to put an end to all puddling; and I may mention that at this moment there are puddling-furnaces in successful operation where my patent hollow steam-rabbler is at work, producing iron of superior quality by the introduction of jets of steam in the puddling process. I

do not, however, lay any claim[Pg 27] to this invention of Mr Bessemer; but I may fairly be entitled to say that I have advanced along the roads on which he has travelled so many miles, and has effected such unexpected results, that I do not hesitate to say that I may go home from this meeting and tear up my patent, for my process of puddling is assuredly superseded."'

After giving an account of his failures, as well as successes, Sir Henry proceeded to say: 'I prepared to try another experiment, in a crucible having no hole in the bottom, but which was provided with an iron pipe put through a hole in the cover, and passing down nearly to the bottom of the crucible. The small lumps and grains of iron were packed round it, so as nearly to fill the crucible. A

blast of air was to be forced down the pipe so as to rise up among the pieces of granular iron, and partly decarburise them. The pipe could then be withdrawn, and the fire urged until the metal with its coat of oxide was fused, and cast-steel thereby produced.

'While the blowing apparatus for this experiment was being fitted up, I was taken with one of those short but painful illnesses to which I was subject at that time. I was confined to my bed, and it was then that my mind, dwelling for hours together on the experiment about to be made, suggested that instead of trying to decarburise the granulated metal by forcing the air down the vertical pipe among the pieces of iron, the air would act much more energetically and more rapidly if I first melted the iron in the crucible, and forced the air down the pipe below the surface of the fluid metal, and thus burnt out the carbon and silicum which it contained.

'This appeared so feasible, and in every way so great an improvement, that the experiment on the granular pieces was at once abandoned, and as soon as I was well enough, I proceeded to try the experiment of forcing the air under the fluid metal. The result was marvellous.[Pg 28] Complete decarburation was effected in half an hour. The heat produced was immense, but unfortunately more than half the metal was blown out of the pot. This led to the use of pots with large, hollow, perforated covers, which effectually prevented the loss of metal. These experiments continued from January to October 1855. I have by me on the mantelpiece at this moment, a small piece of rolled bar-iron which was rolled at Woolwich Arsenal, and exhibited a year later at Cheltenham.

Bessemer Converting Vessel:

a, a, a, tuyeres; b, air-space; c, melted metal.

'I then applied for a patent, but before preparing my provisional specification (dated October 17, 1855), I searched for other patents to ascertain whether anything of the sort had been done before. I then found your[Pg 29] patent for puddling with the steam-rabble, and also Martin's patent for the use of steam in gutters while molten iron was being conveyed from the blast-furnace to a finery, there to be refined in the ordinary way prior to puddling.'

Several leading men in the iron trade took licenses for the new manufacture, which brought Bessemer PS27,000 within thirty days of the time of reading his paper. These licenses he afterwards bought back for PS31,000, giving fresh ones in their stead. Some of the early experiments failed, and it was feared the new method would prove impracticable. These experiments failed because of the presence of phosphorus in the iron. But Bessemer worked steadily in order to remove the difficulties which had arisen, and a chemical laboratory was added to his establishment, with a professor of chemistry attached. Success awaited him. The new method of steel-making spread into France and Sweden, and in 1879 the works for making Bessemer steel were eighty-four in number, and represented a capital of more than three millions. His process for the manufacture of steel raised the annual production of steel in England from 50,000 tons by the older processes to as many as 2,000,000 tons in some years. It was next used for boiler-plates; shipbuilding with Bessemer steel was begun in 1862, and now it is employed for most of the purposes for which malleable iron was formerly

used. The production of Europe and America in 1892 was over 10,000,000 tons, of a probable value of PS84,000,000, sufficient, as has been remarked, to make a solid steel wall round London 40 feet high, and 5 feet thick. It would take, according to the inventor, two or three years' production of all the gold-mines in the world to pay in gold for the output of Bessemer steel for one year. The price of steel previous to Huntsman's process was about PS10,000 per ton; after him,[Pg 30] from PS50 to PS100. Now Bessemer leaves it at PS5 to PS6 per ton. And a process which occupied ten days can be accomplished within half an hour.

Bessemer Process.

[Pg 31]

In his sketch of the 'Bessemer Steel Industry, Past and Present' (1894), Sir Henry Bessemer says: 'It is this new material, so much stronger and tougher than common iron, that now builds our ships of war and our mercantile marine. Steel forms their boilers,

their propeller shafts, their hulls, their masts and spars, their standing rigging, their cable chains and anchors, and also their guns and armour-plating. This new material has covered with a network of steel rails the surface of every country in Europe, and in America alone there are no less than 175,000 miles of Bessemer steel rails.' These steel rails last six times longer than if laid of iron.

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Bessemer was knighted in 1879, and has received many gold medals from scientific institutions. In addition he has, to use his own words, received in the form of royalties 1,057,748 of the beautiful little gold medals (sovereigns) issued by her Majesty's Mint. The method chosen by the Americans to perpetuate his name has been the founding of the growing centre of industry called Bessemer in Indiana, while Bessemer, in Pennsylvania, is the seat of the great Edgar Thompson steel-works. Thus the man who was at first

neglected by government has become wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, and his name is immortal in the annals of our manufac-

turing industry.

SIR CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS AND THE SIEMENS PROCESS.

Another pioneer in the manufacture of steel and iron was Charles William Siemens, the seventh child of a German landowner, who was born at Lenthe, near[Pg 32] Hanover, 4th April 1823. He showed an affectionate and sensitive disposition while very young, and a strong faculty of observation. He received a good plain education at Lubeck, and in deference to his brother Werner he agreed to become an engineer, and accordingly was sent to an industrial school at Magdeburg in 1838, where he also learned languages, including English; mathematics he learned from his interested brother. He left Magdeburg in 1841 in order to increase his scientific knowledge at Gottingen, and there he studied chemistry and physics, with the view of becoming an engineer. Werner, his elder brother,

was still his good genius, and after the death of their parents counselled and encouraged him, and looked upon him as a probable future colleague. They corresponded with one another, not only about family affairs, but also about the scientific and technical subjects in which both were engrossed. This became a life-long habit with the brothers Siemens. One early letter from William described a new kind of valve-gearing which he had invented for Cornish steam-engines. Then the germ of the idea of what was afterwards known as the 'chronometric governor' for steam-engines was likewise communicated in this way. Mr Pole says that his early letters were significant of the talent and capacity of the writer. 'They evince an acuteness of perception in mechanical matters, a power of close and correct reasoning, a sound judgment, a fertility of invention, and an ease and accuracy of expression which, in a youth of nineteen, who had only a few months' experience in a workshop, are extraordinary, and undoubtedly shadow forth the brilliant future he attained in the engineering world.'

Werner in 1841 had taken out a patent for his method of electro-gilding, while William early in 1843 paid his first visit to England, travelling by way of Hamburg. He took up his abode in a little inn called the 'Ship and[Pg 33] Star,' at Sparrow Corner, near the Minories. In an address as President of the Midland Institute, Birmingham, on 28th October 1881, he related his first experiences in England, and how he secured his first success there.

Mr Siemens said: 'That form of energy known as the electric current was nothing more than the philosopher's delight forty years ago; its first application may be traced to this good town of Birmingham, where Mr George Richards Elkington, utilising the discoveries of Davy, Faraday, and Jacobi, had established a practical process of electroplating in 1842.... Although I was only a young student of Gottingen, under twenty years of age, who had just entered upon his practical career with a mechanical engineer, I joined my brother Werner Siemens, then a young lieutenant of artillery in the Prussian service, in his endeavour to accomplish electro-gilding.... I tore myself away from the narrow circumstances surrounding me, and landed at the East End of London, with only a few pounds in my pocket and without friends, but an ardent confidence of ultimate success within my breast.

'I expected to find some office in which inventions were examined into, and rewarded if found meritorious, but no one could direct me to such a place. In walking along Finsbury Pavement I saw written up in large letters, "So-and-So"--I forget the name--

"undertaker," and the thought struck me that this must be the place I was in quest of; at any rate, I thought that a person advertising himself as an "undertaker" would not refuse to look into my invention, with the view of obtaining for me the sought for recognition or reward. On entering the place I soon convinced myself, however, that I came decidedly too soon for the kind of enterprise there contemplated.' By dint of perseverance, however, Siemens secured a letter from Messrs Poole and Carpmaell, of the Patent Office,

to Mr Elkington of Birmingham. Elkington and his partner[Pg 34] Josiah Mason both met the young inventor in such a spirit of fairness that, as he says, he returned to his native country, and to his mechanical engineering, 'a comparative Croesus.' After the lapse of forty years his heart still beat quick when thinking of this determining incident in his career.

The sum which Elkington paid him for his 'thermo-electrical battery' for depositing solutions of gold, silver, and copper was PS1600, less PS110 for the cost of the patent. Although quite successful at the time, other and cheaper processes speedily supplanted it; but the young German had gained a footing and the money he needed for future experiments. When he came back to Germany he was looked upon as quite a hero by his admiring family circle. It was indeed a creditable exploit for a youth of twenty. When he returned to England again in February 1844, he received so much encouragement from leading engineers and scientific men for his 'chronometric governor,' that he decided to settle permanently there, and he became a naturalised British subject in 1859. He joined with a civil engineer, named Joseph Woods, for the promotion and sale of his patents. 'Anastatic printing' was one of his early inventions, which, however, never became profitable. Then came schemes in paper-making, new methods of propelling ships, winged rockets, and locomotives on new principles, all of which were a continual drain on his own and his friends' resources without a correspond-

9

ing return, so that in 1845 he took a situation and earned some money by railway work, which enabled him to pay another visit to Germany. In 1846, undaunted by previous failures, he threw himself heartily into the study of the action of heat as a power-giving agent, and invented an arrangement known as the 'regenerator' for saving certain portions of this waste. As afterwards applied to furnaces for iron, steel, zinc, glass, and other works, it was[Pg 35] pronounced by Sir Henry Bessemer a beautiful invention, at once the most philosophic in principle, the most powerful in action, and the most economic of all the contrivances for producing heat by the combustion of coal. He now secured an appointment in 1849 with Fox & Henderson, Birmingham, at a fixed salary of PS400 a year, and his interest in his patent. Here he profited largely by the experience gained, but the engagement terminated in 1851, when he afterwards settled as a civil engineer in 7 John Street, Adelphi, in March 1852.

His next great achievement was the production of steel direct from the raw ores by means of his regenerative furnace, which the President of the Board of Trade in 1883 mentioned in the House of Commons as one of the most valuable inventions ever produced under the protection of the English patent law, and he said further that it was then being used in almost every industry in the kingdom. Siemens had spent fourteen years in perfecting this regenerative furnace, and it took him other fourteen to utilise it, and perfect it in making steel direct from the raw ores. Martin of Sireil, who made one or two additions to the Siemens steel furnace, has been termed its inventor, but this claim has no foundation. What is known, however, as the 'Siemens-Martin process' is now competing very effectively with the Bessemer process. It consists essentially in first obtaining a bath of melted pig-iron of high quality, and then adding to this pieces of wrought-iron scrap or Bessemer scrap, such as crop ends of rails, shearings of plates, &c. These, though practically non-infusible in large quantities by themselves, become dissolved or fused in such a bath if added gradually. To the bath of molten metal thus obtained spiegeleisen or ferro-manganese is added to supply the required carbon and to otherwise act as

in the Bessemer converter. The result[Pg 36] is tested by small ladle samples, and when it is of the desired quality a portion is run off,

leaving sufficient bath for the continuation of the process.

Siemens took out his patent for the 'open hearth' process of steel-making (the Forth Bridge is built of steel made in this way) in

1861, and four years later erected sample steel works at Birmingham. The engineer of the London and North-Western Railway adopted his system at Crewe in 1868, and the Great Western Railway works followed. In 1869 this process was being carried out on a large scale at the works of the Landore-Siemens Steel Company and elsewhere in England, as well as at various works on the Continent, including Krupp's, at Essen.

In 1862, Siemens was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1874 was presented with the Royal Albert Medal, and in 1875 with the Bessemer Medal in recognition of his researches and inventions in heat and metallurgy. He filled the president's chair in the three principal engineering and telegraphic societies of Great Britain, and in 1882 was President of the British Association. As

manager in England of the firm of Siemens Brothers, Sir William Siemens was actively engaged in the construction of overland and submarine telegraphs. The steamship Faraday was specially designed by him for cable-laying. In addition to his labours in connection with electric-lighting, Sir William Siemens also successfully applied, in the construction of the Portrush Electric Tramway, which was opened in 1883, electricity to the production of locomotion. In his regenerative furnace, as we have seen, he utilised in an ingenious way the heat which would otherwise have escaped with the products of combustion. The process was subsequently applied in many industrial processes, but notably by Siemens himself in the manufacture of steel.[Pg 37]

The other inventions and researches of this wonderful man include a water-meter; a thermometer or pyrometer, which measures by the change produced in the electric conductivity of metals; the bathometer, for measuring ocean depths by variations in the attraction exerted on a delicately suspended body; and the hastening of vegetable growth by use of the electric light. He was knighted in April 1883, and died on November 19 of the same year. There is a memorial window to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

As the elder brother of Sir William Siemens was so closely connected with him in business life, and may be said to have encouraged and led him into the walk of life in which he excelled, he also deserves a notice here. Werner Von Siemens, engineer and electrician, was born December 13, 1816, at Lenthe in Hanover. In 1834 he entered the Prussian Artillery; and in 1844 was put in charge of

the artillery workshops at Berlin. He early showed scientific tastes, and in 1841 took out his first patent for galvanic silver and gold plating. By selling the right of using his process he made 40 louis d'or, which supplied him with the means for further experiments. During the Schleswig-Holstein war, he attracted considerable attention by using electricity for the firing of the mines which had been laid for the defence of Kiel harbour. He was of peculiar service in developing the telegraphic service in Prussia, and discovered in

this connection the valuable insulating property of gutta-percha for underground and submarine cables. In 1849 he left the army, and

shortly after the service of the state altogether, and devoted his energies to the construction of telegraphic and electrical apparatus of all kinds. The well-known firm of Siemens and Halske was established in 1847 in Berlin, and to them the Russian government entrusted the construction of the telegraph lines in that country. Sub[Pg 38]sequently branches were formed, chiefly under the management of the younger brothers of Werner Siemens, in St Petersburg (1857), in London (1858), in Vienna (1858), and in Tiflis (1863). In 1857, Siemens accomplished the remarkable feat of successfully laying a cable in deep water, at a depth of more than 1000 fathoms. This was between Sardinia and Bona. Shortly after he superintended the laying of cables in the Red Sea; and these successful experiments soon led to the greatest undertaking of all, the connection of America with Europe. Besides devising

10

numerous useful forms of galvanometers and other electrical instruments of precision, Werner Siemens was one of the discoverers of the principle of the self-acting dynamo. He also made valuable determinations of the electrical resistance of different substances, the resistance of a column of mercury, one metre long, and one square millimetre cross section at 0degC., being known as the Siemens Unit. His numerous scientific and technical papers, written for the various journals, were republished in collected form in 1881. In

1886 he gave 500,000 marks for the founding of an imperial institute of technology and physics; and in 1888 he was ennobled. He died at Berlin, 6th December 1892. A translation of his Personal Recollections by Coupland appeared in 1893.

Space forbids us mentioning other worthy names in the steel and iron trade, although we cannot pass by Sir John Brown, founder of the Atlas Steel-works, Sheffield (1857), and one of the first to adopt the Bessemer process. He was also the pioneer of armour-plate making. The immense strides he made in business may be judged from the fact that when he started in 1857 his employees numbered 200, with a turnover of PS3000 a year; in 1867 they numbered 4000, and the turnover was PS1,000,000.[Pg 39] The weekly pay roll amounted to PS7000 in 1883, and when he handed over the business to his successors, he was paid PS200,000 for the goodwill.

KRUPP'S IRON AND STEEL WORKS AT ESSEN.

One of the largest iron and steel manufacturing establishments in the world is that founded by the late Alfred Krupp, the famous German cannon-founder, whose name is so well known in connection with modern improvements in artillery. His principal works are situated at Essen, in Prussia, in the midst of a district productive of both iron and coal. The town of Essen, which at the beginning of the present century contained less than four thousand inhabitants, has become an important industrial centre, with a population of nearly eighty thousand persons, this increase being chiefly due to the growth of the ironworks, and the consequent demand for labour. In the vicinity of the town, numerous coal and iron mines, many of which are owned by the Krupp firm, are in

active working, and furnish employment to the large population of the surrounding district. Much of the output of iron ore and coal from these mines is destined for consumption in the vast Krupp works within the town. Those works had their origin in a small iron forge established at Essen in the year 1810 by Frederick Krupp, the father of Alfred Krupp. The elder Krupp was not prosperous; and a lawsuit in which he became involved, and which lasted for ten years, though finally decided in his favour, reduced him nearly to bankruptcy. He died in 1826, in impoverished circumstances, leaving a widow and three sons, the eldest of whom was Alfred, aged fourteen. The business was continued by the widow, who managed, though with difficulty, to procure a good education for her sons. When[Pg 40] the eldest, Alfred, took control of the works in 1848, he found there, as he himself has described, 'three workmen, and more debts than fortune.'

Krupp's subsequent career affords a remarkable instance of success attained, despite adverse circumstances, by sheer force of ability and energy, in building up a colossal manufacturing business from a humble beginning. On his death in 1887 his only son succeeded him. At the present time, Krupp's works within the town of Essen occupy more than five hundred acres, half of which area is under cover. In 1895, the number of persons in his employ was 25,300, and including members of their families, over 50,000. Of the army of workers, about 17,000 were employed at the works in Essen, the remainder being occupied in the 550 iron and coal mines belonging to the firm, or at the branch works at Sayn Neuwied, Magdeburg, Duisburg, and Engers; or in the iron-mines at Bilbao, in Spain, which produce the best ores. In Krupp's Essen works there are one hundred and twelve steam-hammers, ranging in weight from

fifty tons down to four hundred pounds. There are 15 Bessemer converters, 18 Martin-furnaces, 420 steam-engines--representing together 33,150 horse-power--and twenty-one rolling trains; the daily consumption of coal and coke being 3100 tons by 1648 furnaces. The average daily consumption of water, which is brought from the river Ruhr by an aqueduct, is 24,700 cubic metres. The electric light has been introduced, and the work ceases entirely only on Sunday and two or three holidays. Connected with the

Essen works are fifty miles of railway, employing thirty-five locomotives and over 1000 wagons. There are two chemical laboratories; a photographic and lithographic studio; a printing-office, with steam and hand presses; and a bookbinding room, besides tile-works, coke-works, gas-works, &c.

Though, in the popular mind, the name of Krupp is[Pg 41] usually associated with the manufacture of instruments of destruction, yet two-thirds of the work done in his establishment is devoted to the production of articles intended for peaceful uses. The various parts of steam-engines, both stationary and locomotive; iron axles, bridges, rails, wheel-tires, switches, springs, shafts for steamers, mint-dies, rudders, and parts of all varieties of iron machinery, are prepared here for manufacturers. The production is, in Dominie Sampson's phrase, 'prodigious.' In one day the works can turn out 2700 rails, 350 wheel-tires, 150 axles, 180 railway wheels, 1000 railway wedges, 1500 bombshells. In a month they have produced 250 field-pieces, thirty 5.7-inch cannon, fifteen 9.33-inch cannon, eight 11-inch cannon, one 14-inch gun, the weight of the last named being over fifty tons, and its length twenty-eight feet seven inches. Till the end of 1894 the firm has produced 25,000 cannon for thirty-four different states.

Alfred Krupp devoted much attention to the production of steel of the finest quality, and was the first German manufacturer who succeeded in casting steel in large masses. In 1862 he exhibited in London an ingot of finest crucible steel weighing twenty-one

11

tons. Its dimensions were nine feet high by forty-four inches diameter. The uniformity of quality of this mass of metal was proven by the fact that when broken across it showed no seam or flaw, even when examined with a lens. The firm can now make such homogeneous blocks of seventy-five tons weight if required. Such ingots are formed from the contents of a great number of small crucibles, each containing from fifty to one hundred pounds of the metal. The recent developments of the manufacture of steel

by the open-hearth process have removed all difficulty in procuring the metal in masses large enough for all requirements, and of a tensile strength so high as thirty-three to thirty-seven tons to the square inch. Crucible steel, however, though more[Pg 42] expensive, still holds its place as the best and most reliable that can be produced; and nothing else is ever used in the construction of a Krupp gun. By the perfected methods in use at the Essen works, such steel can be made of a tensile strength of nearly forty tons to the square inch, and of marvellous uniformity of quality. The ores used in the Krupp works for making the best steel are red haematite and spathic ore, with a certain proportion of ferro-manganese. The crucibles employed are formed of a mixture of plumbago and fire-clay, shaped by a mould into a cylindrical jar some eighteen inches in height, and baked in a kiln. When in use, they are filled with small bars of puddled metal, mixed with fragments of marble brought from Villmar, on the Lahn. They are then shovelled into large furnaces, whose floors are elevated three or four feet above the ground-level. In the earthen floor of the immense room containing the furnaces are two lines of pits, one set to receive the molten metal, the other intended for the red-hot crucibles when emptied of their contents. When the crucibles have undergone sufficient heating, the furnace doors are opened simultaneously at a given signal, and the attendant workmen draw out the crucibles with long tongs, and rapidly empty them into the pits prepared for the reception

of the metal. The empty crucibles when cooled are examined, and if found unbroken, are used again; but if damaged, as is usually the case, are ground up, to be utilised in making new ones.

The production of steel by this method furnishes employment for eight or nine hundred men daily in the Krupp works. The Bessemer process for converting iron into steel is also largely used there for making steel for certain purposes. All material used in the different classes of manufactures is subjected at every stage to extreme and exact tests; the standards being fixed with[Pg 43] reference to the purpose to which the metal is to be applied, and any material that proves faulty when suitably tested is rigorously rejected.

The guns originally manufactured by the Krupp firm were formed from solid ingots of steel, which were bored, turned, and fashioned as in the case of cast-iron smooth-bore cannon. With the development of the power of artillery, the greater strain caused by the increased powder-charges and by the adoption of rifling--involving enhanced friction between the projectile and the bore--had the result of demonstrating the weakness inherent in the construction of a gun thus made entirely from one solid forging, and that plan was eventually discarded. Artillerists have learnt that the strain produced by an explosive force operating in the interior of a cannon is not felt equally throughout the thickness of the metal from the bore to the exterior, but varies inversely as the square of the distance of each portion of the metal from the seat of effort. For example, in a gun cast solid, if two points be taken, one at the distance of one inch from the bore, and the other four inches from the bore, the metal at the former point will during the explosion be strained sixteen times as much as that at the distance of four inches. The greater the thickness of the material, the greater will be

the inequality between the strains acting at the points respectively nearest to and farthest from the interior. The metal nearest the seat of explosion may thus be strained beyond its tensile strength, while that more remote is in imperfect accord with it. In such a case, disruption of the metal at the inner surface ensues, and extends successively through the whole thickness to the exterior, thus entail-ing the destruction of the gun.

This source of weakness is guarded against by the construction of what is termed the built-up gun, in which the several parts tend to mutual support. This gun consists[Pg 44] of an inner tube, encircled and compressed by a long 'jacket' or cylinder, which is shrunk around the breech portion with the initial tension due to contraction in cooling. Over the jacket and along the chase, other hoops or cylinders are shrunk on successively, in layers, with sufficient tension to compress the parts enclosed. The number and strength of these hoops are proportionate to the known strain that the bore of the gun will have to sustain. The tension at which each part is shrunk on is the greater as the part is farther removed from the inner tube; the jacket, for example, being shrunk on at less tension than the outer hoops. The inner tube, on receiving the expansive force of the explosion, is prevented by the compression of the jacket from being forced up to its elastic limit; and the jacket in its turn is similarly supported by the outer hoops; and on the cessa-tion of the internal pressure the several parts resume their normal position.

This system of construction originated in England, and is now in general use. The first steel guns on this principle were those designed by Captain Blakely and Mr J. Vavasseur, of the London Ordnance Works. At the Exhibition of 1862, a Blakely 8.5-inch

gun, on the built-up system, composed wholly of steel, was a feature of interest in the Ordnance section. The plan devised by Sir W. Armstrong, and carried into effect for a series of years at Woolwich and at the Armstrong Works at Elswick, consisted in enclosing a tube of steel within a jacket of wrought iron, formed by coiling a red-hot bar round a mandrel. The jacket was shrunk on with initial tension, and was fortified in a similar manner by outer hoops of the same metal. The want of homogeneity in this gun was, however, a serious defect, and ultimately led to its abolition. The difference in the elastic properties of the two metals caused a separation, af-ter repeated discharges,[Pg 45] between the steel tube and its jacket, with the result that the tube cracked from want of support. Both at Woolwich and at Elswick (described on a later page), therefore, the wrought-iron gun has given place to the homogeneous steel built-up gun, which is also the form of construction adopted by the chief powers of Europe and by the United States of America.

12

The failure of some of his solid-cast guns led Krupp, about 1865, to the adoption of the built-up principle. With few exceptions, the inner tube of a Krupp gun is forged out of a single ingot, and in every case without any weld. The ingot destined to form the tube has first to undergo a prolonged forging under the steam-hammers, by which the utmost condensation of its particles is effected.

It is then rough-bored and turned, and subsequently carefully tempered in oil, whereby its elasticity and tensile strength are much increased. It is afterwards fine-bored and rifled, and its powder-chamber hollowed out. The latter has a somewhat larger diameter than the rest of the bore, this having been found an improvement. The grooves of the rifling are generally shallow, and they widen towards the breech, so that the leaden coat of the projectile is compressed gradually and with the least friction. The jacket and hoops of steel are forged and rolled, without weld, and after being turned and tempered, are heated and shrunk around the tube in their several positions, the greatest strength and thickness being of course given to the breech end, where the force of explosion exerts

the utmost strain. The completed gun is mounted on its appropriate carriage, and having been thoroughly proved and tested and fitted with the proper sights, is ready for service. The testing range is at Meppen, where a level plain several miles in extent affords a suitable site for the purpose.

For many years all guns of the Krupp manufacture have[Pg 46] been on the breech-loading system, and he has devoted much time and ingenuity to perfecting the breech arrangements. The subject of recoil has also largely occupied his attention. In the larger Krupp guns the force of recoil is absorbed by two cylinders, filled with glycerine and fitted with pistons perforated at the edges. The pistons are driven by the shock of the recoil against the glycerine, which is forced through the perforations. In England a similar arrangement of cylinders, containing water as the resisting medium, has been found effective; and in America, petroleum is employed for the same purpose. The advantages of the use of glycerine are that in case of a leak it would escape too slowly to lose its effect at once, and it is also more elastic than water, and is less liable to become frozen.

The resources of Krupp's establishment are equal to the production of guns of any size that can conceivably be required. He has made guns of one hundred and nineteen tons weight. The portentous development of the size and power of modern ordnance is exemplified by these guns and the Armstrong guns of one hundred and eleven tons made at Elswick. Amongst the class of modern cannon, one of the most powerful is Krupp's seventy-one-ton gun. This, like all others of his make, is a breech-loader. Its dimensions are--length, thirty-two feet nine inches; diameter at breech end, five feet six inches; length of bore, twenty-eight feet seven inches; diameter of bore, 15.75 inches; diameter of powder-chamber, 17.32 inches. The internal tube is of two parts, exactly joined; and over this are four cylinders, shrunk on, and a ring round the breech. Its rifling has a uniform twist of one in forty-five. It cannot possibly be fired until the breech is perfectly closed. Its maximum charge is four hundred and eighty-five pounds of powder, and a chilled iron shell of seventeen hundred and eight pounds.[Pg 47]

Krupp's 15.6 Breech-loading Gun (breech open).

[Pg 48]

Krupp did much to promote the welfare and comfort of his workpeople. For their accommodation, he erected around Essen nearly four thousand family dwellings, in which more than sixteen thousand persons reside. The dwellings are in suites of three or four comfortable rooms, with good water-arrangements; and attached to each building is a garden, large enough for the children to play in. There are one hundred and fifty dwellings of a better kind for officials in the service of the firm. Boarding-houses have also

been built for the use of unmarried labourers, of whom two thousand are thus accommodated. Several churches, Protestant and Catholic, have also been erected, for the use of his workmen and their families. There have likewise been provided two hospitals, bathing establishments, a gymnasium, an unsectarian free school, and six industrial schools--one for adults, two for females. In the case of the industrial schools, the fees are about two shillings monthly, but the poorest are admitted free. A Sick Relief and Pensions Fund has been instituted, and every foreman and workman is obliged to be a member. The entrance fee is half a day's pay, the an-nual payment being proportioned to the wages of the individual member; but half of each person's contribution is paid by the firm. There are three large surgeries; and skilful physicians and surgeons, one of whom is an oculist, are employed at fixed salaries. For

a small additional fee each member can also secure free medical aid for his wife and children. The advantages to members are free medical or surgical treatment in case of need, payment from the fund of funeral expenses at death, pensions to men who have been permanently disabled by injuries while engaged in the works, pensions to widows of members, and temporary support to men who are certified by two of the physicians as unable to work. The highest pension to men is five pounds monthly, the average being about two pounds[Pg 49] sixteen shillings monthly. The average pension to widows is about one pound fourteen shillings monthly.

The firm have made special arrangements with a number of life insurance companies whereby the workmen can, if they choose, insure their lives at low rates. They have formed a Life Insurance Union, and endowed it with a reserve fund of three thousand pounds, from which aid is given to members needing assistance to pay their premiums. An important institution in Essen is the great Central Supply Store, established and owned by the firm, where articles of every description--bread, meat, and other provisions, clothing, furniture, &c.--are sold on a rigidly cash system at cost price. Connected with the Central Store are twenty-seven branch shops, in positions convenient for the workpeople, placing the advantages of the system within the easy reach of all.

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The original name, 'Frederick Krupp,' has been retained through all vicissitudes of fortune as the business title of the firm. The small dwelling in which Alfred Krupp was born is still standing, in the midst of the huge workshops that have grown up around it, and is preserved with the greatest care. At his expense, photographs of it were distributed among his workmen, each copy bearing the following inscription, dated Essen, February 1873: 'Fifty years ago, this primitive dwelling was the abode of my parents. I hope that no one of our labourers may ever know such struggles as have been required for the establishment of these works. Twenty-five years ago that success was still doubtful which has at length--gradually, yet wonderfully--rewarded the exertions, fidelity, and perseverance of the past. May this example encourage others who are in difficulties! May it increase respect for small houses, and sympathy for the larger sorrows they too often contain. The object of labour should be the common weal. If work bring blessing,

then is labour[Pg 50] prayer. May every one in our community, from the highest to the lowest, thoughtfully and wisely strive to secure and build his prosperity on this principle! When this is done, then will my greatest desire be realised.'

Germany has become a formidable competitor to Great Britain in the iron and steel trade, and German steel rails, girders, and wire come in freely to this country. From reports we learn that Great Britain produced in 1882 81/2 million tons of iron and 5 million tons of finished iron and steel, while the production of Germany was then less than 31/2 and 21/2 million tons respectively. English

production had fallen to 71/2 million tons of iron and 4 million tons of finished iron and steel in 1895, while Germany had risen to 5 million tons and 6 million tons respectively.

Contrary to what has been commonly believed, it appears that the difference all round in wages amongst ironworkers, as between

England and Germany, is not great.

Chicago, Pittsburg, Buffalo, and New York are the chief centres of the American iron and steel trade, the production of pig-iron in

1895 being about 91/4 million tons, whereas in 1880 it was well under 4 million. At present over 4 millions of tons are produced of

Bessemer pig-iron.

[Pg 51]

CHAPTER II.

POTTERY AND PORCELAIN.

Josiah Wedgwood and the Wedgwood Ware--Worcester Porcelain.

hen Mr Godfrey Wedgwood, a member of the famous firm of potters at Etruria, near Burslem, Staffordshire, went to work about forty years ago, his famous ancestor and founder of the world-famed Wedgwood ware was still named amongst the workmen as

'Owd Wooden Leg.' A son of Mr Godfrey Wedgwood, now in the firm, is the fifth generation in descent, and the manufactory is still carried on in the same buildings erected by Josiah Wedgwood one hundred and twenty years ago.

One hundred years ago Josiah Wedgwood, the creator of British artistic pottery, passed away at Etruria, near Burslem, surrounded by the creations of his own well-directed genius and industry, having 'converted a rude and inconsiderable manufacture into an elegant art and an important part of national commerce.' His death took place on 3d January 1795, the same year in which Thomas Carlyle saw the light at Ecclefechan, and one year and a half before the death of Burns at Dumfries. During fifty years of his working life, largely owing to his own successful efforts, he had witnessed the output of the Staffordshire potteries increased fivefold, and his wares[Pg 52] were known and sold over Europe and the civilised world. In the words of Mr Gladstone, his characteristic merit lay

'in the firmness and fullness with which he perceived the true law of what we may call Industrial Art, or, in other words, of the application of the higher art to Industry.' Novalis once compared the works of Goethe and Wedgwood in these words: 'Goethe is truly a practical poet. He is in his works what the Englishman is in his wares, perfectly simple, neat, fit, and durable. He has played in the German world of literature the same part that Wedgwood has played in the English world of art.'

JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.

[Pg 53]Long ago, in his sketch of Brindley and the early engineers, Dr Smiles had occasion to record the important service rendered by Wedgwood in the making of the Grand Trunk Canal--towards the preliminary expense of which he subscribed one thousand pounds--and in the development of the industrial life of the Midlands. Since that time Smiles has himself published a biography of

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Wedgwood, to which we are here indebted.

More than once it has happened that the youngest of thirteen children has turned out a genius. It was so in the case of Sir Richard Arkwright, and it turned out to be so in the case of Josiah Wedgwood, the youngest of the thirteen children of Thomas Wedgwood, a Burslem potter, and of Mary Stringer, a kind-hearted but delicate, sensitive woman, the daughter of a nonconformist clergyman. The town of Burslem, in Staffordshire, where Wedgwood saw the light in 1730, was then anything but an attractive place. Drink-

ing and cock-fighting were the common recreations; roads had scarcely any existence; the thatched hovels had dunghills before the doors, while the hollows from which the potter's clay was excavated were filled with stagnant water, and the atmosphere of the whole place was coarse and unwholesome, and a most unlikely nursery of genius.[Pg 54]

It is probable that the first Wedgwoods take their name from the hamlet of Weggewood in Staffordshire. There had been Wedgwoods in Burslem from a very early period, and this name occupies a large space in the parish registers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; of the fifty small potters settled there, many bore this honoured name. The ware consisted of articles in com-mon use, such as butter-pots, basins, jugs, and porringers. The black glazed and ruddy pottery then in use was much improved after an immigration of Dutchmen and Germans. The Elers, who followed the Prince of Orange, introduced the Delft ware and the salt glaze. They produced a kind of red ware, and Egyptian black; but disgusted at the discovery of their secret methods by Astbury and Twyford, they removed to Chelsea in 1710. An important improvement was made by Astbury, that of making ware white by means

of burnt flint. Samuel Astbury, a son of this famous potter, married an aunt of Josiah Wedgwood. But the art was then in its infancy, not more than one hundred people being employed in this way in the district of Burslem, as compared with about ten thousand now, with an annual export of goods amounting to about two hundred thousand pounds, besides what are utilised in home-trade. John Wesley, after visiting Burslem in 1760, and twenty years later in 1781, remarked how the whole face of the country had been improved in that period. Inhabitants had flowed in, the wilderness had become a fruitful field, and the country was not more improved than the people.

All the school education young Josiah received was over in his ninth year, and it amounted to only a slight grounding in reading, writing, and arithmetic. But his practical or technical education went on continually, while he afterwards supplemented many of the deficiencies of early years by a wide course of study. After the death of[Pg 55] his father, he began the practical business of life as a potter in his ninth year, by learning the throwing branch of the trade. The thrower moulds the vessel out of the moist clay from the potter's wheel into the required shape, and hands it on to be dealt with by the stouker, who adds the handle. Josiah at eleven proved a clever thrower of the black and mottled ware then in vogue, such as baking-dishes, pitchers, and milk-cans. But a severe attack of virulent smallpox almost terminated his career, and left a weakness in his right knee, which developed, so that this limb had to be amputated at a later date. He was bound apprentice to his brother Thomas in 1744, when in his fourteenth year; but this weak knee, which hampered him so much, proved a blessing in disguise, for it sent him from the thrower's place to the moulder's board, where he improved the ware, his first effort being an ornamental teapot made of the ochreous clay of the district. Other work of this period comprised plates, pickle-leaves, knife-hafts, and snuff-boxes. At the same time he made experiments in the chemistry of the

material he was using. Wedgwood's great study was that of different kinds of colouring matter for clays, but at the same time he mastered every branch of the art. That he was a well-behaved young man is evident from the fact that he was held up in the neighbourhood as a pattern for emulation.[Pg 56]

Wedgwood at Work.

But his brother Thomas, who moved along in the old rut, had small sympathy with all this experimenting, and thought Josiah flighty and full of fancies. After remaining for a time with his brother, at the completion of his apprenticeship Wedgwood became partner in 1752, in a small pottery near Stoke-upon-Trent: soon after, Mr Whieldon, one of the most eminent potters of the day, joined the firm. Here Wedgwood took pains to discover new methods and striking designs, as trade was then [Pg 57] depressed. New green earthenware was produced, as smooth as glass, for dessert service, moulded in the form of leaves; also toilet ware, snuff-boxes, and articles coloured in imitation of precious stones, which the jewellers of that time sold largely. Other articles of manufacture were

blue-flowered cups and saucers, and varicoloured teapots. Wedgwood, on the expiry of his partnership with Whieldon, started on his own account in his native Burslem in 1760. His capital must have been small, as the sum of twenty pounds was all he had received from his father's estate. He rented Ivy House and Works at ten pounds a year, and engaged his second-cousin, Thomas, as workman at eight shillings and sixpence a week. He gradually acquired a reputation for the taste and excellence of design of his green glazed ware, his tortoiseshell and tinted snuff-boxes, and white medallions. A specially designed tea-service, representing different fruits and vegetables, sold well, and, as might be expected, was at once widely imitated. He hired new works on the site now partly occupied

by the Wedgwood Institute, and introduced various new tools and appliances. His kilns for firing his fine ware gave him the greatest trouble, and had to be often renewed. James Brindley, when puzzled in thinking out some engineering problem, used to retire to bed and work it out in his head before he got up. Sir Josiah Mason, the Birmingham pen-maker, used to simmer over in his mind on the previous night the work for the next day. Wedgwood had a similar habit, which kept him often awake during the early part of the night. Probably owing to the fortunate execution of an order through Miss Chetwynd, maid of honour to Queen Charlotte, of a complete cream service in green and gold, Wedgwood secured the patronage of royalty, and was appointed Queen's Potter in 1763.

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His Queen's ware became popular, and secured him much additional business.[Pg 58]

An engine lathe which he introduced greatly forwarded his designs; and the wareroom opened in London for the exhibition of his now famous Queen's ware, Etruscan vases, and other works, drew attention to the excellence of his work. He started works besides at Chelsea, supervised by his partner Bentley, where modellers, enamellers, and artists were employed, so that the cares of his business, 'pot-making and navigating'--the latter the carrying through of the Grand Trunk Canal--entirely filled his mind and time at this period. So busy was he, that he sometimes wondered whether he was an engineer, a landowner, or a potter. Meanwhile, a step

he had no cause to regret was his marriage in 1764 to Sarah Wedgwood, no relation of his own, a handsome lady of good education and of some fortune.

Wedgwood had begun to imitate the classic works of the Greeks found in public and private collections, and produced his unglazed black porcelain, which he named Basaltes, in 1766. The demand for his vases at this time was so great that he could have sold fifty or one hundred pounds' worth a day, if he had been able to produce them fast enough. He was now patronised by royalty, by the Empress of Russia, and the nobility generally. A large service for Queen Charlotte took three years to execute, as part of the commission consisted in painting on the ware, in black enamel, about twelve hundred views of palaces, seats of the nobility, and remarkable places. A service for the Empress of Russia took eight years to complete. It consisted of nine hundred and fifty-two pieces, of which the cost was believed to have been three thousand pounds, although this scarcely paid Wedgwood's working expenses.

Prosperity elbowed Wedgwood out of his old buildings in Burslem, and led him to purchase land two miles away, on the line of the proposed Grand Trunk Canal, where[Pg 59] his flourishing manufactories and model workmen's houses sprang up gradually, and were named Etruria, after the Italian home of the famous Etruscans, whose work he admired and imitated. His works were partly

removed thither in 1769, and wholly in 1771. At this time he showed great public spirit, and aided in getting an Act of Parliament for better roads in the neighbourhood, and backed Brindley and Earl Gower in their Grand Trunk Canal scheme, which was destined, when completed, to cheapen and quicken the carriage of goods to Liverpool, Bristol, and Hull. The opposition was keen: and Wedgwood issued a pamphlet showing the benefits which would accrue to trade in the Midlands by the proposed waterway. When victory was secured, after the passing of the Act there was a holiday and great rejoicing in Burslem and the neighbourhood, and the first

sod of the canal was cut by Wedgwood, July 26, 1766. He was also appointed treasurer of the new undertaking, which was eleven years in progress. Brindley, the greatest engineer then in England, doubtless sacrificed his life to its success, as he died of continual harassment and diabetes at the early age of fifty-six. Wedgwood had an immense admiration for Brindley's work and character. In the prospect of spending a day with him, he said: 'As I always edify full as much in that man's company as at church, I promise myself to be much wiser the day following.' Like Carlyle, who whimsically put the builder of a bridge before the writer of a book, Wedgwood placed the man who designed the outline of a jug or the turn of a teapot far below the creator of a canal or the builder of a city.

In the career of a man of genius and original powers, the period of early struggle is often the most interesting. When prosperity comes, after difficulties have been surmounted, there is generally less to challenge attention. But Wedgwood's career was still one of continual progress[Pg 60] up to the very close. His Queen's ware, made of the whitest clay from Devon and Dorset, was greatly in demand, and much improved. The fine earthenwares and porcelains which became the basis of such manufactures were originated here. Young men of artistic taste were employed and encouraged to supply designs, and a school of instruction for drawing, painting, and modelling was started. Artists such as Coward and Hoskins modelled the 'Sleeping Boy,' one of the finest and largest of

his works. John Bacon, afterwards known as a sculptor, was one of his artists, as also James Tassie of Glasgow. Wedgwood engaged capable men wherever they could be found. For his Etruscan models he was greatly indebted to Sir W. Hamilton. Specimens of his famous portrait cameos, medallions, and plaques will be found in most of our public museums.

The general health of Wedgwood suffered so much between 1767 and 1768 that he decided to have the limb which had troubled him since his boyhood amputated. He sat, and without wincing, witnessed the surgeons cut off his right leg, for there were then no anaesthetics. 'Mr Wedgwood has this day had his leg taken off,' wrote one of the Burslem clerks at the foot of a London invoice,

'and is as well as can be expected after such an execution.' His wife was his good angel when recovering, and acted as hands and feet and secretary to him; while his partner Bentley (formerly a Liverpool merchant) and Dr Darwin were also kind; and he was almost oppressed with the inquiries of many noble and distinguished persons during convalescence. He had to be content with a wooden

leg now. 'Send me,' he wrote to his brother in London, 'by the next wagon a spare leg, which you will find, I believe, in the closet.' He lived to wear out a succession of wooden legs.[Pg 61]

Indifference and idleness he could not tolerate, and his fine artistic sense was offended by any bit of imperfect work. In going through his works, he would lift the stick upon which he leaned and smash the offending article, saying, 'This won't do for Josiah Wedgwood.' All the while he had a keen insight into the character of his workmen, although he used to say that he had everything to teach them, even to the making of a table plate.

He was no monopolist, and the only patent he ever took out was for the discovery of the lost art of burning in colours, as in the

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Etruscan vases. 'Let us make all the good, fine, and new things we can,' he said to Bentley once; 'and so far from being afraid of other people getting our patterns, we should glory in it, and throw out all the hints we can, and if possible, have all the artists in Eu-rope working after our models.' By this means he hoped to secure the goodwill of his best customers and of the public. At the same time he never sacrificed excellence to cheapness. As the sale of painted Etruscan ware declined, his Jasper porcelain--so called from its resemblance to the stone of that name--became popular. The secret of its manufacture was kept for many years. It was composed of flint, potter's clay, carbonate of barytes, and terra ponderosa. This and the Jasper-dip are in several tones and hues of blue; also yellow, lilac, and green. He called in the good genius of Flaxman in 1775; and, for the following twelve years, the afterwards famous sculptor did an immense amount of work and enhanced his own and his patron's reputation. Flaxman did some of his finest work in this Jasper porcelain. Some of Flaxman's designs Wedgwood could scarcely be prevailed upon to part with. A bas-relief of

the 'Apotheosis of Homer' went for seven hundred and thirty-five pounds at the sale of his partner Bentley;[Pg 62] and the 'Sacrifice to Hymen,' a tablet in blue and white Jasper (1787), brought four hundred and fifteen pounds. The first named is now in the collection of Lord Tweedmouth. Wedgwood's copy of the Barberini or Portland Vase was a great triumph of his art. This vase, which had contained the ashes of the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother, was of dark-blue glass, with white enamel figures.

It now stands in the medal room of the British Museum alongside a model by Wedgwood. It stands 10 inches high, and is the finest specimen of an ancient cameo cut-glass vase known. It was smashed by a madman in 1845, but was afterwards skilfully repaired. Wedgwood made fifty copies in fine earthenware, which were originally sold at 25 guineas each. One of these now fetches PS200. The vase itself once changed hands for eighteen hundred guineas, and a copy fetched two hundred and fifteen guineas in 1892.

Portland Vase.

Josiah Wedgwood now stood at the head of the potters of Staffordshire, and the manufactory at Etruria drew visitors from all parts of Europe. The motto of its founder was still 'Forward;' and, as Dr Smiles expresses it, there was with him no finality in the development of his profession. He studied chemistry, botany, drawing, designing, and conchology. His inquiring mind wanted to get to

the bottom of everything. He journeyed to Cornwall, and was successful in getting kaolin for chinaware. Queen Charlotte patronised a new pearl-white teaware; and he succeeded in perfecting the pestle and mortar for the apothecary. He invented a pyrometer[Pg 63] for measuring temperatures; and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Amongst his intimate friends were Dr Erasmus Darwin, poet and physician (the famous Charles Robert Darwin was a grandson, his mother having been a daughter of Wedgwood's), Boulton of Soho Works, James Watt, Thomas Clarkson, Sir Joseph Banks, and Thomas Day.

We have an example of the generosity of Wedgwood's disposition in his treatment of John Leslie, afterwards Professor Sir John Les-lie of Edinburgh University. He was so well pleased with his tutoring of his sons that he settled an annuity of one hundred and fifty pounds upon him; and it may be that the influence of this able tutor led Thomas Wedgwood to take up the study of heliotype, and become a pioneer of photographic science, even before Daguerre. How industrious Wedgwood had been in his profession is evident from the seven thousand specimens of clay from all parts of the world which he had tested and analysed. The six entirely new pieces of earthenware and porcelain which, along with his Queen's ware, he had introduced early in his career, as painted and embellished, became the foundation of nearly all the fine earthenware and porcelains since produced. He had his reward, for besides a flourishing business, he left more than half a million of money.

WORCESTER PORCELAIN.

[Pg 64]

The Worcester Royal Porcelain Works.

One of the most artistic and interesting industries in this country is the manufacture of porcelain in the ancient city of Worcester. There is no special local reason for the establishment of such works there, but Worcester has been noted as the home of the famous porcelain for more than [Pg 65] a century. It was in 1751 that Dr Wall, a chemist and artist, completed his experiment in

the combination of various elements, and produced a porcelain which was more like the true or natural Chinese porcelain than any

ever devised. This was the more remarkable because kaolin had not then been discovered in this country. The inventor set up his factory in Worcester, close to the cathedral, and for a long time he produced his egg-shell and Tonquin porcelain in various forms, chiefly, however, those of table services. Transfer-printing was introduced later on, and was executed with much of the artist's spirit by experts who attached themselves to the Worcester works after the closing of the enamel works at Battersea. It was a remarkable century in its devotion to ceramic art; and it was characteristic of the ruling princes of the Continent that they should patronise lavishly various potteries of more or less repute. Towards the end of the century the first sign of this royal favour was vouchsafed to Worcester. George III. visited the factories, and under the impetus given by his patronage, the wares of the city advanced so much in popularity that, in the early part of this century, it is said, there were few noble families which had not in their china closets an elaborate service of Worcester, bearing the family arms and motto in appropriate emblazonment. In 1811, George IV. being then Prince Regent, several splendid services of Worcester porcelain were ordered to equip his table for the new social duties entailed by his regency, and one of these alone cost PS4000. In the museums at the Worcester works there are specimens of many beautiful services, designed in accordance with the contemporary ideas of pomp and stateliness. The porcelain artists in those days must have been well

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versed in heraldry; for their chief duties seem to have been the reproduction of crests and coats-of-arms. Some of the services have interesting stories. There is[Pg 66] one of deep royal blue, beautifully decorated, and bearing in the centre an emblematical figure of Hope. The story ran that it was ordered by Nelson for presentation to the Duke of Cumberland, and that the figure of Hope was really a portrait of Lady Hamilton. This, however, was an error: the service was ordered by the Duke himself in the ordinary way, and though Lord Nelson did order a service of Worcester porcelain, he died before it could be completed, and it was afterwards dispersed. Another story attaches to a plate adorned with a picture of a ship in full sail approaching harbour. The Imaum of Muscat

sent many presents to the Prince Regent, and hinted that he would like a ship of war in return. The English authorities, however, did not see fit to give attention to this request, and sent him instead many beautiful things, including a service of Worcester ware, bearing on each piece a scene showing the royal yacht which bore the gifts entering the cove of Muscat. When the potentate heard, however, that his dearest wish had been thwarted in this way, he refused to allow the vessel to enter the harbour, and all the presents had to be brought back again. The picture on the plate, therefore, is more imaginative than accurate.

The Worcester porcelain began to develop in fresh directions soon after the Great Exhibition of 1851, which gave an impulse to the efforts of the artists, and the decorative side of the work was brought into a much more prominent position. For instance, the

'Worcester enamels,' in the style of those of Limoges, were introduced, and an illustration of this work is to be seen in a pair of remarkable vases, bearing enamel reproductions of Maclise's drawings, founded on the Bayeux tapestries. About this time, too, after several years of experiment, the ivory ware--an idea inspired by the lovely ivory sculptures in the Exhibition--was brought to perfection. It is a[Pg 67] beautiful, creamy, translucent porcelain, singularly fitted for artistic treatment, and it is now the most characteristic of the later developments of the Worcester work. In fact, the art directors of the enterprise will not issue now any new wares in the style of those which found favour at an earlier period, for they know that they would instantly be palmed off on the unwary as the genuine products of the bygone times.

To trace the process of the manufacture, from the mixing of the ingredients to the burning of the last wash in the decorated piece, is very interesting. It is a process freely shown to visitors, and forms one of the principal lions in the sober old town which has lain for so many centuries on the banks of the Severn. The materials are brought from all parts of the world. Kaolin, or china clay, which is the felspar of decomposed granite washed from the rocks, is brought from Cornwall, so is the Cornish or china stone; felspar is brought from Sweden, and though of a rich red, it turns white when burnt; marl and fire-clay come from Broseley, in Shropshire,

and Stourbridge; flints are brought from Dieppe; and bones--those of the ox only--come all the way from South America to be calcined and ground down. The grinding is a slow matter; each ingredient is ground separately in a vat, the bottom of which is a hard stone, whereon other hard stones of great weight revolve slowly. From twelve hours' to ten days' constant treatment by these re-morseless mills is required by the various materials, some needing to be ground much longer than others before the requisite fineness is attained. It is essential that all the ingredients should be reduced to a certain standard of grain; and the contents of each vat must pass through a lawn sieve with four thousand meshes to the square inch. When the materials are sufficiently ground to meet this test, they are taken to the 'slip-house,' and mixed together with the[Pg 68] clays, which do not need grinding. A magnet of great strength

is in each mixing trough, and draws to itself every particle of iron, which, if allowed to remain in the mixture, would injure the ware very much. When properly mixed, the water is pressed out, and the paste or clay is beaten so that it may obtain consistency. Then it is ready to be made into the many shapes which find popular favour.

The process of manufacture depends on the shape to be obtained. A plain circular teacup may be cast on a potter's wheel of the ancient kind. When it is partly dried in a mould, it is turned on a lathe and trimmed; then the handle, which has been moulded, is affixed with a touch of the 'slip'--the porcelain paste in a state of dilution is the cement used in all such situations--and the piece is ready for the fire. A plate or saucer, however, is made by flat pressing; a piece of clay like a pancake is laid on the mould, which is set revolving on a wheel; the deft fingers of the workmen press the clay to the proper shape, and it is then dried. But the elaborate ornamental pieces of graceful design are made in moulds, and for this process the clay is used in the thin or 'slip' state. The moulds

are pressed together, the slip is poured into them through a hole in one side, and when the moisture has been absorbed by the plaster moulds sufficiently, the piece is taken out. It is often necessary, in making a large or complicated piece, to have as many as twenty or thirty castings. In moulding a figure, for instance, the legs and arms and hands, even the thumbs in many cases, are cast separately,

and with many other parts of the design are laid before a workman, who carefully builds up the complete figure out of the apparent chaos of parts, affixing each piece to the body with a touch of slip. When these wares are complete, they have to be fired for the first time; and they are taken to a kiln, and placed with great[Pg 69] care and many precautions in the grim interior. The contraction of the clay under fire is a matter to which the designers must give much study; and the change which takes place during forty hours' fierce firing in the kiln is shown by contrasting an unburnt piece and a piece of 'biscuit' or burnt ware, and marking the shrinkage. Your ware must be calculated to shrink only so much; if it shrink a shade further, the whole process may be spoiled. There is a loss of twenty-five per cent. sometimes in these kilns, in spite of the assiduous care of the workmen. When the biscuit ware has cooled, it is dipped in the glaze, which is a compound of lead and borax and other materials--virtually a sort of glass--and then it is fired for sixteen hours in the 'glost oven.' There is no contraction in this ordeal; but there is a risk none the less from other causes. In

fact, there is the danger of injury every time the ware goes to the fire, and as the highly decorated pieces have to go to the kiln many times, it may be inferred that the labour of weeks and even months is sometimes nullified by an untoward accident in the burning.

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It is during the process of decoration that the ornate vases and figures make so many trips to the fire. The artist department is a very large and important one. The designers, however, are a class of themselves. They project the idea; it is the business of the artist, in these circumstances, to execute it. The painters are taken into the works as lads and trained for the special service. What you remark chiefly in going through the decorating rooms is the great facility of the artists. You see a man with a plate or vase on which he is outlining a landscape, and you marvel at the rapid, accurate touches with which he does the work. Flowers, birds, and figures they can reproduce with great skill, and many of them are artists not merely in facility but in instinct. They work with[Pg 70] metallic colours only. They rely on copper, for instance, to give black and green, on iron to yield red hues, and so on; and the gold work is done with what seems to be a dirty brown paste, but is really pure gold mixed with flux and quicksilver. When the first wash is put on, the piece must be fired, so that the colours shall be burnt into the glaze. Then it returns to the painter, who adds the next touches so far as he can; the firing again follows; the piece is returned to him once more; and so on it goes till the work is complete.

It is therefore a highly technical business, especially as the colours change very much in the fire, and the painter has to work with full knowledge of the chemical processes in every firing. There is one form of the decorative process which is very singular--that is, the piercing work. The artist has the vase in the dried state before the firing, and with a tiny, sharp-pointed knife he cuts out little pieces according to the design in his mind, and produces an extremely beautiful perforated ware, the elaborate pattern and the lace-like deli-cacy of which almost repel the idea that the work is done by the unaided hand of man. In the colour processes, the work is virtually complete when the dull gold has been burnished; and the porcelain is then ready to be transferred to the showrooms, or exported

to America, which is the greatest patron, at present, of Worcester art. America, however, failed to retain one lovely vase no less than four feet high, the largest ever made in the works; it was taken to the Chicago Exhibition and back without accident, and was then sold in England for one thousand pounds.

It is important to remember the distinction between 'pottery' and 'porcelain:' the porcelain is clay purified by the fire, whereas pottery leaves the oven as it entered it--clay. The purification of the ware is really an illustration of the process which sustains the artistic inspiration[Pg 71] of the work. The gross, the vulgar, the mean are eliminated; a standard of beauty is set up, and to it every article must conform. It is to this ideal, sustained by a long succession of artists through a century and a half, that Worcester owes its world-wide reputation as the birthplace of some of the loveliest porcelain ever burnt in a kiln.

Chinese Porcelain Vase. [Pg 72]

CHAPTER III.

THE SEWING-MACHINE.

Thomas Saint--Thimonnier--Hunt--Elias Howe--Wilson--Morey--Singer.

lthough the sewing-machine has not put an end to the slavery of the needle, and although 'The Song of the Shirt' may be heard to the accompaniment of its click and whirr, just as it was to the 'stitch, stitch' of Tom Hood's time, yet has it unquestionably come as

a boon and a blessing to man--and woman. Its name now is legion, and it has had so many inventors and improvers that the present generation is fast losing sight of its original benefactors. Indeed, we take the sewing-machine to-day as an accomplished fact so familiar as to be commonplace. And yet that fact is a product of as moving a history as any in the story of human invention.

It is the growth of the last half-century, prior to which the real sewing-machine was the heavy-eyed, if not tireless, needlewoman, whose flying fingers seemed ever in vain pursuit of the flying hours. Needlework is as old as human history, for we may see the beginnings of it in the aprons of fig-leaves which Mother Eve sewed. What instrument she used we know not, but we do know from Moses that needles were in use when the tabernacle was[Pg 73] built. Yet, strange to say, it was not until the middle of last century that any one tried to supersede manual labour in the matter of stitching. It is said that a German tailor, named Charles Frederick Weisenthal, was the first to attempt it, but for hand-embroidery only--with a double-pointed needle, eyed in the middle. This was

in 1755, and fifty years later, one John Duncan, a Glasgow machinist, worked out Weisenthal's idea into a genuine embroidering machine, which really held the germ of the idea of the 'loop-stitch.' But neither of these was a sewing-machine, and before Duncan's invention some one else had been seized with another idea.

This was a London cabinetmaker called Thomas Saint, who in or about 1790 took out a patent for a machine for sewing leather, or rather for 'quilting, stitching, and making shoes, boots, spatterdashes, clogs, and other articles.' This patent, unfortunately, was taken out along with other inventions in connection with leather, and it was quite by accident that, some eighty years later, the specification

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of it was discovered by one who had made for himself a name in connection with sewing-machines. Even the Patent Office did not seem to have known of its existence, yet now it is clear enough that Thomas Saint's leather-sewing-machine of 1790 was the first genuine sewing-machine ever constructed, and that it was on what is now known as the 'chain-stitch' principle. Rude as it was, it is declared by experts to have anticipated most of the ingenious ideas of half a century of successive inventors, not one of whom, however, could in all human probability have as much as heard of Saint's machine. This is not the least curious incident in the history of the sewing-machine.

In Saint's machine the features are--the overhanging arm, which is the characteristic of many modern machines; the perpendicular action of the Singer machine; the eye[Pg 74]-pointed needle of the Howe machine; the pressure surfaces peculiar to the Howe machine; and a 'feed' system equal to that of the most modern inventions. Whether Saint's machine was ever worked in a practical workshop or not, it was unquestionably a practicable machine, constructed by one who knew pretty well what he was about, and what he wanted to achieve.

Now note the date of Thomas Saint's patent (1790), and next note the date of the invention of Barthelmy Thimonnier, of St Etienne, who is claimed in France as the inventor of the sewing-machine. In 1830, Thimonnier constructed a machine, principally of wood, with an arrangement of barbed needles, for stitching gloves, and in the following year he began business in Paris, with a partner, as an army clothier. The firm of Thimonnier, Petit, & Co., however, did not thrive, because the workpeople thought they

saw in the principal's machine an instrument destined to ruin them; much as the Luddites viewed steam-machinery in the cotton districts of England. An idea of that sort rapidly germinates heat, and Thimonnier's workshop was one day invaded by an angry mob, who smashed all the machines, and compelled the inventor to seek safety in flight. Poor Thimonnier was absent from Paris for three years, but in 1834 returned with another and more perfect machine. This was so coldly received, both by employers and workmen in the tailoring trade, that he left the capital, and, journeying through France with his machine, paid his way by exhibiting it in the towns and villages as a curiosity. After a few years, however, Thimonnier fell in with a capitalist who believed in him and his machine, and was willing to stake money on both. A partnership was entered into for the manufacture and sale of the machine, and all promised well for the new firm, when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, stopped the business, and ruined both the inventor and the capitalist. [Pg 75] Thimonnier died in 1857, in a poorhouse, of a broken heart.

This French machine was also on the chain-stitch principle, but it was forty years later than Saint's. In between the two came, about

1832, one Walter Hunt, of New York, who is said to have constructed a sewing-machine with the lock-stitch movement. Some uncertainty surrounds this claim, and Elias Howe is the person usually credited with this important, indeed invaluable invention. Whether Howe had ever seen Hunt's machine, we know not; but Hunt's machine was never patented, seems never to have come into practical working, and is, indeed, said to have been unworkable. There is, besides, in the Polytechnic at Vienna, the model of a machine, dated 1814, constructed by one Joseph Madersberg, a tailor of the Tyrol, which embodies the lock-stitch idea--working

with two threads. But this also was unworkable, and Elias Howe has the credit of having produced the first really practical lock-stitch sewing-machine.

His was a life of vicissitude and of ultimate triumph, both in fame and fortune. He was born at a small place in Massachusetts in

1819, and as a youth went to Boston, there to work as a mechanic. While there, and when about twenty-two years old, the idea occurred to him at his work of passing a thread through cloth and securing it on the other side by another thread. Here we perceive the germ of the lock-stitch--the two threads. Howe began to experiment with a number of bent wires in lieu of needles, but he lacked the means to put his great idea to a thorough practical test. Thus it slumbered for three years, when he went to board and lodge with an old schoolfellow named Fisher, who, after a while, agreed to advance Howe one hundred pounds in return for a half share in the invention should it prove a success. Thus aided, in 1845 Howe completed his first machine, and[Pg 76] actually made himself a suit

of clothes with it; and this would be just about the time of Thimonnier's temporary prosperity in alliance with the capitalist, Mogrini.

Feeling sure of his ground, Howe took bold steps to 'boom' his invention. He challenged five of the most expert sewers in a great Boston clothing factory to a sewing match. Each of them was to sew a certain strip of cloth, and Howe undertook to sew five strips, torn in halves, before each man had completed his one strip. The arrangements completed, the match began, and to the wonder of everybody, Howe finished his five seams before the others were half done with one seam. But murmurs instead of cheers succeeded the victory. He was angrily reproached for trying to take the bread out of the mouth of the honest working-man, and a cry was raised among the workers (as it has been heard time and again in the history of industrial development) to smash the machine. Howe, indeed, had much difficulty in escaping from the angry mob, with his precious machine under his arm.

In Howe's experience we thus see one parallel with Thimonnier's; but there was another. The American was quite as poor and resourceless as the Frenchman, and the next step in Howe's career was that he went on tour to the country fairs to exhibit his machine for a trifling fee, in order to keep body and soul together. People went in flocks to see the thing as a clever toy, but no one would 'take hold' of it as a practical machine. And so, in despair of doing any good with it in America, Elias Howe, in 1846, sent his brother to England to see if a market could not be found for the invention there. The brother succeeded in making terms with one

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William Thomas, staymaker, in Cheapside, London, and he sent for Elias to come over.

The price to be paid by Thomas for the patent was two hundred and fifty pounds, but Howe was to make certain[Pg 77] alterations in it so as to adapt it to the special requirements of the purchaser. While engaged in perfecting the machine, he was to receive wages at the rate of three pounds per week, and this wage he seems to have received for nearly two years. But he failed to achieve what Thomas wanted, and Thomas, after spending a good deal of money over the experiments, abandoned the thing altogether. Howe was thus astrand again, and he returned to America as poor as ever, leaving his machine behind him in pawn for advances to pay his passage home. And yet there were 'millions in it.'

This was in the year 1849, and just about the time when Howe was returning to America, another American, named Bostwich, was sending over to England a machine which he had invented for imitating hand-stitching, by means of cog-wheels and a bent needle. And a year or two after Howe's return, one Charles Morey, of Manchester, attempted to carry out the same stitch on a somewhat different plan, but failed to find sufficient pecuniary support. Indeed, poor Morey had a tragic end, for, taking his machine to Paris in the hope of finding a purchaser there, he incurred some debt which he could not pay, and was clapped into the Mazas prison. While there, he inadvertently broke the rules, and was shot by the guard for failing to reply to a challenge which he did not understand.