Captains of Industry by James Parton (life changing books to read TXT) 📕

He was born in the year 1601, and sprung from a family whose title of nobility dated back to the fourteenth century. He is described by his English biographer as a learned, thoughtful, and studious Roman Catholic; as public-spirited and humane; as a mechanic, patient, skillful, full of resources, and quick to comprehend. He inherited a great estate, not perhaps so very productive in money, but of enormous intrinsic value. There is reason to believe that he began to experiment with steam soon after he came of age. He describes one of his experiments, probably of early date:—

"I have taken a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it with water three quarters full, stopping and screwing up the broken end, as also the touch-hole, and making a constant fire under it. Within twenty-four hours it burst, and made a great crack."

That the engine which he constructed was designed to pump water is shown by the very name which he gave it,—"the water-commanding engine,"—and, indeed, it was never used for any other purpose. The plan of it was very simple, and, without improvements, it could have answered its purposes but imperfectly. It consisted of two vessels from which the air was driven alternately by the condensation of steam within them, and into the vacuum thus created the water rushed from the bottom of the mine. He probably had his first machine erected before 1630, when he was still a young man, and he spent his life in endeavors to bring his invention into use. In doing this he expended so large a portion of his fortune, and excited so much ridicule, that he died comparatively poor and friendless. I think it probable, however, that his poverty was due rather to the civil wars, in which his heroic old father and himself were so unfortunate as to be on the losing side. He attempted to form a company for the introduction of his machine, and when he died without having succeeded in this, his widow still persisted in the same object, though without success. He did, however, make several steam-engines besides the one at Raglan Castle; engines which did actually answer the purpose of raising water from considerable depths in a continuous stream. He also erected near London a steam fountain, which he describes.

During the next century several important improvements were made in the steam-engine, but without rendering it anything like the useful agent which we now possess. When James Watt began to experiment, about the year 1760, in his little shop near the Glasgow University, the steam-engine was still used only for pumping water, and he soon discovered that it wasted three fourths of the steam. He once related to a friend how the idea of his great improvement, that of saving the waste by a condenser, occurred to his mind. He was then a poor mechanic living upon fourteen shillings a week.

"I had gone to take a walk," he said, "on a fine Sabbath afternoon. I had entered the Green by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street, and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that, as steam was an elastic body, it would rush into a vacuum, and, if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel, it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder."

He had found it! Before he had crossed the Green, he added, "the whole thing was arranged in my mind." Since that memorable day the invention has been ever growing; for, as Professor Thurston well remarks: "Great inventions are never the work of any one mind." From Hero to Corliss is a stretch of nearly twenty centuries; during which, probably, a thousand inventive minds have contributed to make the steam-engine the exquisite thing it is to-day.

Our great cities have a new wonder of late years. I mean those immense dry-goods stores which we see in Paris, London, New York, Vienna, Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago, in which are displayed under one roof almost all the things worn, or used for domestic purposes, by man, woman, or child.

What a splendid and cheering spectacle the interior presents on a fine, bright day! The counters a tossing sea of brilliant fabrics; crowds of ladies moving in all directions; the clerks, well-dressed and polite, exhibiting their goods; the cash-boys flying about with money in one hand and a bundle in the other; customers streaming in at every door; and customers passing out, with the satisfied air of people who have got what they want. It gives the visitor a cheerful idea of abundance to see such a provision of comfortable and pleasant things brought from every quarter of the globe.

An old dry-goods merchant of London, now nearly ninety, and long ago retired from business with a large fortune, has given his recollections of business in the good old times. There is a periodical, called the "Draper's Magazine," devoted to the dry-goods business, and it is in this that some months ago he told his story.

When he was a few months past thirteen, being stout and large for his age, he was placed in a London dry-goods store, as boy of all work. No wages were given him. At that time the clerks in stores usually boarded with their employer. On the first night of his service, when it was time to go to bed, he was shown a low, truckle bedstead, under the counter, made to pull out and push in. He did not have even this poor bed to himself, but shared it with another boy in the store. On getting up in the morning, instead of washing and dressing for the day, he was obliged to put on some old clothes, take down the shutters of the store,—which were so heavy he could hardly carry them,—then clean the brass signs and the outside of the shop windows, leaving the inside to be washed by the older clerks. When he had done this, he was allowed to go up stairs, wash himself, dress for the day, and to eat his breakfast. Then he took his place behind the counter.

We think it wrong for boys under fourteen to work ten hours a day. But in the stores of the olden time, both boys and men worked from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and nothing was thought of it. This store, for example, was opened soon after eight in the morning, and the shutters were not put up till ten in the evening. There was much work to do after the store was closed; and the young men, in fact, were usually released from labor about a quarter past eleven. On Saturday nights the store closed at twelve o'clock, and it was not uncommon for the young men to be employed in putting away the goods until between two and three on Sunday morning.

"There used to be," the old gentleman records, "a supper of hot beafsteaks and onions, and porter, which we boys used to relish immensely, and eat and drink a good deal more of both than was good for us."

After such a week's work one would think the clerks would have required rest on Sunday. But they did not get much. The store was open from eight until church time, which was then eleven o'clock; and this was one of the most profitable mornings of the week. The old gentleman explains why it was so. Almost all factories, shops, and stores were then kept open very late, and the last thing done in them was to pay wages, which was seldom accomplished until after midnight. Hence the apparent necessity for the Sunday morning's business.

Another great evil mentioned by our chronicler grew out of this bad system of all work and no play. The clerks, released from business towards midnight, were accustomed to go to a tavern and spend part of the night in drinking and carousing; reeling home at a late hour, much the worse for drink, and unfit for business in the morning until they had taken another glass. All day the clerks were in the habit of slipping out without their hats to the nearest tap-room for beer.

Nor was the system very different in New York. An aged book-keeper, to whom I gave an outline of the old gentleman's narrative, informs me that forty years ago the clerks, as a rule, were detained till very late in the evening, and often went from the store straight to a drinking-house.

Now let us see how it fared with the public who depended upon these stores for their dry-goods. From our old gentleman's account it would seem that every transaction was a sort of battle between the buyer and seller to see which should cheat the other. On the first day of his attendance he witnessed a specimen of the mode in which a dexterous clerk could sell an article to a lady which she did not want. An unskillful clerk had displayed too suddenly the entire stock of the goods of which she was in search; upon which she rose to leave, saying that there was nothing she liked. A more experienced salesman then stepped up.

"Walk this way, madam, if you please, and I will show you something entirely different, with which I am sure you will be quite delighted."

He took her to the other end of the store, and then going back to the pile which she had just rejected, snatched up several pieces, and sold her one of them almost immediately. Customers, the old merchant says, were often bullied into buying things they did not want.

"Many a half-frightened girl," he remarks, "have I seen go out of the shop, the tears welling up into her eyes, and saying, 'I am sure I shall never like it:' some shawl or dress having been forced upon her contrary to her taste or judgment."

The new clerk, although by nature a very honest young fellow, soon became expert in all the tricks of the trade. It was the custom then for employers to allow clerks a reward for selling things that were particularly unsalable, or which required some special skill or impudence in the seller. For example, they kept on hand a great supply of what they were pleased to call "remnants," which were supposed to be sold very cheap; and as the public of that day had a passion for remnants, the master of the shop took care to have them made in sufficient numbers. There were heaps of remnants of linen, and it so happened that the remnants were exactly long enough for a shirt, or some other garment. Any clerk who could push off one of these remnants upon a customer was allowed a penny or twopence as a reward for his talent; and there were certain costly articles, such as shawls and silks of unsalable patterns, upon which there was a premium of several shillings for selling.

There was one frightfully ugly shawl which had hung fire so long that the master of the shop offered a reward of eight shillings (two dollars) to any one who should sell it at the full price; which was twenty dollars. Our lad covered himself with glory one morning, by selling this horrid old thing. A sailor came in to buy a satin scarf for a present. The boy saw his chance.

"As you want something for a present," said he to the sailor, "would you not like to give something really useful and valuable that would last for years?"

In three minutes the sailor was walking out of