Self Help

S >> Samuel Smiles >> Self Help

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31

The career of industry which the nation has pursued, has also
proved its best education. As steady application to work is the
healthiest training for every individual, so is it the best
discipline of a state. Honourable industry travels the same road
with duty; and Providence has closely linked both with happiness.
The gods, says the poet, have placed labour and toil on the way
leading to the Elysian fields. Certain it is that no bread eaten
by man is so sweet as that earned by his own labour, whether bodily
or mental. By labour the earth has been subdued, and man redeemed
from barbarism; nor has a single step in civilization been made
without it. Labour is not only a necessity and a duty, but a
blessing: only the idler feels it to be a curse. The duty of work
is written on the thews and muscles of the limbs, the mechanism of
the hand, the nerves and lobes of the brain--the sum of whose
healthy action is satisfaction and enjoyment. In the school of
labour is taught the best practical wisdom; nor is a life of manual
employment, as we shall hereafter find, incompatible with high
mental culture.

Hugh Miller, than whom none knew better the strength and the
weakness belonging to the lot of labour, stated the result of his
experience to be, that Work, even the hardest, is full of pleasure
and materials for self-improvement. He held honest labour to be
the best of teachers, and that the school of toil is the noblest of
schools--save only the Christian one,--that it is a school in which
the ability of being useful is imparted, the spirit of independence
learnt, and the habit of persevering effort acquired. He was even
of opinion that the training of the mechanic,--by the exercise
which it gives to his observant faculties, from his daily dealing
with things actual and practical, and the close experience of life
which he acquires,--better fits him for picking his way along the
journey of life, and is more favourable to his growth as a Man,
emphatically speaking, than the training afforded by any other
condition.

The array of great names which we have already cursorily cited, of
men springing from the ranks of the industrial classes, who have
achieved distinction in various walks of life--in science,
commerce, literature, and art--shows that at all events the
difficulties interposed by poverty and labour are not
insurmountable. As respects the great contrivances and inventions
which have conferred so much power and wealth upon the nation, it
is unquestionable that for the greater part of them we have been
indebted to men of the humblest rank. Deduct what they have done
in this particular line of action, and it will be found that very
little indeed remains for other men to have accomplished.

Inventors have set in motion some of the greatest industries of the
world. To them society owes many of its chief necessaries,
comforts, and luxuries; and by their genius and labour daily life
has been rendered in all respects more easy as well as enjoyable.
Our food, our clothing, the furniture of our homes, the glass which
admits the light to our dwellings at the same time that it excludes
the cold, the gas which illuminates our streets, our means of
locomotion by land and by sea, the tools by which our various
articles of necessity and luxury are fabricated, have been the
result of the labour and ingenuity of many men and many minds.
Mankind at large are all the happier for such inventions, and are
every day reaping the benefit of them in an increase of individual
well-being as well as of public enjoyment.

Though the invention of the working steam-engine--the king of
machines--belongs, comparatively speaking, to our own epoch, the
idea of it was born many centuries ago. Like other contrivances
and discoveries, it was effected step by step--one man transmitting
the result of his labours, at the time apparently useless, to his
successors, who took it up and carried it forward another stage,--
the prosecution of the inquiry extending over many generations.
Thus the idea promulgated by Hero of Alexandria was never
altogether lost; but, like the grain of wheat hid in the hand of
the Egyptian mummy, it sprouted and again grew vigorously when
brought into the full light of modern science. The steam-engine
was nothing, however, until it emerged from the state of theory,
and was taken in hand by practical mechanics; and what a noble
story of patient, laborious investigation, of difficulties
encountered and overcome by heroic industry, does not that
marvellous machine tell of! It is indeed, in itself, a monument of
the power of self-help in man. Grouped around it we find Savary,
the military engineer; Newcomen, the Dartmouth blacksmith; Cawley,
the glazier; Potter, the engine-boy; Smeaton, the civil engineer;
and, towering above all, the laborious, patient, never-tiring James
Watt, the mathematical-instrument maker.

Watt was one of the most industrious of men; and the story of his
life proves, what all experience confirms, that it is not the man
of the greatest natural vigour and capacity who achieves the
highest results, but he who employs his powers with the greatest
industry and the most carefully disciplined skill--the skill that
comes by labour, application, and experience. Many men in his time
knew far more than Watt, but none laboured so assiduously as he did
to turn all that he did know to useful practical purposes. He was,
above all things, most persevering in the pursuit of facts. He
cultivated carefully that habit of active attention on which all
the higher working qualities of the mind mainly depend. Indeed,
Mr. Edgeworth entertained the opinion, that the difference of
intellect in men depends more upon the early cultivation of this
HABIT OF ATTENTION, than upon any great disparity between the
powers of one individual and another.

Even when a boy, Watt found science in his toys. The quadrants
lying about his father's carpenter's shop led him to the study of
optics and astronomy; his ill health induced him to pry into the
secrets of physiology; and his solitary walks through the country
attracted him to the study of botany and history. While carrying
on the business of a mathematical-instrument maker, he received an
order to build an organ; and, though without an ear for music, he
undertook the study of harmonics, and successfully constructed the
instrument. And, in like manner, when the little model of
Newcomen's steam-engine, belonging to the University of Glasgow,
was placed in his hands to repair, he forthwith set himself to
learn all that was then known about heat, evaporation, and
condensation,--at the same time plodding his way in mechanics and
the science of construction,--the results of which he at length
embodied in his condensing steam-engine.

For ten years he went on contriving and inventing--with little hope
to cheer him, and with few friends to encourage him. He went on,
meanwhile, earning bread for his family by making and selling
quadrants, making and mending fiddles, flutes, and musical
instruments; measuring mason-work, surveying roads, superintending
the construction of canals, or doing anything that turned up, and
offered a prospect of honest gain. At length, Watt found a fit
partner in another eminent leader of industry--Matthew Boulton, of
Birmingham; a skilful, energetic, and far-seeing man, who
vigorously undertook the enterprise of introducing the condensing-
engine into general use as a working power; and the success of both
is now matter of history. {5}

Many skilful inventors have from time to time added new power to
the steam-engine; and, by numerous modifications, rendered it
capable of being applied to nearly all the purposes of manufacture-
-driving machinery, impelling ships, grinding corn, printing books,
stamping money, hammering, planing, and turning iron; in short, of
performing every description of mechanical labour where power is
required. One of the most useful modifications in the engine was
that devised by Trevithick, and eventually perfected by George
Stephenson and his son, in the form of the railway locomotive, by
which social changes of immense importance have been brought about,
of even greater consequence, considered in their results on human
progress and civilization, than the condensing-engine of Watt.

One of the first grand results of Watt's invention,--which placed
an almost unlimited power at the command of the producing classes,-
-was the establishment of the cotton-manufacture. The person most
closely identified with the foundation of this great branch of
industry was unquestionably Sir Richard Arkwright, whose practical
energy and sagacity were perhaps even more remarkable than his
mechanical inventiveness. His originality as an inventor has
indeed been called in question, like that of Watt and Stephenson.
Arkwright probably stood in the same relation to the spinning-
machine that Watt did to the steam-engine and Stephenson to the
locomotive. He gathered together the scattered threads of
ingenuity which already existed, and wove them, after his own
design, into a new and original fabric. Though Lewis Paul, of
Birmingham, patented the invention of spinning by rollers thirty
years before Arkwright, the machines constructed by him were so
imperfect in their details, that they could not be profitably
worked, and the invention was practically a failure. Another
obscure mechanic, a reed-maker of Leigh, named Thomas Highs, is
also said to have invented the water-frame and spinning-jenny; but
they, too, proved unsuccessful.

When the demands of industry are found to press upon the resources
of inventors, the same idea is usually found floating about in many
minds;--such has been the case with the steam-engine, the safety-
lamp, the electric telegraph, and other inventions. Many ingenious
minds are found labouring in the throes of invention, until at
length the master mind, the strong practical man, steps forward,
and straightway delivers them of their idea, applies the principle
successfully, and the thing is done. Then there is a loud outcry
among all the smaller contrivers, who see themselves distanced in
the race; and hence men such as Watt, Stephenson, and Arkwright,
have usually to defend their reputation and their rights as
practical and successful inventors.

Richard Arkwright, like most of our great mechanicians, sprang from
the ranks. He was born in Preston in 1732. His parents were very
poor, and he was the youngest of thirteen children. He was never
at school: the only education he received he gave to himself; and
to the last he was only able to write with difficulty. When a boy,
he was apprenticed to a barber, and after learning the business, he
set up for himself in Bolton, where he occupied an underground
cellar, over which he put up the sign, "Come to the subterraneous
barber--he shaves for a penny." The other barbers found their
customers leaving them, and reduced their prices to his standard,
when Arkwright, determined to push his trade, announced his
determination to give "A clean shave for a halfpenny." After a few
years he quitted his cellar, and became an itinerant dealer in
hair. At that time wigs were worn, and wig-making formed an
important branch of the barbering business. Arkwright went about
buying hair for the wigs. He was accustomed to attend the hiring
fairs throughout Lancashire resorted to by young women, for the
purpose of securing their long tresses; and it is said that in
negotiations of this sort he was very successful. He also dealt in
a chemical hair dye, which he used adroitly, and thereby secured a
considerable trade. But he does not seem, notwithstanding his
pushing character, to have done more than earn a bare living.

The fashion of wig-wearing having undergone a change, distress fell
upon the wig-makers; and Arkwright, being of a mechanical turn, was
consequently induced to turn machine inventor or "conjurer," as the
pursuit was then popularly termed. Many attempts were made about
that time to invent a spinning-machine, and our barber determined
to launch his little bark on the sea of invention with the rest.
Like other self-taught men of the same bias, he had already been
devoting his spare time to the invention of a perpetual-motion
machine; and from that the transition to a spinning-machine was
easy. He followed his experiments so assiduously that he neglected
his business, lost the little money he had saved, and was reduced
to great poverty. His wife--for he had by this time married--was
impatient at what she conceived to be a wanton waste of time and
money, and in a moment of sudden wrath she seized upon and
destroyed his models, hoping thus to remove the cause of the family
privations. Arkwright was a stubborn and enthusiastic man, and he
was provoked beyond measure by this conduct of his wife, from whom
he immediately separated.

In travelling about the country, Arkwright had become acquainted
with a person named Kay, a clockmaker at Warrington, who assisted
him in constructing some of the parts of his perpetual-motion
machinery. It is supposed that he was informed by Kay of the
principle of spinning by rollers; but it is also said that the idea
was first suggested to him by accidentally observing a red-hot
piece of iron become elongated by passing between iron rollers.
However this may be, the idea at once took firm possession of his
mind, and he proceeded to devise the process by which it was to be
accomplished, Kay being able to tell him nothing on this point.
Arkwright now abandoned his business of hair collecting, and
devoted himself to the perfecting of his machine, a model of which,
constructed by Kay under his directions, he set up in the parlour
of the Free Grammar School at Preston. Being a burgess of the
town, he voted at the contested election at which General Burgoyne
was returned; but such was his poverty, and such the tattered state
of his dress, that a number of persons subscribed a sum sufficient
to have him put in a state fit to appear in the poll-room. The
exhibition of his machine in a town where so many workpeople lived
by the exercise of manual labour proved a dangerous experiment;
ominous growlings were heard outside the school-room from time to
time, and Arkwright,--remembering the fate of Kay, who was mobbed
and compelled to fly from Lancashire because of his invention of
the fly-shuttle, and of poor Hargreaves, whose spinning-jenny had
been pulled to pieces only a short time before by a Blackburn mob,-
-wisely determined on packing up his model and removing to a less
dangerous locality. He went accordingly to Nottingham, where he
applied to some of the local bankers for pecuniary assistance; and
the Messrs. Wright consented to advance him a sum of money on
condition of sharing in the profits of the invention. The machine,
however, not being perfected so soon as they had anticipated, the
bankers recommended Arkwright to apply to Messrs. Strutt and Need,
the former of whom was the ingenious inventor and patentee of the
stocking-frame. Mr. Strutt at once appreciated the merits of the
invention, and a partnership was entered into with Arkwright, whose
road to fortune was now clear. The patent was secured in the name
of "Richard Arkwright, of Nottingham, clockmaker," and it is a
circumstance worthy of note, that it was taken out in 1769, the
same year in which Watt secured the patent for his steam-engine. A
cotton-mill was first erected at Nottingham, driven by horses; and
another was shortly after built, on a much larger scale, at
Cromford, in Derbyshire, turned by a water-wheel, from which
circumstance the spinning-machine came to be called the water-
frame.

Arkwright's labours, however, were, comparatively speaking, only
begun. He had still to perfect all the working details of his
machine. It was in his hands the subject of constant modification
and improvement, until eventually it was rendered practicable and
profitable in an eminent degree. But success was only secured by
long and patient labour: for some years, indeed, the speculation
was disheartening and unprofitable, swallowing up a very large
amount of capital without any result. When success began to appear
more certain, then the Lancashire manufacturers fell upon
Arkwright's patent to pull it in pieces, as the Cornish miners fell
upon Boulton and Watt to rob them of the profits of their steam-
engine. Arkwright was even denounced as the enemy of the working
people; and a mill which he built near Chorley was destroyed by a
mob in the presence of a strong force of police and military. The
Lancashire men refused to buy his materials, though they were
confessedly the best in the market. Then they refused to pay
patent-right for the use of his machines, and combined to crush him
in the courts of law. To the disgust of right-minded people,
Arkwright's patent was upset. After the trial, when passing the
hotel at which his opponents were staying, one of them said, loud
enough to be heard by him, "Well, we've done the old shaver at
last;" to which he coolly replied, "Never mind, I've a razor left
that will shave you all." He established new mills in Lancashire,
Derbyshire, and at New Lanark, in Scotland. The mills at Cromford
also came into his hands at the expiry of his partnership with
Strutt, and the amount and the excellence of his products were
such, that in a short time he obtained so complete a control of the
trade, that the prices were fixed by him, and he governed the main
operations of the other cotton-spinners.

Arkwright was a man of great force of character, indomitable
courage, much worldly shrewdness, with a business faculty almost
amounting to genius. At one period his time was engrossed by
severe and continuous labour, occasioned by the organising and
conducting of his numerous manufactories, sometimes from four in
the morning till nine at night. At fifty years of age he set to
work to learn English grammar, and improve himself in writing and
orthography. After overcoming every obstacle, he had the
satisfaction of reaping the reward of his enterprise. Eighteen
years after he had constructed his first machine, he rose to such
estimation in Derbyshire that he was appointed High Sheriff of the
county, and shortly after George III. conferred upon him the honour
of knighthood. He died in 1792. Be it for good or for evil,
Arkwright was the founder in England of the modern factory system,
a branch of industry which has unquestionably proved a source of
immense wealth to individuals and to the nation.

All the other great branches of industry in Britain furnish like
examples of energetic men of business, the source of much benefit
to the neighbourhoods in which they have laboured, and of increased
power and wealth to the community at large. Amongst such might be
cited the Strutts of Belper; the Tennants of Glasgow; the Marshalls
and Gotts of Leeds; the Peels, Ashworths, Birleys, Fieldens,
Ashtons, Heywoods, and Ainsworths of South Lancashire, some of
whose descendants have since become distinguished in connection
with the political history of England. Such pre-eminently were the
Peels of South Lancashire.

The founder of the Peel family, about the middle of last century,
was a small yeoman, occupying the Hole House Farm, near Blackburn,
from which he afterwards removed to a house situated in Fish Lane
in that town. Robert Peel, as he advanced in life, saw a large
family of sons and daughters growing up about him; but the land
about Blackburn being somewhat barren, it did not appear to him
that agricultural pursuits offered a very encouraging prospect for
their industry. The place had, however, long been the seat of a
domestic manufacture--the fabric called "Blackburn greys,"
consisting of linen weft and cotton warp, being chiefly made in
that town and its neighbourhood. It was then customary--previous
to the introduction of the factory system--for industrious yeomen
with families to employ the time not occupied in the fields in
weaving at home; and Robert Peel accordingly began the domestic
trade of calico-making. He was honest, and made an honest article;
thrifty and hardworking, and his trade prospered. He was also
enterprising, and was one of the first to adopt the carding
cylinder, then recently invented.

But Robert Peel's attention was principally directed to the
PRINTING of calico--then a comparatively unknown art--and for some
time he carried on a series of experiments with the object of
printing by machinery. The experiments were secretly conducted in
his own house, the cloth being ironed for the purpose by one of the
women of the family. It was then customary, in such houses as the
Peels, to use pewter plates at dinner. Having sketched a figure or
pattern on one of the plates, the thought struck him that an
impression might be got from it in reverse, and printed on calico
with colour. In a cottage at the end of the farm-house lived a
woman who kept a calendering machine, and going into her cottage,
he put the plate with colour rubbed into the figured part and some
calico over it, through the machine, when it was found to leave a
satisfactory impression. Such is said to have been the origin of
roller printing on calico. Robert Peel shortly perfected his
process, and the first pattern he brought out was a parsley leaf;
hence he is spoken of in the neighbourhood of Blackburn to this day
as "Parsley Peel." The process of calico printing by what is
called the mule machine--that is, by means of a wooden cylinder in
relief, with an engraved copper cylinder--was afterwards brought to
perfection by one of his sons, the head of the firm of Messrs. Peel
and Co., of Church. Stimulated by his success, Robert Peel shortly
gave up farming, and removing to Brookside, a village about two
miles from Blackburn, he devoted himself exclusively to the
printing business. There, with the aid of his sons, who were as
energetic as himself, he successfully carried on the trade for
several years; and as the young men grew up towards manhood, the
concern branched out into various firms of Peels, each of which
became a centre of industrial activity and a source of remunerative
employment to large numbers of people.

From what can now be learnt of the character of the original and
untitled Robert Peel, he must have been a remarkable man--shrewd,
sagacious, and far-seeing. But little is known of him excepting
from traditions and the sons of those who knew him are fast passing
away. His son, Sir Robert, thus modestly spoke of him:- "My father
may be truly said to have been the founder of our family; and he so
accurately appreciated the importance of commercial wealth in a
national point of view, that he was often heard to say that the
gains to individuals were small compared with the national gains
arising from trade."

Sir Robert Peel, the first baronet and the second manufacturer of
the name, inherited all his father's enterprise, ability, and
industry. His position, at starting in life, was little above that
of an ordinary working man; for his father, though laying the
foundations of future prosperity, was still struggling with the
difficulties arising from insufficient capital. When Robert was
only twenty years of age, he determined to begin the business of
cotton-printing, which he had by this time learnt from his father,
on his own account. His uncle, James Haworth, and William Yates of
Blackburn, joined him in his enterprise; the whole capital which
they could raise amongst them amounting to only about 500l., the
principal part of which was supplied by William Yates. The father
of the latter was a householder in Blackburn, where he was well
known and much respected; and having saved money by his business,
he was willing to advance sufficient to give his son a start in the
lucrative trade of cotton-printing, then in its infancy. Robert
Peel, though comparatively a mere youth, supplied the practical
knowledge of the business; but it was said of him, and proved true,
that he "carried an old head on young shoulders." A ruined corn-
mill, with its adjoining fields, was purchased for a comparatively
small sum, near the then insignificant town of Bury, where the
works long after continued to be known as "The Ground;" and a few
wooden sheds having been run up, the firm commenced their cotton-
printing business in a very humble way in the year 1770, adding to
it that of cotton-spinning a few years later. The frugal style in
which the partners lived may be inferred from the following
incident in their early career. William Yates, being a married man
with a family, commenced housekeeping on a small scale, and, to
oblige Peel, who was single, he agreed to take him as a lodger.
The sum which the latter first paid for board and lodging was only
8s. a week; but Yates, considering this too little, insisted on the
weekly payment being increased a shilling, to which Peel at first
demurred, and a difference between the partners took place, which
was eventually compromised by the lodger paying an advance of
sixpence a week. William Yates's eldest child was a girl named
Ellen, and she very soon became an especial favourite with the
young lodger. On returning from his hard day's work at "The
Ground," he would take the little girl upon his knee, and say to
her, "Nelly, thou bonny little dear, wilt be my wife?" to which the
child would readily answer "Yes," as any child would do. "Then
I'll wait for thee, Nelly; I'll wed thee, and none else." And
Robert Peel did wait. As the girl grew in beauty towards
womanhood, his determination to wait for her was strengthened; and
after the lapse of ten years--years of close application to
business and rapidly increasing prosperity--Robert Peel married
Ellen Yates when she had completed her seventeenth year; and the
pretty child, whom her mother's lodger and father's partner had
nursed upon his knee, became Mrs. Peel, and eventually Lady Peel,
the mother of the future Prime Minister of England. Lady Peel was
a noble and beautiful woman, fitted to grace any station in life.
She possessed rare powers of mind, and was, on every emergency, the
high-souled and faithful counsellor of her husband. For many years
after their marriage, she acted as his amanuensis, conducting the
principal part of his business correspondence, for Mr. Peel himself
was an indifferent and almost unintelligible writer. She died in
1803, only three years after the Baronetcy had been conferred upon
her husband. It is said that London fashionable life--so unlike
what she had been accustomed to at home--proved injurious to her
health; and old Mr. Yates afterwards used to say, "if Robert hadn't
made our Nelly a 'Lady,' she might ha' been living yet."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31