Self Help
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Samuel Smiles >> Self Help
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In 1831 the electors of Tiverton, of which town Mr. Heathcoat had
proved himself so genuine a benefactor, returned him to represent
them in Parliament, and he continued their member for nearly thirty
years. During a great part of that time he had Lord Palmerston for
his colleague, and the noble lord, on more than one public
occasion, expressed the high regard which he entertained for his
venerable friend. On retiring from the representation in 1859,
owing to advancing age and increasing infirmities, thirteen hundred
of his workmen presented him with a silver inkstand and gold pen,
in token of their esteem. He enjoyed his leisure for only two more
years, dying in January, 1861, at the age of seventy-seven, and
leaving behind him a character for probity, virtue, manliness, and
mechanical genius, of which his descendants may well be proud.
We next turn to a career of a very different kind, that of the
illustrious but unfortunate Jacquard, whose life also illustrates
in a remarkable manner the influence which ingenious men, even of
the humblest rank, may exercise upon the industry of a nation.
Jacquard was the son of a hard-working couple of Lyons, his father
being a weaver, and his mother a pattern reader. They were too
poor to give him any but the most meagre education. When he was of
age to learn a trade, his father placed him with a book-binder. An
old clerk, who made up the master's accounts, gave Jacquard some
lessons in mathematics. He very shortly began to display a
remarkable turn for mechanics, and some of his contrivances quite
astonished the old clerk, who advised Jacquard's father to put him
to some other trade, in which his peculiar abilities might have
better scope than in bookbinding. He was accordingly put
apprentice to a cutler; but was so badly treated by his master,
that he shortly afterwards left his employment, on which he was
placed with a type-founder.
His parents dying, Jacquard found himself in a measure compelled to
take to his father's two looms, and carry on the trade of a weaver.
He immediately proceeded to improve the looms, and became so
engrossed with his inventions that he forgot his work, and very
soon found himself at the end of his means. He then sold the looms
to pay his debts, at the same time that he took upon himself the
burden of supporting a wife. He became still poorer, and to
satisfy his creditors, he next sold his cottage. He tried to find
employment, but in vain, people believing him to be an idler,
occupied with mere dreams about his inventions. At length he
obtained employment with a line-maker of Bresse, whither he went,
his wife remaining at Lyons, earning a precarious living by making
straw bonnets.
We hear nothing further of Jacquard for some years, but in the
interval he seems to have prosecuted his improvement in the
drawloom for the better manufacture of figured fabrics; for, in
1790, he brought out his contrivance for selecting the warp
threads, which, when added to the loom, superseded the services of
a draw-boy. The adoption of this machine was slow but steady, and
in ten years after its introduction, 4000 of them were found at
work in Lyons. Jacquard's pursuits were rudely interrupted by the
Revolution, and, in 1792, we find him fighting in the ranks of the
Lyonnaise Volunteers against the Army of the Convention under the
command of Dubois Crance. The city was taken; Jacquard fled and
joined the Army of the Rhine, where he rose to the rank of
sergeant. He might have remained a soldier, but that, his only son
having been shot dead at his side, he deserted and returned to
Lyons to recover his wife. He found her in a garret still employed
at her old trade of straw-bonnet making. While living in
concealment with her, his mind reverted to the inventions over
which he had so long brooded in former years; but he had no means
wherewith to prosecute them. Jacquard found it necessary, however,
to emerge from his hiding-place and try to find some employment.
He succeeded in obtaining it with an intelligent manufacturer, and
while working by day he went on inventing by night. It had
occurred to him that great improvements might still be introduced
in looms for figured goods, and he incidentally mentioned the
subject one day to his master, regretting at the same time that his
limited means prevented him from carrying out his ideas. Happily
his master appreciated the value of the suggestions, and with
laudable generosity placed a sum of money at his disposal, that he
might prosecute the proposed improvements at his leisure.
In three months Jacquard had invented a loom to substitute
mechanical action for the irksome and toilsome labour of the
workman. The loom was exhibited at the Exposition of National
Industry at Paris in 1801, and obtained a bronze medal. Jacquard
was further honoured by a visit at Lyons from the Minister Carnot,
who desired to congratulate him in person on the success of his
invention. In the following year the Society of Arts in London
offered a prize for the invention of a machine for manufacturing
fishing-nets and boarding-netting for ships. Jacquard heard of
this, and while walking one day in the fields according to his
custom, he turned the subject over in his mind, and contrived the
plan of a machine for the purpose. His friend, the manufacturer,
again furnished him with the means of carrying out his idea, and in
three weeks Jacquard had completed his invention.
Jacquard's achievement having come to the knowledge of the Prefect
of the Department, he was summoned before that functionary, and, on
his explanation of the working of the machine, a report on the
subject was forwarded to the Emperor. The inventor was forthwith
summoned to Paris with his machine, and brought into the presence
of the Emperor, who received him with the consideration due to his
genius. The interview lasted two hours, during which Jacquard,
placed at his ease by the Emperor's affability, explained to him
the improvements which he proposed to make in the looms for weaving
figured goods. The result was, that he was provided with
apartments in the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, where he had
the use of the workshop during his stay, and was provided with a
suitable allowance for his maintenance.
Installed in the Conservatoire, Jacquard proceeded to complete the
details of his improved loom. He had the advantage of minutely
inspecting the various exquisite pieces of mechanism contained in
that great treasury of human ingenuity. Among the machines which
more particularly attracted his attention, and eventually set him
upon the track of his discovery, was a loom for weaving flowered
silk, made by Vaucanson the celebrated automaton-maker.
Vaucanson was a man of the highest order of constructive genius.
The inventive faculty was so strong in him that it may almost be
said to have amounted to a passion, and could not be restrained.
The saying that the poet is born, not made, applies with equal
force to the inventor, who, though indebted, like the other, to
culture and improved opportunities, nevertheless contrives and
constructs new combinations of machinery mainly to gratify his own
instinct. This was peculiarly the case with Vaucanson; for his
most elaborate works were not so much distinguished for their
utility as for the curious ingenuity which they displayed. While a
mere boy attending Sunday conversations with his mother, he amused
himself by watching, through the chinks of a partition wall, part
of the movements of a clock in the adjoining apartment. He
endeavoured to understand them, and by brooding over the subject,
after several months he discovered the principle of the escapement.
From that time the subject of mechanical invention took complete
possession of him. With some rude tools which he contrived, he
made a wooden clock that marked the hours with remarkable
exactness; while he made for a miniature chapel the figures of some
angels which waved their wings, and some priests that made several
ecclesiastical movements. With the view of executing some other
automata he had designed, he proceeded to study anatomy, music, and
mechanics, which occupied him for several years. The sight of the
Flute-player in the Gardens of the Tuileries inspired him with the
resolution to invent a similar figure that should PLAY; and after
several years' study and labour, though struggling with illness, he
succeeded in accomplishing his object. He next produced a
Flageolet-player, which was succeeded by a Duck--the most ingenious
of his contrivances,--which swam, dabbled, drank, and quacked like
a real duck. He next invented an asp, employed in the tragedy of
'Cleopatre,' which hissed and darted at the bosom of the actress.
Vaucanson, however, did not confine himself merely to the making of
automata. By reason of his ingenuity, Cardinal de Fleury appointed
him inspector of the silk manufactories of France; and he was no
sooner in office, than with his usual irrepressible instinct to
invent, he proceeded to introduce improvements in silk machinery.
One of these was his mill for thrown silk, which so excited the
anger of the Lyons operatives, who feared the loss of employment
through its means, that they pelted him with stones and had nearly
killed him. He nevertheless went on inventing, and next produced a
machine for weaving flowered silks, with a contrivance for giving a
dressing to the thread, so as to render that of each bobbin or
skein of an equal thickness.
When Vaucanson died in 1782, after a long illness, he bequeathed
his collection of machines to the Queen, who seems to have set but
small value on them, and they were shortly after dispersed. But
his machine for weaving flowered silks was happily preserved in the
Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and there Jacquard found it
among the many curious and interesting articles in the collection.
It proved of the utmost value to him, for it immediately set him on
the track of the principal modification which he introduced in his
improved loom.
One of the chief features of Vaucanson's machine was a pierced
cylinder which, according to the holes it presented when revolved,
regulated the movement of certain needles, and caused the threads
of the warp to deviate in such a manner as to produce a given
design, though only of a simple character. Jacquard seized upon
the suggestion with avidity, and, with the genius of the true
inventor, at once proceeded to improve upon it. At the end of a
month his weaving-machine was completed. To the cylinder of
Vancanson, he added an endless piece of pasteboard pierced with a
number of holes, through which the threads of the warp were
presented to the weaver; while another piece of mechanism indicated
to the workman the colour of the shuttle which he ought to throw.
Thus the drawboy and the reader of designs were both at once
superseded. The first use Jacquard made of his new loom was to
weave with it several yards of rich stuff which he presented to the
Empress Josephine. Napoleon was highly gratified with the result
of the inventor's labours, and ordered a number of the looms to be
constructed by the best workmen, after Jacquard's model, and
presented to him; after which he returned to Lyons.
There he experienced the frequent fate of inventors. He was
regarded by his townsmen as an enemy, and treated by them as Kay,
Hargreaves, and Arkwright had been in Lancashire. The workmen
looked upon the new loom as fatal to their trade, and feared lest
it should at once take the bread from their mouths. A tumultuous
meeting was held on the Place des Terreaux, when it was determined
to destroy the machines. This was however prevented by the
military. But Jacquard was denounced and hanged in effigy. The
'Conseil des prud'hommes' in vain endeavoured to allay the
excitement, and they were themselves denounced. At length, carried
away by the popular impulse, the prud'hommes, most of whom had been
workmen and sympathized with the class, had one of Jacquard's looms
carried off and publicly broken in pieces. Riots followed, in one
of which Jacquard was dragged along the quay by an infuriated mob
intending to drown him, but he was rescued.
The great value of the Jacquard loom, however, could not be denied,
and its success was only a question of time. Jacquard was urged by
some English silk manufacturers to pass over into England and
settle there. But notwithstanding the harsh and cruel treatment he
had received at the hands of his townspeople, his patriotism was
too strong to permit him to accept their offer. The English
manufacturers, however, adopted his loom. Then it was, and only
then, that Lyons, threatened to be beaten out of the field, adopted
it with eagerness; and before long the Jacquard machine was
employed in nearly all kinds of weaving. The result proved that
the fears of the workpeople had been entirely unfounded. Instead
of diminishing employment, the Jacquard loom increased it at least
tenfold. The number of persons occupied in the manufacture of
figured goods in Lyons, was stated by M. Leon Faucher to have been
60,000 in 1833; and that number has since been considerably
increased.
As for Jacquard himself, the rest of his life passed peacefully,
excepting that the workpeople who dragged him along the quay to
drown him were shortly after found eager to bear him in triumph
along the same route in celebration of his birthday. But his
modesty would not permit him to take part in such a demonstration.
The Municipal Council of Lyons proposed to him that he should
devote himself to improving his machine for the benefit of the
local industry, to which Jacquard agreed in consideration of a
moderate pension, the amount of which was fixed by himself. After
perfecting his invention accordingly, he retired at sixty to end
his days at Oullins, his father's native place. It was there that
he received, in 1820, the decoration of the Legion of Honour; and
it was there that he died and was buried in 1834. A statue was
erected to his memory, but his relatives remained in poverty; and
twenty years after his death, his two nieces were under the
necessity of selling for a few hundred francs the gold medal
bestowed upon their uncle by Louis XVIII. "Such," says a French
writer, "was the gratitude of the manufacturing interests of Lyons
to the man to whom it owes so large a portion of its splendour."
It would be easy to extend the martyrology of inventors, and to
cite the names of other equally distinguished men who have, without
any corresponding advantage to themselves, contributed to the
industrial progress of the age,--for it has too often happened that
genius has planted the tree, of which patient dulness has gathered
the fruit; but we will confine ourselves for the present to a brief
account of an inventor of comparatively recent date, by way of
illustration of the difficulties and privations which it is so
frequently the lot of mechanical genius to surmount. We allude to
Joshua Heilmann, the inventor of the Combing Machine.
Heilmann was born in 1796 at Mulhouse, the principal seat of the
Alsace cotton manufacture. His father was engaged in that
business; and Joshua entered his office at fifteen. He remained
there for two years, employing his spare time in mechanical
drawing. He afterwards spent two years in his uncle's banking-
house in Paris, prosecuting the study of mathematics in the
evenings. Some of his relatives having established a small cotton-
spinning factory at Mulhouse, young Heilmann was placed with
Messrs. Tissot and Rey, at Paris, to learn the practice of that
firm. At the same time he became a student at the Conservatoire
des Arts et Metiers, where he attended the lectures, and studied
the machines in the museum. He also took practical lessons in
turning from a toymaker. After some time, thus diligently
occupied, he returned to Alsace, to superintend the construction of
the machinery for the new factory at Vieux-Thann, which was shortly
finished and set to work. The operations of the manufactory were,
however, seriously affected by a commercial crisis which occurred,
and it passed into other hands, on which Heilmann returned to his
family at Mulhouse.
He had in the mean time been occupying much of his leisure with
inventions, more particularly in connection with the weaving of
cotton and the preparation of the staple for spinning. One of his
earliest contrivances was an embroidering-machine, in which twenty
needles were employed, working simultaneously; and he succeeded in
accomplishing his object after about six months' labour. For this
invention, which he exhibited at the Exposition of 1834, he
received a gold medal, and was decorated with the Legion of Honour.
Other inventions quickly followed--an improved loom, a machine for
measuring and folding fabrics, an improvement of the "bobbin and
fly frames" of the English spinners, and a weft winding-machine,
with various improvements in the machinery for preparing, spinning,
and weaving silk and cotton. One of his most ingenious
contrivances was his loom for weaving simultaneously two pieces of
velvet or other piled fabric, united by the pile common to both,
with a knife and traversing apparatus for separating the two
fabrics when woven. But by far the most beautiful and ingenious of
his inventions was the combing-machine, the history of which we now
proceed shortly to describe.
Heilmann had for some years been diligently studying the
contrivance of a machine for combing long-stapled cotton, the
ordinary carding-machine being found ineffective in preparing the
raw material for spinning, especially the finer sorts of yarn,
besides causing considerable waste. To avoid these imperfections,
the cotton-spinners of Alsace offered a prize of 5000 francs for an
improved combing-machine, and Heilmann immediately proceeded to
compete for the reward. He was not stimulated by the desire of
gain, for he was comparatively rich, having acquired a considerable
fortune by his wife. It was a saying of his that "one will never
accomplish great things who is constantly asking himself, how much
gain will this bring me?" What mainly impelled him was the
irrepressible instinct of the inventor, who no sooner has a
mechanical problem set before him than he feels impelled to
undertake its solution. The problem in this case was, however,
much more difficult than he had anticipated. The close study of
the subject occupied him for several years, and the expenses in
which he became involved in connection with it were so great, that
his wife's fortune was shortly swallowed up, and he was reduced to
poverty, without being able to bring his machine to perfection.
From that time he was under the necessity of relying mainly on the
help of his friends to enable him to prosecute the invention.
While still struggling with poverty and difficulties, Heilmann's
wife died, believing her husband ruined; and shortly after he
proceeded to England and settled for a time at Manchester, still
labouring at his machine. He had a model made for him by the
eminent machine-makers, Sharpe, Roberts, and Company; but still he
could not make it work satisfactorily, and he was at length brought
almost to the verge of despair. He returned to France to visit his
family, still pursuing his idea, which had obtained complete
possession of his mind. While sitting by his hearth one evening,
meditating upon the hard fate of inventors and the misfortunes in
which their families so often become involved, he found himself
almost unconsciously watching his daughters coming their long hair
and drawing it out at full length between their fingers. The
thought suddenly struck him that if he could successfully imitate
in a machine the process of combing out the longest hair and
forcing back the short by reversing the action of the comb, it
might serve to extricate him from his difficulty. It may be
remembered that this incident in the life of Heilmann has been made
the subject of a beautiful picture by Mr. Elmore, R.A., which was
exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1862.
Upon this idea he proceeded, introduced the apparently simple but
really most intricate process of machine-combing, and after great
labour he succeeded in perfecting the invention. The singular
beauty of the process can only be appreciated by those who have
witnessed the machine at work, when the similarity of its movements
to that of combing the hair, which suggested the invention, is at
once apparent. The machine has been described as "acting with
almost the delicacy of touch of the human fingers." It combs the
lock of cotton AT BOTH ENDS, places the fibres exactly parallel
with each other, separates the long from the short, and unites the
long fibres in one sliver and the short ones in another. In fine,
the machine not only acts with the delicate accuracy of the human
fingers, but apparently with the delicate intelligence of the human
mind.
The chief commercial value of the invention consisted in its
rendering the commoner sorts of cotton available for fine spinning.
The manufacturers were thereby enabled to select the most suitable
fibres for high-priced fabrics, and to produce the finer sorts of
yarn in much larger quantities. It became possible by its means to
make thread so fine that a length of 334 miles might be spun from a
single pound weight of the prepared cotton, and, worked up into the
finer sorts of lace, the original shilling's worth of cotton-wool,
before it passed into the hands of the consumer, might thus be
increased to the value of between 300l. and 400l. sterling.
The beauty and utility of Heilmann's invention were at once
appreciated by the English cotton-spinners. Six Lancashire firms
united and purchased the patent for cotton-spinning for England for
the sum of 30,000l; the wool-spinners paid the same sum for the
privilege of applying the process to wool; and the Messrs.
Marshall, of Leeds, 20,000l. for the privilege of applying it to
flax. Thus wealth suddenly flowed in upon poor Heilmann at last.
But he did not live to enjoy it. Scarcely had his long labours
been crowned by success than he died, and his son, who had shared
in his privations, shortly followed him.
It is at the price of lives such as these that the wonders of
civilisation are achieved.
CHAPTER III--THE GREAT POTTERS--PALISSY, BOTTGHER, WEDGWOOD
"Patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the
rarest too . . . Patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as
well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness when
Impatience companions her."--John Ruskin.
"Il y a vingt et cinq ans passez qu'il ne me fut monstre une coupe
de terre, tournee et esmaillee d'une telle beaute que . . .
deslors, sans avoir esgard que je n'avois nulle connoissance des
terres argileuses, je me mis a chercher les emaux, comme un homme
qui taste en tenebres."--Bernard Palissy.
It so happens that the history of Pottery furnishes some of the
most remarkable instances of patient perseverance to be found in
the whole range of biography. Of these we select three of the most
striking, as exhibited in the lives of Bernard Palissy, the
Frenchman; Johann Friedrich Bottgher, the German; and Josiah
Wedgwood, the Englishman.
Though the art of making common vessels of clay was known to most
of the ancient nations, that of manufacturing enamelled earthenware
was much less common. It was, however, practised by the ancient
Etruscans, specimens of whose ware are still to be found in
antiquarian collections. But it became a lost art, and was only
recovered at a comparatively recent date. The Etruscan ware was
very valuable in ancient times, a vase being worth its weight in
gold in the time of Augustus. The Moors seem to have preserved
amongst them a knowledge of the art, which they were found
practising in the island of Majorca when it was taken by the Pisans
in 1115. Among the spoil carried away were many plates of Moorish
earthenware, which, in token of triumph, were embedded in the walls
of several of the ancient churches of Pisa, where they are to be
seen to this day. About two centuries later the Italians began to
make an imitation enamelled ware, which they named Majolica, after
the Moorish place of manufacture.
The reviver or re-discoverer of the art of enamelling in Italy was
Luca della Robbia, a Florentine sculptor. Vasari describes him as
a man of indefatigable perseverance, working with his chisel all
day and practising drawing during the greater part of the night.
He pursued the latter art with so much assiduity, that when working
late, to prevent his feet from freezing with the cold, he was
accustomed to provide himself with a basket of shavings, in which
he placed them to keep himself warm and enable him to proceed with
his drawings. "Nor," says Vasari, "am I in the least astonished at
this, since no man ever becomes distinguished in any art whatsoever
who does not early begin to acquire the power of supporting heat,
cold, hunger, thirst, and other discomforts; whereas those persons
deceive themselves altogether who suppose that when taking their
ease and surrounded by all the enjoyments of the world they may
still attain to honourable distinction,--for it is not by sleeping,
but by waking, watching, and labouring continually, that
proficiency is attained and reputation acquired."
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