Captains of Industry Part 26

These were the wise and large thoughts of a great citizen for the metropolis of his country. But the king was Charles II.! Our race produces good citizens in great numbers, and great citizens not a few, but the supreme difficulty of civilization is to get a few such where they can direct and control.

SIR JOHN RENNIE,

ENGINEER.

One of the most striking city scenes in the world is the view of London as you approach London Bridge in one of the small, low-decked steamers which ply upon the Thames. London stands where navigation for sea-going vessels ceases on this famous stream, which is crossed at London, within a stretch of three or four miles, by about fifteen bridges, of which seven or eight can be seen at one view under the middle arch of London Bridge.

Over all these bridges there is a ceaseless tide of human life, and in the river below, besides long lines of ships at anchor and unloading, there are as many steam-vessels, barges, skiffs, and wherries as can find safe pa.s.sage. A scene more animated, picturesque, and grand is nowhere else presented, especially when the great black dome of St.

Paul's is visible, hanging over it, appearing to be suspended in the foggy atmosphere like a black balloon, the cathedral itself being invisible.

Three of these bridges were built by the engineers, father and son, whose name appears at the head of this article, and those three are among the most wonderful structures of their kind. One of these is London Bridge; another is called Southwark, and the third, Waterloo. The time may come when the man who builds bridges will be as celebrated as the man who batters them down with cannon; but, at present, for one person who knows the name of Sir John Rennie there are a thousand who are familiar with Wellington and Waterloo.

He had, however, a pedigree longer than that of some lords. His father was a very great engineer before him, and that father acquired his training in practical mechanics under a Scotch firm of machinists and mill-wrights which dates back to the reign of Charles the Second. It is to be particularly noted that both John Rennie, the elder, and Sir John, his son, derived an important part of their education in the workshop and model-room. Both of them, indeed, had an ideal education; for they enjoyed the best theoretical instruction which their age and country could furnish, and the best practical training also. Theory and practice went hand in hand. While the intellect was nourished, the body was developed, the hand acquired skill, and the eyesight, certainty. It is impossible to imagine a better education for a young man than for him to receive instruction at Edinburgh University under the ill.u.s.trious Professor Black, and afterwards a training in practical mechanics under Andrew Meikle, one of the best mechanics then living. This was the fortunate lot of Rennie's father, who wisely determined that his son should have the same advantage.

When the boy had pa.s.sed through the preparatory schools, the question arose, whether he should be sent to one of the universities, or should go at once into the workshop. His father frequently said that the real foundation of civil engineering is mechanics, theoretical and practical.

He did not believe that a young man could become an engineer by sitting in a cla.s.s-room and hearing lectures; but that he must be placed in contact with realities, with materials, with tools, with men, with difficulties, make mistakes, achieve successes, and thus acquire the blended boldness and caution which mark the great men in this profession. It is a fact that the greatest engineers of the past century, whatever else they may have had or lacked, were thoroughly versed in practical mechanics. Smeaton, Telford, Arkwright, Hargreaves, George Stephenson, Rennie, were all men who, as they used to say, had "an ounce of theory to a pound of practice."

Young Rennie worked eight hours a day in the practical part of his profession, and spent four in the acquisition of science and the modern languages, aided in both by the first men in London in their branches.

Four or five years of this training gave him, as he says in his autobiography, the "_rudiments_" of his profession. His father next determined to give him some experience in bearing responsibility, and placed him as an a.s.sistant to the resident-engineer of Waterloo Bridge, then in course of construction. He was but nineteen years of age; but, being the son of the head of the firm, he was naturally deferred to and prepared to take the lead. Soon after, the Southwark Bridge was begun, which the young man superintended daily at every stage of its construction.

English engineers regard this bridge as the _ne plus ultra_ of bridge-building. A recent writer speaks of it as "confessedly unrivaled as regards its colossal proportions, its architectural effect, or the general simplicity and ma.s.sive character of its details." It crosses the river by three arches, of which the central one has a span of two hundred and forty feet, and it is built at a place where the river at high tide is thirty-six feet deep. The cost of this bridge was four millions of dollars, and it required five years to build it. The bridge is of iron, and contains a great many devices originated by the young engineer, and sanctioned by his father. It was he also who first, in recent times, learned how to transport ma.s.ses of stone of twenty-five tons weight, used for the foundation of bridges.

Having thus become an accomplished engineer, his wise old father sent him on a long tour, which lasted more than two years, in the course of which he inspected all the great works, both of the ancients and moderns, in Europe, and the more accessible parts of Africa and Asia.

Returning home, the death of his father suddenly placed upon his shoulders the most extensive and difficult engineering business in Great Britain. But with such a training, under such a father, and inheriting so many traditional methods, he proved equal to the position, continued the great works begun by his father, and carried them on to successful completion.

His father had already convinced the government that the old London Bridge could never be made sufficient for the traffic, or un.o.bstructive to the navigation. A bridge has existed at this spot since the year 928, and some of the timbers of the original structure were still sound in 1824, when work upon the new bridge was begun.

Thirty firms competed for the contract for building the new London Bridge, but it was awarded to the Rennies, under whose superintendence it was built. The bridge is nine hundred and twenty-eight feet in length, and has five arches. In this structure although utility was the first consideration, there in an elegant solidity of design which makes it pleasing and impressive in the highest degree. The rapid stream is as little obstructed as the circ.u.mstances admitted, and there does not appear to be in the bridge an atom of superfluous material. London Bridge is, I suppose, the most crowded thoroughfare in the world.

Twenty-five thousand vehicles cross it daily, as well as countless mult.i.tudes of foot-pa.s.sengers. So great is the throng, that there is a project now on foot to widen it. In 1831, when it was formally opened by King William IV., the great engineer was knighted, and he was in consequence ever after called Sir John Rennie.

During the period of railroad building, Sir John Rennie constructed a great many remarkable works, particularly in Portugal and Sweden. We have lately heard much of the disappointment of young engineers whom the cessation in the construction of railroads has thrown out of business.

Perhaps no profession suffered more from the dull times than this. Sir John Rennie explains the matter in his autobiography:--

"In 1844," he tells us, "the demand for engineering surveyors and a.s.sistants was very great. Engineering was considered to be the only profession where immense wealth and fame were to be acquired, and consequently everybody became engineers. It was not the question whether they were educated for it, or competent to undertake it, but simply whether any person chose to dub himself engineer; hence lawyers' clerks, surgeons' apprentices, merchants, tradesmen, officers in the army and navy, private gentlemen, left their professions and became engineers.

The consequence was that innumerable blunders were made and vast sums of money were recklessly expended."

It was much the same in the United States; and hence a good many of these gentlemen have been obliged to find their way back to the homelier occupations which they rashly abandoned. But in our modern world a thoroughly trained engineer, like Sir John Rennie, will always be in request; for man's conquest of the earth is still most incomplete; and I do not doubt that the next century will far outdo this in the magnitude of its engineering works, and in the external changes wrought by the happy union of theory and practice in such men as Telford, Stephenson, and Rennie.

Sir John Rennie spent the last years of his life in writing his Memoirs, a most interesting and useful work, recently published in London, which, I hope, will be republished here. It is just the book for a young fellow who has an ambition to gain honor by serving mankind in a skillful and manly way. Sir John Rennie, like his father before him, and like all other great masters of men, was constantly attentive to the interests and feelings of those who a.s.sisted him. He was a wise and considerate employer; and the consequence was, that he was generally served with loyal and affectionate fidelity. He died in 1874, aged eighty years.

SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE.

We still deal strangely with the Jews. While at one end of Europe an Israelite scarcely dares show himself in the streets for fear of being stoned and abused, in other countries of the same continent we see them prime ministers, popular authors, favorite composers of music, capitalists, philanthropists, to whom whole nations pay homage.

Sir Moses Montefiore, though an English baronet, is an Israelite of the Israelites, connected by marriage and business with the Rothschilds, and a sharer in their wonderful acc.u.mulations of money. His hundredth birthday was celebrated in 1883 at his country-house on the English coast, and celebrated in such a way as to make the festival one of the most interesting events of the year. The English papers tell us that nearly a hundred telegrams of congratulation and benediction reached the aged man in the course of the day, from America, Africa, Asia, and all-parts of Europe, from Christians, Jews, Mahomedans, and men of the world. The telegraph offices, we are told, were clogged during the morning with these messages, some of which were of great length, in foreign languages and in strange alphabets, such as the Arabic and Hebrew. Friends in England sent him addresses in the English manner, several of which were beautifully written upon parchment and superbly mounted. The railroad pa.s.sing near his house conveyed to him by every train during the day presents of rare fruit and beautiful flowers. The Jews in Spain and Portugal forwarded presents of the cakes prepared by orthodox Jews for the religious festival which occurred on his birthday.

Indeed, there has seldom been in Europe such a widespread and cordial recognition of the birthday of any private citizen.

Doubtless, the remarkable longevity of Sir Moses had something to do with emphasizing the celebration. Great wealth, too, attracts the regard of mankind. But there are many rich old Jews in the world whose birthday excites no enthusiasm. The briefest review of the long life of Sir Moses Montefiore will sufficiently explain the almost universal recognition of the recent anniversary.

He was born as long ago as 1784, the second year of American independence, when William Pitt was prime minister of England. He was five years old when the Bastille was stormed, and thirty-one when the battle of Waterloo was fought. He was in middle life before England had become wise enough to make Jew and Christian equal before the law, and thus attract to her sh.o.r.es one of the most gifted and one of the most virtuous of races.

The father of Sir Moses lived and died in one of the narrow old streets near the centre of London called Philpot Lane, where he became the father of an old-fashioned family of seventeen children. This prolific parent was a man of no great wealth, and consequently his eldest son, Moses, left school at an early age, and was apprenticed to a London firm of provision dealers. He was a singularly handsome young man, of agreeable manners and most engaging disposition, circ.u.mstances which led to his entering the Stock Exchange. This was at a time when only twelve Jewish brokers were allowed to carry on business in London, and he was one of the twelve.

At the age of twenty-eight he had fully entered upon his career, a broker and a married man, his wife the daughter of Levy Cohen, a rich and highly cultivated Jewish merchant. His wife's sister had married N.

M. Rothschild, and one of his brothers married Rothschild's sister.

United thus by marriage to the great banker, he became also his partner in business, and this at a time when the gains of the Rothschilds were greatest and most rapid.

Most readers remember how the Rothschilds made their prodigious profits during the last years of Bonaparte's reign. They had a pigeon express at Dover, by means of which they obtained the first correct news from the continent. During the "Hundred Days," for example, such a panic prevailed in England that government bonds were greatly depressed. The first rumors from Waterloo were of defeat and disaster, which again reduced consols to a panic price. The Rothschilds, notified of the victory a few hours sooner than the government itself, bought largely of securities which, in twenty-four hours, almost doubled in value. Moses Montefiore, sharing in these transactions, found himself at forty-five a millionaire.

Instead of slaving away in business to the end of his life, adding million to million, with the risk of losing all at last, he took the wise resolution of retiring from business and devoting the rest of his life to works of philanthropy.

When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, Moses Montefiore was sheriff of London. The queen had lived near his country-house, and had often as a little girl strolled about his park. She now enjoyed the satisfaction of conferring upon her neighbor the honor of knighthood, and a few years later she made him a baronet. Thus he became Sir Moses, which has an odd sound to us, but which in England seems natural enough.

During the last fifty years Sir Moses has been, as it were, a professional philanthropist. Every good cause has shared his bounty, but he has been most generous to poor members of his own race and religion.

He has visited seven times the Holy Land, where the Jews have been for ages impoverished and degraded. He has directed his particular attention to improving the agriculture of Palestine, once so fertile and productive, and inducing the Jews to return to the cultivation of the soil. In that country he himself caused to be planted an immense garden, in which there are nine hundred fruit trees, made productive by irrigation. He has promoted the system of irrigation by building aqueducts, digging wells, and providing improved apparatus. He has also endowed hospitals and almshouses in that country.

In whatever part of the world, during the last fifty years, the Jews have been persecuted or distressed, he has put forth the most efficient exertions for their relief, often going himself to distant countries to convey the requisite a.s.sistance. When he was ninety-one years of age he went to Palestine upon an errand of benevolence. He has pleaded the cause of his persecuted brethren before the Emperor of Russia, and pleaded it with success. To all that part of the world known to us chiefly through the Jews he has been a constant and most munificent benefactor during the last half century, while never turning a deaf ear to the cry of want nearer home.

In October he completes his hundredth year. At present (January, 1884), he reads without spectacles, hears well, stands nearly erect, although six feet three in height, and has nothing of the somnolence of old age.

He drives out every day, gets up at eleven, and goes to bed at nine. His diet is chiefly milk and old port wine, with occasionally a little soup or bread and b.u.t.ter. He still enjoys the delights of beneficence, which are among the keenest known to mortals, and pleases himself this year by giving checks of ninety-nine pounds to benevolent objects, a pound for each year that he has had the happiness of living.

MARQUIS OF WORCESTER,

INVENTOR OF THE STEAM-ENGINE.

In the English county of Monmouthshire, near Wales, a region of coal mines and iron works, there are the ruins of Raglan Castle, about a mile from a village of the same name. To these ruins let pilgrims repair who delight to visit places where great things began; for here once dwelt the Marquis of Worcester, who first made steam work for men. The same family still owns the site; as indeed it does the greater part of the county; the head of the family being now styled the Duke of Beaufort.

The late Lord Raglan, commander of the English forces in the Crimea, belonged to this house, and showed excellent taste in selecting for his t.i.tle a name so interesting. Perhaps, however, he never thought of the old tower of Raglan Castle, which is still marked and indented where the second Marquis of Worcester set up his steam-engine two hundred and twenty years ago. Very likely he had in mind the time when the first marquis held the castle for Charles I. against the Roundheads, and baffled them for two months, though he was then eighty-five years of age. It was the son of that valiant and tough old warrior who put steam into harness, and defaced his ancestral tower with a ponderous and imperfect engine.

For many centuries before his time something had been known of the power of steam; and the Egyptians, a century or more before Christ, had even made certain steam toys, which we find described in a ma.n.u.script written about 120 B. C., at Alexandria, by a learned compiler and inventor named Hero. One of these was in the form of a man pouring from a cup a libation to the G.o.ds. The figure stood upon an altar, and it was connected by a pipe with a kettle of water underneath. On lighting a fire under the kettle, the water was forced up through the figure, and flowed out of the cup upon the altar. Another toy was a revolving copper globe, which was kept in motion by _the escape_ of steam from two little pipes bent in the same direction. Of this contrivance the French Professor Arago once wrote:--

"This was, beyond doubt, a machine in which steam engendered motion, and could produce mechanical effects. It was _a veritable steam-engine_! Let us hasten, however, to add that it bears no resemblance, either by its form or in mode of action, to steam-engines now in use."

Other steam devices are described by Hero. By one a horn was blown, and by another figures were made to dance upon an altar. But there is no trace in the ancient world of the application of steam to an important useful purpose. Professor Thurston of Hoboken, in his excellent work upon the "History of the Steam-Engine," has gleaned from the literature of the last seven hundred years several interesting allusions to the nature and power of steam. In 1125 there was, it appears, at Rheims in France, some sort of contrivance for blowing a church organ by the aid of steam. There is an allusion, also, in a French sermon of 1571, to the awful power in volcanic eruptions of a small quant.i.ty of confined steam.

There are traces of steam being made to turn a spit upon which meat was roasted. An early French writer mentions the experiment of exploding a bomb-sh.e.l.l nearly filled with water by putting it into a fire. In 1630 King Charles the First of England granted to David Ramseye a patent for nine different contrivances, among which were the following:--

"To raise water from low pits by fire. To make any sort of mills to go on standing waters by continual motion without help of wind, water, or horse. To make boats, ships, and barges to go against strong wind and tide. To raise water from mines and coal pits by a way never yet in use."