Industrial Biography, Iron Workers and Tool Makers Part 18

The Cotton Trade had by this time sprung into great importance, and was increasing with extraordinary rapidity. Population and wealth were pouring into South Lancas.h.i.+re, and industry and enterprise were everywhere on foot. The foundations were being laid of a system of manufacturing in iron, machinery, and textile fabrics of nearly all kinds, the like of which has perhaps never been surpa.s.sed in any country. It was a race of industry, in which the prizes were won by the swift, the strong, and the skilled. For the most part, the early Lancas.h.i.+re manufacturers started very nearly equal in point of worldly circ.u.mstances, men originally of the smallest means often coming to the front--work men, weavers, mechanics, pedlers, farmers, or labourers--in course of time rearing immense manufacturing concerns by sheer force of industry, energy, and personal ability. The description given by one of the largest employers in Lancas.h.i.+re, of the capital with which he started, might apply to many of them: "When I married," said he, "my wife had a spinning-wheel, and I had a loom--that was the beginning of our fortune." As an ill.u.s.tration of the rapid rise of Manchester men from small beginnings, the following outline of John Kennedy's career, intimately connected as he was with the subject of our memoir--may not be without interest in this place.

John Kennedy was one of five young men of nearly the same age, who came from the same neighbourhood in Scotland, and eventually settled in Manchester as cottons-pinners about the end of last century. The others were his brother James, his partner James MacConnel, and the brothers Murray, above referred to--Mr. Fairbairn's first extensive employers. John Kennedy's parents were respectable peasants, possessed of a little bit of ground at Knocknalling, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, on which they contrived to live, and that was all. John was one of a family of five sons and two daughters, and the father dying early, the responsibility and the toil of bringing up these children devolved upon the mother. She was a strict disciplinarian, and early impressed upon the minds of her boys that they had their own way to make in the world. One of the first things she made them think about was, the learning of some useful trade for the purpose of securing an independent living; "for," said she, "if you have gotten mechanical skill and intelligence, and are honest and trustworthy, you will always find employment and be ready to avail yourselves of opportunities for advancing yourselves in life." Though the mother desired to give her sons the benefits of school education, there was but little of that commodity to be had in the remote district of Knocknalling. The parish-school was six miles distant, and the teaching given in it was of a very inferior sort--usually administered by students, probationers for the ministry, or by half-fledged dominies, themselves more needing instruction than able to impart it.

The Kennedys could only attend the school during a few months in summer-time, so that what they had acquired by the end of one season was often forgotten by the beginning of the next. They learnt, however, to read the Testament, say their catechism, and write their own names.

As the children grew up, they each longed for the time to come when they could be put to a trade. The family were poorly clad; stockings and shoes were luxuries rarely indulged in; and Mr. Kennedy used in after-life to tell his grandchildren of a certain Sunday which he remembered shortly after his father died, when he was setting out for Dalry church, and had borrowed his brother Alexander's stockings, his brother ran after him and cried, "See that you keep out of the dirt, for mind you have got my stockings on!" John indulged in many day-dreams about the world that lay beyond the valley and the mountains which surrounded the place of his birth. Though a mere boy, the natural objects, eternally unchangeable, which daily met his eyes--the profound silence of the scene, broken only by the bleating of a solitary sheep, or the crowing of a distant c.o.c.k, or the thrasher beating out with his flail the scanty grain of the black oats spread upon a skin in the open air, or the streamlets leaping from the rocky clefts, or the distant church-bell sounding up the valley on Sundays--all bred in his mind a profound melancholy and feeling of loneliness, and he used to think to himself, "What can I do to see and know something of the world beyond this?" The greatest pleasure he experienced during that period was when packmen came round with their stores of clothing and hardware, and displayed them for sale; he eagerly listened to all that such visitors had to tell of the ongoings of the world beyond the valley.

The people of the Knocknalling district were very poor. The greater part of them were unable to support the younger members, whose custom it was to move off elsewhere in search of a living when they arrived at working years,--some to America, some to the West Indies, and some to the manufacturing districts of the south. Whole families took their departure in this way, and the few friends.h.i.+ps which Kennedy formed amongst those of his own age were thus suddenly snapped, and only a great blank remained. But he too could follow their example, and enter upon that wider world in which so many others had ventured and succeeded. As early as eight years of age, his mother still impressing upon her boys the necessity of learning to work, John gathered courage to say to her that he wished to leave home and apprentice himself to some handicraft business. Having seen some carpenters working in the neighbourhood, with good clothes on their backs, and hearing the men's characters well spoken of, he thought it would be a fine thing to be a carpenter too, particularly as the occupation would enable him to move from place to place and see the world. He was as yet, however, of too tender an age to set out on the journey of life; but when he was about eleven years old, Adam Murray, one of his most intimate acquaintances, having gone off to serve an apprentices.h.i.+p in Lancas.h.i.+re with Mr.

Cannan of Chowbent, himself a native of the district, the event again awakened in him a strong desire to migrate from Knocknalling. Others had gone after Murray, James MacConnel and two or three more; and at length, at about fourteen years of age, Kennedy himself left his native home for Lancas.h.i.+re. About the time that he set out, Paul Jones was ravaging the coasts of Galloway, and producing general consternation throughout the district. Great excitement also prevailed through the occurrence of the Gordon riots in London, which extended into remote country places; and Kennedy remembered being nearly frightened out of his wits on one occasion by a poor dominie whose school he attended, who preached to his boys about the horrors that were coming upon the land through the introduction of Popery. The boy set out for England on the 2nd of February, 1784, mounted upon a Galloway, his little package of clothes and necessaries strapped behind him. As he pa.s.sed along the glen, recognising each familiar spot, his heart was in his mouth, and he dared scarcely trust himself to look back. The ground was covered with snow, and nature quite frozen up. He had the company of his brother Alexander as far as the town of New Galloway, where he slept the first night. The next day, accompanied by one of his future masters, Mr. James Smith, a partner of Mr. Cannan's, who had originally entered his service as a workman, they started on ponyback for Dumfries. After a long day's ride, they entered the town in the evening, and amongst the things which excited the boy's surprise were the few street-lamps of the town, and a waggon with four horses and four wheels. In his remote valley carts were as yet unknown, and even in Dumfries itself they were comparative rarities; the common means of transport in the district being what were called "tumbling cars." The day after, they reached Longtown, and slept there; the boy noting ANOTHER lamp. The next stage was to Carlisle, where Mr. Smith, whose firm had supplied a carding engine and spinning-jenny to a small manufacturer in the town, went to "gate" and trim them. One was put up in a small house, the other in a small room; and the sight of these machines was John Kennedy's first introduction to cotton-spinning.

While going up the inn-stairs he was amazed and not a little alarmed at seeing two men in armour--he had heard of the battles between the Scots and English--and believed these to be some of the fighting men; though they proved to be but effigies. Five more days were occupied in travelling southward, the resting places being at Penrith, Kendal, Preston, and Chorley, the two travellers arriving at Chowbent on Sunday the 8th of February, 1784. Mr. Cannan seems to have collected about him a little colony of Scotsmen, mostly from the same neighbourhood, and in the evening there was quite an a.s.sembly of them at the "Bear's Paw," where Kennedy put up, to hear the tidings from their native county brought by the last new comer. On the following morning the boy began his apprentices.h.i.+p as a carpenter with the firm of Cannan and Smith, serving seven years for his meat and clothing. He applied himself to his trade, and became a good, steady workman. He was thoughtful and self-improving, always endeavouring to acquire knowledge of new arts and to obtain insight into new machines. "Even in early life," said he, in the account of his career addressed to his children, "I felt a strong desire to know what others knew, and was always ready to communicate what little I knew myself; and by admitting at once my want of education, I found that I often made friends of those on whom I had no claims beyond what an ardent desire for knowledge could give me."

His apprentices.h.i.+p over, John Kennedy commenced business[5] in a small way in Manchester in 1791, in conjunction with two other workmen, Sandford and MacConnel. Their business was machine-making and mule-spinning, Kennedy taking the direction of the machine department.

The firm at first put up their mules for spinning in any convenient garrets they could hire at a low rental. After some time, they took part of a small factory in Ca.n.a.l Street, and carried on their business on a larger scale. Kennedy and MacConnel afterwards occupied a little factory in the same street,--since removed to give place to Fairbairn's large machine works. The progress of the firm was steady and even rapid, and they went on building mills and extending their business--Mr. Kennedy, as he advanced in life, gathering honour, wealth, and troops of friends. Notwithstanding the defects of his early education, he was one of the few men of his cla.s.s who became distinguished for his literary labours in connexion princ.i.p.ally with the cotton trade. Towards the close of his life, he prepared several papers of great interest for the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, which are to be found printed in their Proceedings; one of these, on the Invention of the Mule by Samuel Crompton, was for a long time the only record which the public possessed of the merits and claims of that distinguished inventor. His knowledge of the history of the cotton manufacture in its various stages, and of mechanical inventions generally, was most extensive and accurate. Among his friends he numbered James Watt, who placed his son in his establishment for the purpose of acquiring knowledge and experience of his profession. At a much later period he numbered George Stephenson among his friends, having been one of the first directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and one of the three judges (selected because of his sound judgment and proved impartiality, as well as his knowledge of mechanical engineering) to adjudicate on the celebrated compet.i.tion of Locomotives at Rainhill. By these successive steps did this poor Scotch boy become one of the leading men of Manchester, closing his long and useful life in 1855 at an advanced age, his mental faculties remaining clear and unclouded to the last. His departure from life was happy and tranquil--so easy that it was for a time doubtful whether he was dead or asleep.

To return to Mr. Fairbairn's career, and his progress as a millwright and engineer in Manchester. When he and his partner undertook the extensive alterations in Mr. Murray's factory, both were in a great measure unacquainted with the working of cotton-mills, having until then been occupied princ.i.p.ally with corn-mills, and printing and bleaching works; so that an entirely new field was now opened to their united exertions. Sedulously improving their opportunities, the young partners not only thoroughly mastered the practical details of cotton-mill work, but they were very shortly enabled to introduce a series of improvements of the greatest importance in this branch of our national manufactures. Bringing their vigorous practical minds to bear on the subject, they at once saw that the gearing of even the best mills was of a very clumsy and imperfect character. They found the machinery driven by large square cast-iron shafts, on which huge wooden drums, some of them as much as four feet in diameter, revolved at the rate of about forty revolutions a minute; and the couplings were so badly fitted that they might be heard creaking and groaning a long way off. The speeds of the driving-shafts were mostly got up by a series of straps and counter drums, which not only crowded the rooms, but seriously obstructed the light where most required for conducting the delicate operations of the different machines. Another serious defect lay in the construction of the shafts, and in the mode of fixing the couplings, which were constantly giving way, so that a week seldom pa.s.sed without one or more breaks-down. The repairs were usually made on Sundays, which were the millwrights' hardest working days, to their own serious moral detriment; but when trade was good, every consideration was made to give way to the uninterrupted running of the mills during the rest of the week.

It occurred to Mr. Fairbairn that the defective arrangements thus briefly described, might be remedied by the introduction of lighter shafts driven at double or treble the velocity, smaller drums to drive the machinery, and the use of wrought-iron wherever practicable, because of its greater lightness and strength compared with wood. He also provided for the simplification of the hangers and fixings by which the shafting was supported, and introduced the "half-lap coupling" so well known to millwrights and engineers. His partner entered fully into his views; and the opportunity shortly presented itself of carrying them into effect in the large new mill erected in 1818, for the firm of MacConnel and Kennedy. The machinery of that concern proved a great improvement on all that had preceded it; and, to Messrs. Fairbairn and Lillie's new system of gearing Mr. Kennedy added an original invention of his own in a system of double speeds, with the object of giving an increased quant.i.ty of twist in the finer descriptions of mule yarn.

The satisfactory execution of this important work at once placed the firm of Fairbairn and Lillie in the very front rank of engineering millwrights. Mr. Kennedy's good word was of itself a pa.s.sport to fame and business, and as he was more than satisfied with the manner in which his mill machinery had been planned and executed, he sounded their praises in all quarters. Orders poured in upon them so rapidly, that they had difficulty in keeping pace with the demands of the trade.

They then removed from their original shed to larger premises in Matherstreet, where they erected additional lathes and other tool-machines, and eventually a steam-engine. They afterwards added a large cellar under an adjoining factory to their premises; and from time to time provided new means of turning out work with increased efficiency and despatch. In due course of time the firm erected a factory of their own, fitted with the most improved machinery for turning out millwork; and they went on from one contract to another, until their reputation as engineers became widely celebrated. In 1826-7, they supplied the water-wheels for the extensive cotton-mills belonging to Kirkman Finlay and Company, at Catrine Bank in Ayrs.h.i.+re.

These wheels are even at this day regarded as among the most perfect hydraulic machines in Europe. About the same time they supplied the mill gearing and water-machinery for Messrs. Escher and Company's large works at Zurich, among the largest cotton manufactories on the continent.

In the mean while the industry of Manchester and the neighbourhood, through which the firm had risen and prospered, was not neglected, but had the full benefit of the various improvements which they were introducing in mill machinery. In the course of a few years an entire revolution was effected in the gearing. Ponderous ma.s.ses of timber and cast-iron, with their enormous bearings and couplings, gave place to slender rods of wrought-iron and light frames or hooks by which they were suspended. In like manner, lighter yet stronger wheels and pulleys were introduced, the whole arrangements were improved, and, the workmans.h.i.+p being greatly more accurate, friction was avoided, while the speed was increased from about 40 to upwards of 300 revolutions a minute. The fly-wheel of the engine was also converted into a first motion by the formation of teeth on its periphery, by which a considerable saving was effected both in cost and power.

These great improvements formed quite an era in the history of mill machinery; and exercised the most important influence on the development of the cotton, flax, silk, and other branches of manufacture. Mr. Fairbairn says the system introduced by his firm was at first strongly condemned by leading engineers, and it was with difficulty that he could overcome the force of their opposition; nor was it until a wheel of thirty tons weight for a pair of engines of 100-horse power each was erected and set to work, that their prognostications of failure entirely ceased. From that time the principles introduced by Mr. Fairbairn have been adopted wherever steam is employed as a motive power in mills.

Mr. Fairbairn and his partner had a hard uphill battle to fight while these improvements were being introduced; but energy and perseverance, guided by sound judgment, secured their usual reward, and the firm became known as one of the most thriving and enterprising in Manchester. Long years after, when addressing an a.s.sembly of working men, Mr. Fairbairn, while urging the necessity of labour and application as the only sure means of self-improvement, said, "I can tell you from experience, that there is no labour so sweet, none so consolatory, as that which is founded upon an honest, straightforward, and honourable ambition." The history of any prosperous business, however, so closely resembles every other, and its details are usually of so monotonous a character, that it is unnecessary for us to pursue this part of the subject; and we will content ourselves with briefly indicating the several further improvements introduced by Mr. Fairbairn in the mechanics of construction in the course of his long and useful career.

His improvements in water-wheels were of great value, especially as regarded the new form of bucket which he introduced with the object of facilitating the escape of the air as the water entered the bucket above, and its readmission as the water emptied itself out below. This arrangement enabled the water to act upon the wheel with the maximum of effect in all states of the river; and it so generally recommended itself, that it very soon became adopted in most water-mills both at home and abroad.[6] His labours were not, however, confined to his own particular calling as a mill engineer, but were shortly directed to other equally important branches of the constructive art. Thus he was among the first to direct his attention to iron s.h.i.+p building as a special branch of business. In 1829, Mr. Houston, of Johnstown, near Paisley, launched a light boat on the Ardrossan Ca.n.a.l for the purpose of ascertaining the speed at which it could be towed by horses with two or three persons on board. To the surprise of Mr. Houston and the other gentlemen present, it was found that the labour the horses had to perform in towing the boat was mach greater at six or seven, than at nine miles an hour. This anomaly was very puzzling to the experimenters, and at the request of the Council of the Forth and Clyde Ca.n.a.l, Mr. Fairbairn, who had already become extensively known as a scientific mechanic, was requested to visit Scotland and inst.i.tute a series of experiments with light boats to determine the law of traction, and clear up, if possible, the apparent anomalies in Mr.

Houston's experiments. This he did accordingly, and the results of his experiments were afterwards published, The trials extended over a series of years, and were conducted at a cost of several thousand pounds. The first experiments were made with vessels of wood, but they eventually led to the construction of iron vessels upon a large scale and on an entirely new principle of construction, with angle iron ribs and wrought-iron sheathing plates. The results proved most valuable, and had the effect of specially directing the attention of naval engineers to the employment of iron in s.h.i.+p building.

Mr. Fairbairn himself fully recognised the value of the experiments, and proceeded to construct an iron vessel at his works at Manchester, in 1831, which went to sea the same year. Its success was such as to induce him to begin iron s.h.i.+pbuilding on a large scale, at the same time as the Messrs. Laird did at Birkenhead; and in 1835, Mr. Fairbairn established extensive works at Millwall, on the Thames,--afterwards occupied by Mr. Scott Russell, in whose yard the "Great Eastern"

steams.h.i.+p was erected,--where in the course of some fourteen years he built upwards of a hundred and twenty iron s.h.i.+ps, some of them above 2000 tons burden. It was in fact the first great iron s.h.i.+pbuilding yard in Britain, and led the way in a branch of business which has since become of first-rate magnitude and importance. Mr. Fairbairn was a most laborious experimenter in iron, and investigated in great detail the subject of its strength, the value of different kinds of riveted joints compared with the solid plate, and the distribution of the material throughout the structure, as well as the form of the vessel itself. It would indeed be difficult to over-estimate the value of his investigations on these points in the earlier stages of this now highly important branch of the national industry.

To facilitate the manufacture of his iron-sided s.h.i.+ps, Mr. Fairbairn, about the year 1839, invented a machine for riveting boiler plates by steam-power. The usual method by which this process had before been executed was by hand-hammers, worked by men placed at each side of the plate to be riveted, acting simultaneously on both sides of the bolt.

But this process was tedious and expensive, as well as clumsy and imperfect; and some more rapid and precise method of fixing the plates firmly together was urgently wanted. Mr. Fairbairn's machine completely supplied the want. By its means the rivet was driven into its place, and firmly fastened there by a couple of strokes of a hammer impelled by steam. Aided by the Jacquard punching-machine of Roberts, the riveting of plates of the largest size has thus become one of the simplest operations in iron-manufacturing.

The thorough knowledge which Mr. Fairbairn possessed of the strength of wrought-iron in the form of the hollow beam (which a wrought-iron s.h.i.+p really is) naturally led to his being consulted by the late Robert Stephenson as to the structures by means of which it was proposed to span the estuary of the Conway and the Straits of Menai; and the result was the Conway and Britannia Tubular Bridges, the history of which we have fully described elsewhere.[7] There is no reason to doubt that by far the largest share of the merit of working out the practical details of those structures, and thus realizing Robert Stephenson's magnificent idea of the tubular bridge, belongs to Mr. Fairbairn.

In all matters connected with the qualities and strength of iron, he came to be regarded as a first-rate authority, and his advice was often sought and highly valued. The elaborate experiments inst.i.tuted by him as to the strength of iron of all kinds have formed the subject of various papers which he has read before the British a.s.sociation, the Royal Society, and the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. His practical inquiries as to the strength of boilers have led to his being frequently called upon to investigate the causes of boiler explosions, on which subject he has published many elaborate reports. The study of this subject led him to elucidate the law according to which the density of steam varies throughout an extensive range of pressures and atmospheres,--in singular confirmation of what had before been provisionally calculated from the mechanical theory of heat. His discovery of the true method of preventing the tendency of tubes to collapse, by dividing the flues of long boilers into short lengths by means of stiffening rings, arising out of the same investigation, was one of the valuable results of his minute study of the subject; and is calculated to be of essential value in the manufacturing districts by diminis.h.i.+ng the chances of boiler explosions, and saving the lamentable loss of life which has during the last twenty years been occasioned by the malconstruction of boilers.

Among Mr. Fairbairn's most recent, inquiries are those conducted by him at the instance of the British Government relative to the construction of iron-plated s.h.i.+ps, his report of which has not yet been made public, most probably for weighty political reasons.

We might also refer to the practical improvements which Mr. Fairbairn has been instrumental in introducing in the construction of buildings of various kinds by the use of iron. He has himself erected numerous iron structures, and pointed out the road which other manufacturers have readily followed. "I am one of those," said he, in his 'Lecture on the Progress of Engineering,' "who have great faith in iron walls and iron beams; and although I have both spoken and written much on the subject, I cannot too forcibly recommend it to public attention. It is now twenty years since I constructed an iron house, with the machinery of a corn-mill, for Halil Pasha, then Seraskier of the Turkish army at Constantinople. I believe it was the first iron house built in this country; and it was constructed at the works at Millwall, London, in 1839." [8]

Since then iron structures of all kinds have been erected: iron lighthouses, iron-and-crystal palaces, iron churches, and iron bridges.

Iron roads have long been worked by iron locomotives; and before many years have pa.s.sed a telegraph of iron wire will probably be found circling the globe. We now use iron roofs, iron bedsteads, iron ropes, and iron pavement; and even the famous "wooden walls of England" are rapidly becoming reconstructed of iron. In short, we are in the midst of what Mr. Worsaae has characterized as the Age of Iron.

At the celebration of the opening of the North Wales Railway at Bangor, almost within sight of his iron bridge across the Straits of Menai, Robert Stephenson said, "We are daily producing from the bowels of the earth a raw material, in its crude state apparently of no worth, but which, when converted into a locomotive engine, flies over bridges of the same material, with a speed exceeding that of the bird, advancing wealth and comfort throughout the country. Such are the powers of that all-civilizing instrument, Iron."

Iron indeed plays a highly important part in modern civilization. Out of it are formed alike the sword and the ploughshare, the cannon and the printing-press; and while civilization continues partial and half-developed, as it still is, our liberties and our industry must necessarily in a great measure depend for their protection upon the excellence of our weapons of war as well as on the superiority of our instruments of peace. Hence the skill and ingenuity displayed in the invention of rifled guns and artillery, and iron-sided s.h.i.+ps and batteries, the fabrication of which would be impossible but for the extraordinary development of the iron-manufacture, and the marvellous power and precision of our tool-making machines, as described in preceding chapters.

"Our strength, wealth, and commerce," said Mr. Cobden in the course of a recent debate in the House of Commons, "grow out of the skilled labour of the men working in metals. They are at the foundation of our manufacturing greatness; and in case you were attacked, they would at once be available, with their hard hands and skilled brains, to manufacture your muskets and your cannon, your shot and your sh.e.l.l.

What has given us our Armstrongs, Whitworths, and Fairbairns, but the free industry of this country? If you can build three times more steam-engines than any other country, and have threefold the force of mechanics, to whom and to what do you owe that, but to the men who have trained them, and to those principles of commerce out of which the wealth of the country has grown? We who have some hand in doing that, are not ignorant that we have been and are increasing the strength of the country in proportion as we are raising up skilled artisans." [9]

The reader who has followed us up to this point will have observed that handicraft labour was the first stage of the development of human power, and that machinery has been its last and highest. The uncivilized man began with a stone for a hammer, and a splinter of flint for a chisel, each stage of his progress being marked by an improvement in his tools. Every machine calculated to save labour or increase production was a substantial addition to his power over the material resources of nature, enabling him to subjugate them more effectually to his wants and uses; and every extension of machinery has served to introduce new cla.s.ses of the population to the enjoyment of its benefits. In early times the products of skilled industry were for the most part luxuries intended for the few, whereas now the most exquisite tools and engines are employed in producing articles of ordinary consumption for the great ma.s.s of the community. Machines with millions of fingers work for millions of purchasers--for the poor as well as the rich; and while the machinery thus used enriches its owners, it no less enriches the public with its products.

Much of the progress to which we have adverted has been the result of the skill and industry of our own time. "Indeed," says Mr. Fairbairn, "the mechanical operations of the present day could not have been accomplished at any cost thirty years ago; and what was then considered impossible is now performed with an exact.i.tude that never fails to accomplish the end in view." For this we are mainly indebted to the almost creative power of modern machine-tools, and the facilities which they present for the production and reproduction of other machines. We also owe much to the mechanical agencies employed to drive them. Early inventors yoked wind and water to sails and wheels, and made them work machinery of various kinds; but modern inventors have availed themselves of the far more swift and powerful, yet docile force of steam, which has now laid upon it the heaviest share of the burden of toil, and indeed become the universal drudge. Coal, water, and a little oil, are all that the steam-engine, with its bowels of iron and heart of fire, needs to enable it to go on working night and day, without rest or sleep. Yoked to machinery of almost infinite variety, the results of vast ingenuity and labour, the Steam-engine pumps water, drives spindles, thrashes corn, prints books, hammers iron, ploughs land, saws timber, drives piles, impels s.h.i.+ps, works railways, excavates docks; and, in a word, a.s.serts an almost unbounded supremacy over the materials which enter into the daily use of mankind, for clothing, for labour, for defence, for household purposes, for locomotion, for food, or for instruction.

[1] Long after, when married and settled at Manchester, the fiddle, which had been carefully preserved, was taken down from the shelf for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the children; but though they were well enough pleased with it, the instrument was never brought from its place without creating alarm in the mind of their mother lest anybody should hear it.

At length a dancing-master, who was giving lessons in the neighbourhood, borrowed the fiddle, and, to the great relief of the family, it was never returned. Many years later Mr. Fairbairn was present at the starting of a cotton mill at Wesserling in Alsace belonging to Messrs. Gros, Deval, and Co., for which his Manchester firm had provided the mill-work and water-wheel (the first erected in France on the suspension principle, when the event was followed by an entertainment). During dinner Mr. Fairbairn had been explaining to M.

Gros, who spoke a little English, the nature of home-brewed beer, which he much admired, having tasted it when in England. The dinner was followed by music, in the performance of which the host himself took part; and on Mr. Fairbairn's admiring his execution on the violin, M.

Gros asked him if he played. "A little," was the almost unconscious reply. "Then you must have the goodness to play some," and the instrument was in a moment placed in his hands, amidst urgent requests from all sides that he should play. There was no alternative; so he proceeded to perform one of his best tunes--"The Keel Row." The company listened with amazement, until the performer's career was suddenly cut short by the host exclaiming at the top of his voice, "Stop, stop, Monsieur, by gar that be HOME-BREWED MUSIC!"

[2] "Although not a native of Newcastle," he then said, "he owed almost everything to Newcastle. He got the rudiments of his education there, such as it was; and that was (something like that of his revered predecessor George Stephenson) at a colliery. He was brought up as an engineer at the Percy Main Colliery. He was there seven years; and if it had not been for the opportunities he then enjoyed, together with the use of the library at North s.h.i.+elds, he believed he would not have been there to address them. Being self-taught, but with some little ambition, and a determination to improve himself, he was now enabled to stand before them with some pretensions to mechanical knowledge, and the persuasion that he had been a useful contributor to practical science and objects connected with mechanical engineering."--Meeting of the Inst.i.tute of Mechanical Engineers at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1858.

[3] Useful Information for Engineers, 2nd series, 1860, p. 211.

[4] Lecture at Derby--Useful Information for Engineers, 2nd series, p.

212.

[5] One of the reasons which induced Kennedy thus early to begin the business of mule-spinning has been related as follows. While employed as apprentice at Chowbent, he happened to sleep over the master's apartment; and late one evening, on the latter returning from market, his wife asked his success. "I've sold the eightys," said he, "at a guinea a pound." "What," exclaimed the mistress, in a loud voice, "sold the eightys for ONLY a guinea a pound! I never heard of such a thing." The apprentice could not help overhearing the remark, and it set him a-thinking. He knew the price of cotton and the price of labour, and concluded there must be a very large margin of profit. So soon as he was out of his time, therefore, he determined that he should become a cotton spinner.

[6] The subject will be found fully treated in Mr. Fairbairn's own work, A Treatise on Mills and Mill-Work, embodying the results of his large experience.

[7] Lives of the Engineers, vol. iii. 416-40. See also An Account of the Construction of the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges. By William Fairbairn, C.E. 1849.

[8] Useful Information for Engineers, 2nd series, 225. The mere list of Mr. Fairbairn's writings would occupy considerable s.p.a.ce; for, notwithstanding his great labours as an engineer, he has also been an industrious writer. His papers on Iron, read at different times before the British a.s.sociation, the Royal Society, and the Literary and Philosophical Inst.i.tution of Manchester, are of great value. The treatise on "Iron" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica is from his pen, and he has contributed a highly interesting paper to Dr. Scoffern's Useful Metals and their Alloys on the Application of Iron to the purposes of Ordnance, Machinery, Bridges, and House and s.h.i.+p Building. Another valuable but less-known contribution to Iron literature is his Report on Machinery in General, published in the Reports on the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855. The experiments conducted by Mr.

Fairbairn for the purpose of proving the excellent properties of iron for s.h.i.+pbuilding--the account of which was published in the Trans actions of the Royal Society eventually led to his further experiments to determine the strength and form of the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges, plate-girders, and other constructions, the result of which was to establish quite a new era in the history of bridge as well as s.h.i.+p building.

[9] House of Commons Debate, 7th July, 1862.