Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1872-08-01


disaster, and, in part to meet the needed out
| laws for the industrial demands of population
| increasing both in numbers and in wants. Here
let it be remembered that all capital in order to
| yield profit must be used for industrial pur-
poses; the boarding OF it is mere hctioni II Is
| all worked over and over, the labor and skill
| that it employs must be paid before the capital
| list receives the hrst dollar of bis income, But
large capitals, so far from snperseding, utilize
| protect and shelter small capitals, however in
vested, whether directly in industrial enter
| prises or indirectly through banks.
Now the point which wish to urge is this.
By the education gwen here, the mechanic or
citizen is enabled to secure for himself at once
the wages OF labor, which will feed and cloth
MN, the wages of superior skill, which will
yield him a surplus revenue, and the profits of
capital by the investment of his savings, 7year
by year, and of the constantly increasing
profits upon them. This indeed, Is the proper
way of settling the conflict between labor and
capital. Every skilled laborer belongs to both
parties and in fighting against capital he is at
war with himself IL he begins life poor his
interest will indeed seem TO be on the side of
labor; but with every years savings ii is more
and more for his interest that capital
should Weld a remunerative income, and the very
measures which, il successful, would impover-
Sh the millionaire, will render his surplus earn
ings unpToductve and their investment inse-
cure. The graduates of this institute may
regard themselves as capitalists in the near
here is the very material from which wealth
is created. Were | familiar with names in
Worcester, know that could point out 10 YOU
not few Of the proprietors of these great man
| ufacturng establishments who came hither with
no resource except hands and brSnS, and have
fairly earned by industry and skill every dollar
of the tens of hundreds Of thousands, which, 1t
| may be literally said, they are worth; for,
| though man may not be worth all the money
he has, he is worth all that he honestly ac-
| quires.
But there are higher grounds on which insti-
tutons like this are to be cherished We are
training in our schools of industrial science dis.
| coverers and inventors iu their several depart
ments, men who will shorten and cheaper the
| labor of production, introduce new applications
| of science to the useful arts, and add perma-
| nently by industrial improvements. There are
| some families in the vegetable creation,
diocciduS so called, in which the fruCtifying
pollen of fruit producing blossom are elaborated
on different plans. Singular has been the case
for the most part in the industrial world. In
vestigations have generally been the joint pro-
duct of two very different classes of minds,
neither of which could have effected anything
without the other; not infrequently between the
two an important invention has been kept for
many years in allegiance, and when finally
perfected, has been of doubtful or
disputed parentage. The idea or princi.
pie has been conceived and suggest
ed by a man Of learning and science, studi-
Gus and reflective habits, but of no prac-
teal skill. He has tried in vain 10 en-
body it, has encountered ridicule, opposition
and contempt Perhaps after years Of fruit
less endeavOr he has lapsed into unhonored
poverty or DEATH His idea has been taken up
by some man who had skill to actualize what he
had not knowledge enough to originate, and he
has reaped the honor and the profit of his pre-
decessor's uncompensated study and toll AS
by the old slave law the child followed the for
tunes of the mother, so the invention, the brain
child, has been accredited not to the fertile
mind, but TO the productive hand. An obvious
Instance may be found in the history of the ap.
plicatiOn Of ether as an anRsthetic agent. You
know that DrS. jackson and Morton both
claimed the invention, and both, believe, with
equal truth, though by the law which l have
specified the right was MortOn's. Jackson con-
ceved the idea and made the suggestion for
which Morton's scientific mind was inadequate.
Morton contrived means for the sue
cesSful experiment for which Jackson's
practical skill was inadequate. Had
Jackson been a practcing dentist as well as
chemist, or Morton a scientifically educated
man, either might have borne the undsputed
honor of discoverer and inventor. In certain
sense inventions are said to be the work of their
age rather than Of individuals, but they have been
generally a little behind the age. A new idea
has commonly been current in the scientific
world for u generation or more before it has
been actualized, for the simple reason that the
scientific men have not had skill enough 10
make successful experiments, and the men of
practical skill have not had science enough to
recognize and welcome the dawniug of any new
light. Thus, an invention OF prime Importance
has often lowered long close within reach of
both speculative and practical men, waiting for
the conjunction of science and skill without
which il could not assume an available form,
and when it has been at length brought forth,
perhaps many have approached near it, and so
distinctly anticipated it as to claim with per-
feet honesty the merit of its inception. The
history of steam affords numerous illustrations
of my statement A full century of experiment
and speculative philosophy on steam as a work
ing force had elapsed, with the construction of
various forms of machinery which demonstrated
its potential efficacy, yet were too cumbrous, too
frail, or too restricted in their range of work to
be brought into general use except for pumping
water from mines, when the steam engine prop
err, with its cylinder and piston separate from
the boiler, came from the hands of Newcome
the blacksmith, and Lawley the plumber, about
the beginning of the last century. Some sixty
years later, Watt conceived the idea of separate
condenser 10 save the loss of power and waste of
fuel by the alternate heating and cooling of the
cylnder,-a coDtrivance which alone and at
once placed steam in advance of all other me-
chanical agencies, and gave sure presage
of its enduring and world wide supremacy
But he, thought a mechanical genius of the
highest order was hardly more than self-taught
workman, having had but years apprentice
ship to London mechanical instrument maker
His conception and foresight of his great in
yention were clear and vivid, but his own work
ing power was limited, and in all Glasgow he
could not hud artizans capable of the delicate
workmanship required, the collective skill of
the city not suff1cing for the casting and boring
of cylinder, while hammered cylinder left
fatal interStices between its inner surface and
the piston. After fourteen years of speculation
and experiment he had got no further than TO
show that he ought to have succeeded; and was
Welding 10 desDair under the of
erty and repeated failures, when he entered into
partnership with Boulton, trained and skilled
manufacturer in iron and steel, Ia Birming-
ham, the emporium of skilled labor for the
British empire, where from the first moment his
progress was continuous triumph-a triumph
which, however, was his only, because his
partner was just and true hearted man; for il
is under precisely such circumstance that in
numerous instances, the actual inventor has
suceumbed 10 the skilled and able artisan while
Boulton left Watt the fame that was his due.
and took care that his long years of toll aud
want should be crowned by an old age of ease
and affiuence. Attempts at navigation by steam
were made at intervals for a century and half
or more, but generally by men who had more
science than art, often by those who had neither
but only a vague conception Of the capacity and
destiny OF this mighty agent, which was TO in
augurate a new era for human industry and en-
| terprise Some Of these experiments were
partially successful; but failed to combine
managebleness and permanence. Fitch, If he
had been a well trained mechancian, would
have no doubt antedated by several years the
establishment of steam navigation on our west
ern waters. But the glory was reserved for Full
ton, who, though not educated as a mechanic
had made himself one by TASTE study, and ma
tured practice, and was as familiar with the de-
tails Of MATERIAL method and workmanship as
with the scientific conditions to which all these
were subservent But even he was retarded in
the successful execution of his plans by the fact
that he was not by profession a machinist or
shipbuilder. The idea preceded its dnal embodi-
ment by at least fourteen years,-an interval in
which he had experimental in France under dis
advantages and discouragements which would
have been fatal 10 the scheme, but for his in.
domitable elasticity and hopeiulness. Had he
been master Of machine shop or
building yard of his own, he would undoubtedly
have launched the ClermOnt not later than the
first year of this century instead of the seventh
would have secured the right of invention for
himself and associate, and would have been
spared the litigations with rival claimants which
embittered the residue of his life and FASTENED
its close, leaving, as his biographer saws, for
"the only patrimony of his children the load of
debt which their parent contracted in those pur-
suits that ought to command the gratitude, as
they do the admiration, of mankind"
OF the disabilities under which an inventor
may labor in consequence Of his not being an
artisan by profession, we have a striking illus
tration in Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cot.