Industrial Biography | Page 3

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INDUSTRIAL BIOGRAPHY
Iron Workers and Tool Makers
by Samuel Smiles
(this etext was produced from a reprint of the 1863 first edition)
PREFACE.
The Author offers the following book as a continuation, in a more
generally accessible form, of the Series of Memoirs of Industrial Men
introduced in his Lives of the Engineers. While preparing that work he
frequently came across the tracks of celebrated inventors, mechanics,
and iron-workers--the founders, in a great measure, of the modern
industry of Britain--whose labours seemed to him well worthy of being
traced out and placed on record, and the more so as their lives
presented many points of curious and original interest. Having been
encouraged to prosecute the subject by offers of assistance from some
of the most eminent living mechanical engineers, he is now enabled to
present the following further series of memoirs to the public.
Without exaggerating the importance of this class of biography, it may
at least be averred that it has not yet received its due share of attention.
While commemorating the labours and honouring the names of those
who have striven to elevate man above the material and mechanical, the
labours of the important industrial class to whom society owes so much
of its comfort and well-being are also entitled to consideration. Without
derogating from the biographic claims of those who minister to intellect
and taste, those who minister to utility need not be overlooked. When a
Frenchman was praising to Sir John Sinclair the artist who invented
ruffles, the Baronet shrewdly remarked that some merit was also due to
the man who added the shirt.

A distinguished living mechanic thus expresses himself to the Author
on this point: - "Kings, warriors, and statesmen have heretofore
monopolized not only the pages of history, but almost those of
biography. Surely some niche ought to be found for the Mechanic,
without whose skill and labour society, as it is, could not exist. I do not
begrudge destructive heroes their fame, but the constructive ones ought
not to be forgotten; and there IS a heroism of skill and toil belonging to
the latter class, worthy of as grateful record,--less perilous and romantic,
it may be, than that of the other, but not less full of the results of human
energy, bravery, and character. The lot of labour is indeed often a dull
one; and it is doing a public service to endeavour to lighten it up by
records of the struggles and triumphs of our more illustrious workers,
and the results of their labours in the cause of human advancement."
As respects the preparation of the following memoirs, the Author's
principal task has consisted in selecting and arranging the materials so
liberally placed at his disposal by gentlemen for the most part
personally acquainted with the subjects of them, and but for whose
assistance the book could not have been written. The materials for the
biography of Henry Maudslay, for instance, have been partly supplied
by the late Mr. Joshua Field, F.R.S. (his partner), but principally by Mr.
James Nasmyth, C.E., his distinguished pupil. In like manner Mr. John
Penn, C.E., has supplied the chief materials for the memoir of Joseph
Clement, assisted by Mr. Wilkinson, Clement's nephew. The Author
has also had the valuable assistance of Mr. William Fairbairn, F.R.S.,
Mr. J. O. March, tool manufacturer (Mayor of Leeds), Mr. Richard
Roberts, C.E., Mr. Henry Maudslay, C.E., and Mr. J. Kitson, Jun., iron
manufacturer, Leeds, in the preparation of the other memoirs of
mechanical engineers included in this volume.
The materials for the memoirs of the early iron-workers have in like
manner been obtained for the most part from original sources; those of
the Darbys and Reynoldses from Mr. Dickinson of Coalbrookdale, Mr.
William Reynolds of Coed-du, and Mr. William G. Norris of the
former place, as well as from Mr. Anstice of Madeley Wood, who has
kindly supplied the original records of the firm. The substance of the
biography of Benjamin Huntsman, the inventor of cast-steel, has been
furnished by his lineal representatives; and the facts embodied in the
memoirs of Henry Cort and David Mushet have been supplied by the

sons of those inventors. To