Part 4 (1/2)

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How did England join with the rest of Europe in undoing the work of Napoleon?

2. Give the chief events in the early life of Canning.

3. Why did Canning authorize an attack on Denmark?

4. What was his relation to the Peninsular War?

5. What was his ”lost opportunity” of 1812?

6. How did he set forth his plans when he became foreign secretary in 1821?

7. What interference in the affairs of Europe did the Holy Alliance attempt?

8. How did Canning defend his recognition of Spanish-American independence?

9. What part did England play in the liberation of Greece?

10. What were the personal qualities of Canning?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GEORGE CANNING. Frank H. Hill.

POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN. Edited by Charles Edmonds.

IV

STEPHENSON AND THE RAILWAY

[GEORGE STEPHENSON, born, Wylam, near Newcastle, June 9, 1781; died, August 12, 1848; driver lad in a colliery; at fourteen, a.s.sistant to his father as fireman of colliery engines; at seventeen, engineman; at eighteen, learned to read in night school; 1812, enginewright at Killingworth colliery; 1814, operated his locomotive, ”My Lord”; 1822, engineer of Stockton and Darlington Railroad (opened 1825); engineer of Liverpool and Manchester Railroad (opened 1830); produced locomotive ”Rocket,”

capable of thirty miles an hour.]

In a bare room of a laborer's tenement in the colliery village of Wylam, in Northumberland, on the 9th day of June, 1781, was born a babe to whose mind and hand England was to owe as much in future years as to any high-born minister of the crown. Indeed, one might trust the world to give a verdict in favor of George Stephenson, the founder of the steam railway as against his sovereign, King George III. himself.

The father, the ”old Rob” of the village boys, was the fireman of the pumping engine at the colliery hard by. His father before him--the Stephensons were no pedigree-hunters, and traced their line no farther- -was a Scotchman who, so far as anything was remembered of him, had come into the north of England as a gentleman's servant. Robert was a favorite with the village children, to whom he gave the freedom of the fire-room, and was a boon companion of his own houseful of boys and girls, kindling their fancy by his headful of tales, and sharpening their observation of the beauties of nature by making them the companions of his walks a-field, where the birds and other living things were the objects of his peculiar interest and love.

As soon as little George was old enough to ”take notice” he must have discovered the railway which ran before his father's door, and his earliest responsibilities were connected with the oversight of his younger brothers and sisters lest in their play they should fall under the wheels of the cars or the hoofs of the horses that supplied the motive power. The road was a wooden tramway along which coal cars were dragged from the mines to tidewater.

The first tramways in the northern coal-fields were made by laying a track of planking on wooden sleepers. This device was more than a century old when George Stephenson was born. In some places this had been improved by plating the planks with iron.

While the Wylam lad was still a barefoot boy, cast-iron rails were being introduced in Leicesters.h.i.+re, a wheel having been designed with a f.l.a.n.g.e to keep it on the narrow track. Thus the railway was brought to a stage which needed only the application of steam to its motive power to carry it into a new and vastly enlarged phase.

The fireman's son was set to win his share of the family bread before he was ten. He tended a widow's cows, led the plow- horses, and hoed turnips before he entered a colliery as a breaker-boy, where his task was to pick out stones and other foreign substances from the fuel. Sixpence a day was the wage.

Soon at twopence more he was promoted to drive the gin-horse that, circling around a capstan, hoisted the buckets of water and coals out of the pit. At fourteen he became his father's a.s.sistant in the fire-room at Dewley Burn at a s.h.i.+lling a day. At fifteen he obtained a foreman's position in another colliery. At seventeen he had gone over his father's head, and had charge of a pumping engine at Water-row Pit. When his wages reached twelve s.h.i.+llings a week he thought he was ”a made man for life,” but his ign.o.ble content was soon disturbed. Always fascinated by machinery, as he was by birds and animals, he made a pet of his engines, studying them with a singular fondness, and making himself master of their principles and their parts. This knowledge prompted him to learn more, especially to find out something about the improved engines of Boulton & Watt, of which rumors had reached the enginemen of the north. To do this he must learn to read, an art which he seems to have considered superfluous until he was eighteen. Never did student work harder than Geordie Stephenson at his new task, amazing his teachers and his mates by his progress at ”the three R's.” He was now brakesman of a hoisting engine, dividing his small leisure between his studies and his cobblery, for he added to his earnings by mending shoes. His income was now some ninety pounds a year. He saved his first guinea and felt himself a rich man.

At twenty-one he married a farmer's house-servant and went to housekeeping in a cottage at Wellington Quay.

It would be a long story, however interesting, to follow the young mechanic through the experiences by which he won a name in all the North Country as the cleverest of ”engine doctors,”

eking out his wages by making lasts, mending watches, and even cutting out coats and trousers for the wives of the pitmen to sew up for their husbands. His desire to provide his motherless boy Robert with better schooling than he had enjoyed sharpened his wits and added strength to his arm. Fortunately the son proved to be not only an apt scholar, but had the rare gift of being able to teach others. Whatever he learned in the good schools to which his father sent him, he imparted to his father.

So boy and man progressed together in their educational partners.h.i.+p.

When George Stephenson became chief enginewright of the Killingworth collieries at one hundred pounds a year he thought he had reached the summit of his ambition. The duties of the position made less demand upon him for manual labor, and left him time to carry out some of his mechanical ideas. He devised new hoists and pumps for the mines, and then applied himself to the ever-present problem of cheapening the transportation of the coals between pit mouth and s.h.i.+p side. One of his first improvements of this sort was a gravity railway, so arranged that the loaded cars, running down to the river by their own weight, furnished the power to draw the empty cars to the summit again by cable. When George Stephenson took up the problem of perfecting a ”traveling steam engine” he had the advantage of knowing what had been accomplished by other experimenters. For fifty years inventors had been turning out steam engines of considerable promise in the model stage, but of little practical performance. Indeed, about 1803, a Cornishman named Trevithick had produced a locomotive which was used for a time to transport metal and ore to the Pen-y-darran iron works in South Wales. The heavy engine so damaged the tracks that it was soon dismounted and degraded to the work of a steam pump. In 1812 a cog-wheel locomotive, invented by a Mr. Blenkinsop, began running in a colliery a few miles out of Leeds, and served very well its purpose to haul heavy trains almost as fast as a horse could walk. The next year a Derbys.h.i.+re mechanic produced a ”Mechanical Traveler,” the legs of which were moved alternately by steam, but the bursting of its boiler on its trial trip put an end to its picturesque career of doubtful usefulness.