Chapter II (4)

American reformers, if they want to go to the root of the evil, have a light to guide their efforts in the successful working of their Senate, which, being elected indirectly, through the State Legislatures, is a body of remarkable ability, and possesses the general confidence of the nation; while the House of Representatives, elected directly by the people, that is, by the wire-puller, who usurps the functions of the people, presents a most unfavorable contrast. Those who have sat in both say the difference between the two political atmospheres is immense. Rid the Senate of Party, and it would be about as good a governing body as any nation could reasonably desire. Indirect elections through local councils is the plan which seems to promise the best central legislature; and it takes from the primary elector nothing which at present is really his. Ordinary knowledge and intelligence ought to suffice to enable a man to choose from among his neighbors those who are fittest to manage his local affairs. But the local councillors would be a comparatively picked body; they might reasonably be expected to give their minds to the central election; they would not be too many for concert; and they would exercise their power as a trust under the eyes of the people. As permanent bodies they could not, like the College of Presidential Electors, be reduced to the mere bearers of a mandate. A high trust, by adding to the importance and dignity of local councils, would be likely to draw into them better men. Through such an organization, apparently, opinion might freely and quietly flow from the people to the depository of power. Local and social influences would no doubt be strong; but they are more wholesome than that of the Boss, and, as was said before, it is easier to enlarge the parochial than to make the wire-puller honest. Parochialism, however, has been pretty well broken up by the press and the telegraph. Hardly anybody can now live in intellectual isolation. The Caucus itself, so far as it works fairly, is a tribute to the principle of indirect election.

To begin by passing a measure of Home Rule, not for Ireland alone, but for the United Kingdom, to reconstruct the local institutions, unloading upon them part of the now crushing burden of the central legislature, and then to base the central institutions upon them, is a policy which might at least claim attention, and, perhaps, deserve partial experiment, as an alternative to central revolution, if the nation and its leaders had not surrendered themselves to the revolutionary current.

Like the mode of election, the qualification for the franchise has never undergone any rational consideration with reference to the changed status and duties of the elector, who, instead of being really a subject, is now a participant in sovereign power. Nothing has been thought of the property qualification, which by successive agitations has been reduced to the vanishing point, and the next time anybody wants to raise the political wind will finally disappear. The broader the basis of electoral institutions can safely be made the better, and with indirect instead of direct election to the central legislature, it would be safe to make it very broad. Still some qualifications are necessary, even for the primary elector; nor, if the writer may trust his own observation, is there any indisposition on the part of the intelligent working-classes to look at the matter in that light. A common education is now placed within everybody’s reach by the help of the State, and it entails corresponding obligations. A mode of ascertaining that the elector could read and write, or at least read, by means of a certificate or test, might surely be devised. Personal application for registration would also be a fair requirement, since a man would hardly be fit to share the sovereign power who did not care enough about his vote to ask for it; and it would probably act as a useful criterion, self-applied. With the full powers of a citizen should also go, in reason, the full duties—liability to serve on juries, to assist in the enforcement of the law, to take part, if called upon, in the defence of the country. There is a vague notion that all human beings, or all who pay taxes (which, directly or indirectly, everybody does), have a natural right to a vote, and this is carried so far that votes are about to be given to a multitude of Irish who openly profess themselves the enemies of the State, and announce that they will use the votes for its destruction. Perhaps this Irish experiment may help to bring us all to reason, and convince us that nobody has a right to the means of doing mischief to himself and his fellows, or to anything but that form of government which is practically the best for all.

Considering how our morality and happiness depend on the maintenance of right relations between the sexes, it is surely a proof of the desperate recklessness of party that the Conservative leaders should be willing to fling female character and ultimately the home into the political caldron for the sake of gaining the female vote. Their calculation may prove unfounded; at least on this continent the women of Conservative temperament seem to stay at home, while the revolutionary Megæra mounts the platform and, brandishing her torch among the Anarchists of Chicago, bids the poor trust in dynamite instead of trusting in God. That gentleness and purity will come with woman into public life is certainly not the decisive verdict of experience, so far as experience has gone. It rather seems that her gentleness and purity depended on her absence from the political arena. Will the government be improved by being made feminine? That is the question to be answered in the common interest of both sexes. The male nature, though not higher, is the more practical. Men, as a rule, alone are brought into daily contact with the world of action by the varied experiences and exigencies of which the balance of political character is formed. Men alone can be said to be fully responsible. Unless sentiment should undergo a total change, a female Member of Parliament or office-holder could not be called to account like a man. In this rough world how will a nation prosper which is swayed by the emotions of its women? The sexes may be co-equal, and yet, having different natures, they may have different parts to play in the community as they certainly have in the family. Laws have been made by man, because law, to take effect, must have force behind it, and the force of the community is male. If women made such laws as some of them threaten to make in the interest of their sex, men would refuse to execute the law. If women voted a war for some object of female enthusiasm, as the French women would for the defence of the Pope, men would refuse to march. The authority of government would then fall. A woman cannot support the police or take part in the defence of the country. Women are not a class with separate interests of its own, but a sex, the political interests of which are identical with those of their husbands and brothers. Their property is not of a special kind, nor can it be alleged to have suffered any wrong by general legislation. Assuredly general legislation has of late not been unfavorable to woman. Perhaps they get more from the chivalry of male legislation than they would get if, armed with political power, they were fighting for themselves. To the argument that property held by them is unrepresented, the answer is that no property is represented in any hands beyond the minimum required for a qualification in each case. This is a small hardship compared with the practical exclusion from voting of all our sailors, the flower of our industry, and of a large number of those employed by commerce in the work of distribution. Woman, if she has her disabilities, has also her privileges, which, with the general guardianship of affection, the majority of the sex would probably be unwilling to renounce for the sake of gratifying the ambition of a few. Conservatives especially may be expected to consider the effects likely to be produced on female character and on domestic life by the introduction of women into politics and the general revolution in the relations between the sexes of which that measure is an integral part. Female aspirations begin to take a new turn. An American apostle of woman’s rights told us plainly the other day that she considered maternity a poor aim for a woman’s ambition. Nature answers by dooming the race to decay.

A stable, though responsible, executive, invested with a reasonable amount of authority, commanding the general confidence of the people, and capable of exercising forecast and governing on a plan, especially with regard to foreign affairs, is a necessity of civilized life. How is it to be secured for the future to England? Have reforming statesmen asked themselves that momentous question, or has the necessity of answering it been hidden from their eyes by the illusion which surrounds the “ancient throne?” What basis has Government at present but party? Is not that crisis crumbling to pieces? Is not the Liberal party in the House of Commons split up into discordant sections and held together solely by the authority of a leader in his seventy-fifth year and without any visible heir of his power? Have not the Irish entirely severed themselves from it and taken up a position which renders a reunion with them hopeless? Is not even the Tory party, though as a party of reaction less exposed to disintegration than a party of progress, went by divergent tendencies towards Conservatism on one side and Tory democracy on the other? Is not everybody at a loss to conceive how, after next election, and when the number of Parnellites shall have been increased, a party broad and strong enough to support a government is to be formed? The disintegration is not confined to England; it extends to all countries in which Parliamentary institutions prevail. It is extending now to the United States, where the reforming Republicans voted in the Presidential election; and the other day the Liberal party in Belgium suddenly split in two. The consequences everywhere are the fatal instability and weakness of government, the only exception being Germany, where Bismarck holds himself above party, governs on a principle really monarchical, and makes up a majority from any quarter that he can? France, with her Chamber full of Sectionalism, cabal and unruly ambition, lives always on the brink of administrative anarchy: industry and commerce never knowing whether next day they will have the shelter of a government over their heads. The Executive in the United States stands on an independent though elective footing; if it depended for its existence from day to day on the factions of Congress, chaos would soon come. Is there any prospect of a return to party union and solidity? As intellects grow more active, idiosyncracies more pronounced, ambitions more numerous and keen, is it likely that divergences will become fewer and that patient submission to party discipline will increase? Is not the tendency everywhere the opposite way? What permanent claim has party on the allegiance of a moral being? What is it but a soft name for faction, the bane of States? Why should a good citizen surrender his conscience to it? Why should good citizens for ever divide themselves into two hostile camps, and wage political war against each other? Is an unpatriotic and anti-social principle to be accepted as the last word of politics? The supply of organic questions cannot be inexhaustible. When it is exhausted and divisions of principle have disappeared, on what ground of reason or moral motive are parties to rest? Must they not thenceforth become factions pure and simple? Have they not become factions pure and simple, whenever organic questions have ceased to be at issue? Party has been the organ by which in England the Long Revolution has been conducted to its issue, and power has been gradually wrested from the Crown and transferred to the Commons. Hence the belief, shared by the whole of Europe, that party was inseparable from Parliamentary institutions, and that in no other way could free government be carried on. If free government can be carried on in no other way, the prospect is dark, for party is apparently doomed, alike by morality and by the growing tendencies of the age. But there is obviously one other way at least in which free government can be carried on. Instead of making office the prize of a perpetual faction fight, the members of the Executive Council of State may be regularly elected by the Members of the Legislature for a term certain, under such a system with regard to the rotation of vacancies as may at once secure sufficient harmony between the two bodies and a sufficient continuity in the executive government. The responsibility of the Executive for the decisions of the Legislature, and its obligation to resign upon every Legislative defeat, which is a mere accident of English history and devoid of rational foundation, would then cease. The Legislature and the Executive would be at liberty each to do its own work. The Executive would be national, and would receive the general support of the community instead of being an object of organized hostility to half of it; it would be stable instead of being as it is now throughout Europe ephemeral as well as weak. Responsibility on the part of its members instead of being diminished would be increased. It would become individual, whereas now it is only collective, the whole Cabinet and the party majority being bound to support each Minister whatever may be his failure in duty. Personal aptitude might be considered in the elections to the offices, whereas at present little can be considered beyond the necessity of providing for all the leaders, and a good financier or Minister of Marine would not be turned out because he was in the minority on a Franchise Bill.

The nations have been so much engaged in taking authority out of bad hands, that they have forgotten that it is a good and necessary thing in itself. Government has become dangerously weak. The greater part of its energy is now expended, not in the work of administration, but in preserving its own existence. Not only is it exposed to the incessant attacks of an Opposition whose business is to traduce and harass it, but it is now hardly able to sustain itself against the irresponsible power of the press, wielded nobody knows by whom, but often under secret influences, which are a great and growing danger in all communities. To keep the popular favor, which is to them the breath of life, the members of the Cabinet have to be always on the stump, reserving to themselves little time for rest or reflection, and the stump orator is rapidly superseding the statesman. This vacillation of policy on the Egyptian question, the consequences of which all have been deploring, has not been so much that of the Government as that of the nation itself worrying and distracting the Government through the press. A country with an Empire and a world-wide diplomacy cannot afford to have an Executive, the policy of which is always shifting with the wind of opinion, and which can exercise no forecast, because it is not sure of its existence for an hour. In India, the danger is not so much from native disaffection as from British agitation, which the Company managed to exclude, but which, since India has been driven into the vortex of British politics, a party Government has no power to control. Those who are as far as is the writer of this paper from being Imperialists, must see, nevertheless, that while the Empire exists it creates a special necessity for a strong and undemagogic Government, and that on any hypothesis, a disruption, or general dissolution from a collapse of the central authority, is not the thing to be desired. The Radicals themselves are saying that what the country now wants is a strong government, by which, however, people often mean a government strongly imbued with their own ideas.

England ought not to be very much in love with the party system at this moment, for it has well-nigh laid her, with all her greatness and her glory, at the feet of Messrs. Healy and Biggar. Faction and nothing but faction has brought her to the verge of a dismemberment, which, by carving a hostile Republic out of her side, would reduce her to a second-rate Power, and condemn her to play a subordinate instead of a leading part in the march of European civilization. “England has lost heart” is the exalting cry of Mr. Parnell. She has lost heart because she is betrayed by faction, seeking under highly philanthropic and philosophic pretences to climb into power by bartering the unity of the nation for the Irish vote. With a truly national government she would soon be herself again.

There is another point which, while time for consideration remains to them, British statesmen will surely do well to consider. It would seem paradoxical to say that England, the parent of constitutional government, has no constitution; but it will be admitted at once that she has no legal constitution, at least that her legal constitution is not actual. Actually she has nothing but a balance of power, or rather the power no longer balanced of the House of Commons, which if the Crown attempted to govern would stop the supplies, and if the Lords attempted to vote would force the Crown to coerce them by a swamping creation, or incite the people to terrify them into submission. The term “Constitutional,” though it seems full of mysterious and august meaning, has never really denoted anything but the limit of practical force. If it has been unconstitutional for the Lords to amend a money Bill, but constitutional for them to reject a Bill respecting a tax, as in the noted case of the paper duty, the reason was that the rejection was final, whereas the amended Bill would go back to the Commons, who would throw it out. But while the Commons have annihilated the power of the Crown, and reduced that of the Lords almost to a cipher, they remain themselves liable to dissolution at the will of the party leader into whose hands that prerogative has come, and who can thus suspend at any moment the existence of the supreme government, reduce its members to private citizens, and, if they resist, deal with them as common rioters through the police. In the ordinary course of things the existence of the supreme government is suspended, and an interregnum ensues, whenever the regular Parliamentary term expires. This is hardly the sort of ship with which it is wise to put out on the wide waters of democracy. England, like other nations under the elective system, needs a written constitution, defining all powers and duties, guarding against any usurpation, and entrusted to the keeping of a court of law. Traditions and understandings, which may be maintained and serve their purpose so long as the government is in the hands of a family group of statesmen walking in the ancestral paths, will not command the same respect in a far different order of things. The written constitution is the political Bible of the United States, and without it all would soon be usurpation and confusion. A written constitution in no way interferes with the freedom of development which is the supposed privilege of the unwritten. It only provides that development shall proceed in the way of regular and legal amendment, and not in that of violent collision and intimidation by street parades. The system of constitutional amendment works perfectly well in the United States. The power might be safely reposed in the people at large. Men who are not competent to vote on the complex question of the general policy of the country, and at the same time on the merits of the candidate, are competent to vote on a single question submitted by itself, and with regard to which, moreover, there is little danger of corruption or illicit influence. But the nation at large ought, by petition sufficiently signed or in some other way, to have the power of initiating constitutional amendments or compelling their submission by the Government as well as of rejecting them when submitted. Elective rulers, once installed in power, are no more willing to part with it than kings. Such a body as the American House of Representatives, though it might become a sheer political nuisance, would never take the first step in reform. There ought to be a power of enforcing change, when the necessity for it has become apparent to the nation, without having recourse to a violent revolution, or even to intimidation such as is being used in default of a better means to wrest the veto from the House of Lords.

These are the views of one who has long been convinced that the day of hereditary institutions had closed, that the day of elective institutions had fully come, that the appointed task of political science was to study the liabilities, weaknesses and dangers of the elective system with a view to their correction or prevention, and that the mission of the Liberal party in England was to conduct the critical transition and guide Europe in accomplishing it without revolution. If such views are condemned as Conservative by Radicals, and as Republican by Conservatives, neither charge can well be repelled. They certainly cannot be congenial to any who exult in the prospect of a socialistic revolution. But the upshot of all that has been here said is that Democracy must be organized and regulated. Unorganized and unregulated, it will probably end in confusion.—_Contemporary Magazine._

SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS.[8]

[8] A Lecture delivered before the (London) Sunday Lecture Society, January 18, 1885.

BY WILLIAM LANT CARPENTER.

I am about to endeavor to set forth the life and work of Sir William Siemens, who was not only an ardent scientific discoverer, but one whose work for the last five or six years has interested the general public to a degree that has perhaps never before been the case with any man so devoted to science as he was. Of him it may be said, without fear of contradiction, that he has, beyond all his contemporaries, promoted the practical application of scientific discovery to industrial purposes. It has also been said by one who had the privilege of his friendship, that “no one could know him without feeling how lovely his character was. Wonderful as were the qualities of his mind, they were equalled by the nobleness of his heart.”

These two sentences, then, will serve to indicate my purpose. In telling, with necessary brevity, the story of the life of Sir William Siemens, I shall try to keep in view the fact that even his great powers, without his large heart, would never have produced the impression which he did upon the national mind. Hence, after I have given a sketch of some of the more important discoveries of the inventor, and their consequences to the national life, I shall, with the help of materials most kindly and liberally placed at my disposal by his family, try to show what manner of man he was, and what impression he made upon those who had the very great advantage of personal communion with him.

Charles William Siemens was born at Lenthe in Hanover on April 4, 1823, and was one among many of a family eminent for their scientific knowledge and practical skill. The possession of such unusual talents by a whole family is rarer, perhaps, in the intellectual life of England than in that of Germany; at any rate, in the absence of definite statistics such as those compiled with so much care by Mr. Francis Galton, the general impression is that such is the case. It is not difficult to discern in the scientific career of the Brothers Siemens some prominent characteristics of their race; and in the life of Sir William, the sympathy of the German mind for general principles, and the tenacity with which it clings to them, are well illustrated, and stand out in strongly-marked contrast to the usual indifference of the average English mind to theoretic conclusions, as opposed to so-called practical ones. It would be well-nigh impossible to find among Englishmen one instance in which an inventor has been so confident of the possible utility of a few grand general principles, that he has worked out from them several great inventions; and that he felt himself justified in this confidence after years of hard work is evidenced by his own saying that “the farther we advance, the more thoroughly do we approach the indications of pure science in our practical results.”

William Siemens received his early educational training at Lübeck, and in the course of it the stimulus afforded to excellence of workmanship by the German guild system made an early and lasting impression upon his mind, for he repeatedly referred to it in after life. From Lübeck he went to the Polytechnical School at Magdeburg, where he studied physical science with apparatus of the most primitive kind, and under great disadvantages, as compared with the facilities of our modern laboratories. After this he studied at Göttingen University, where, under Wöhler and Himly, he first got that insight into chemical laws which laid the foundation of his metallurgical knowledge, and here began to develop in him that wonderful thirst for discovery, which abundant success never quenched. Here, also, occurred what he has himself described as “the determining incident of his life.” Mr. Elkington, of Birmingham, utilising the discoveries of Davy, Faraday, and Jacobi, had devised the first practical application of that form of energy which we now call the electric current, and in 1842 he established a practical process of electro-plating. In the following year, as the result of his own and his brother Werner’s work, William Siemens presented himself before Mr. Elkington with an improvement in his process, which was adopted. This is the first on the list of inventions on the diagram behind me. Speaking of his first landing in London he says:

“I expected to find some office in which inventions were examined, and rewarded if found meritorious; but no one could direct me to such a place. In walking along Finsbury Pavement, I saw written up in large letters so-and-so (I forget the name) ‘undertaker,’ and the thought struck me that this must be the place I was in quest of. At any rate I thought that a person advertising himself as an undertaker would not refuse to look into my invention, with a view of obtaining for me the sought-for recognition or reward. On entering the place I soon convinced myself, however, that I had come decidedly too soon for the kind of enterprise there contemplated, and finding myself confronted with the proprietor of the establishment, I covered my retreat by what he must have thought a very inadequate excuse.”

Returning to Germany, he became a pupil in the engine works of Count Stolberg, to study mechanical engineering. While there he worked out a great improvement upon Watt’s centrifugal governor for regulating the supply of steam to an engine, and in 1844 he returned to England with his invention, and soon decided to stay here. His object in doing so was to enjoy the security which the English patent law afforded to inventors, for in his own country there were then no such laws. This chronometric governor, though not very successful commercially, introduced him to the engineering world; it was originally intended for steam engines, but its chief application has been to regulate the movement of the great transit instrument at Greenwich. Then followed in quick succession several minor inventions which met with varying practical success, such as the process of anastatic printing, which was made the subject of a Royal Institution lecture in 1845 by Faraday; a water meter, which has since been in general use; an air pump, &c., &c.

About this time the researches of Joule, Carnot, and Mayer upon the relations between heat and mechanical work were attracting much attention among scientific men, and at the age of twenty-three, William Siemens adopted the hypothesis now known as the dynamical theory of heat. More than once I have drawn attention to the exact numerical relation between units of heat and units of work established by Joule, viz., that 772 foot-pounds of work is required to generate heat enough to raise the temperature of 1 lb. of water 1° Fah., and I have pointed out here and elsewhere that this was the first well-authenticated example of that grandest of modern generalisations, the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, the truth of which is constantly receiving new illustrations.

With a mind thoroughly pervaded by this important principle, Siemens applied himself to the study of steam and caloric engines, and saw at once that there was an enormous difference between the theoretical and the actual power gained from the heat developed by the combustion of a given quantity of coal, and hence that there was a very large margin for improvement. He at once determined to try to utilise some of this wasted heat, and he conceived the idea (to which I invite your particular attention) of making a regenerator, or an accumulator, which should retain or store a limited quantity of heat, and be capable of yielding it up again when required for the performance of any work. In the factory of Mr. John Hicks, of Bolton, he first constructed an engine on this plan; the saving in fuel was great, but it was attended by mechanical difficulties which at that time he was unable to solve. The Society of Arts, however, recognised the value of the principle by awarding him a gold medal in 1850. Three years afterwards, his paper “On the Conversion of Heat into Mechanical Effect,” before the Institution of Civil Engineers, gained him the Telford premium (awarded only once in five years) and the medal of the Institution. In 1856 he gave a lecture upon his engine at the Royal Institution, considered as the result of ten years’ experimental work, and as the first practical application of the mechanical theory of heat; he then indicated the economic considerations which encouraged him to persevere in his experiments, pointing out that the total national expenditure for steam-coal alone amounted to eight millions sterling per year, of which at least two-thirds might be saved!

His efforts to improve the steam-engine, however, were speedily followed by a still more important application of the mechanical theory of heat to industrial purposes. In 1857 his younger brother, and then pupil, Frederick (who, since the death of Sir William, has undertaken the sole charge of the development of this branch of his elder brother’s work), suggested to him the employment of regenerators for the purpose of saving some of the heat wasted in metallurgical operations, and for four years he labored to attain this result, constructing several different forms of furnace. His chief practical difficulties arose from the use of solid fuel—coal or coke—but when, in 1859, he hit upon the plan of converting the solid fuel into gaseous, which he did by the aid of his gas-producer, he found that the results obtained with his regenerators exceeded his most sanguine expectations. In 1861 the first practical regenerative gas furnace was erected at the glass works of Messrs. Chance Bros. in Manchester, and it was found to be very economical in its results. Early in 1862 the attention of Faraday was drawn to this matter, and on June 20 of the same year, that prince of experimentalists appeared before the Royal Institution audience for the last time to explain the wonderful simplicity, economy, and power of the Siemens regenerative gas furnace. Age and experience have not diminished the high estimation in which it is held; after nearly twenty years of continuous working and extended application, Sir Henry Bessemer described it in 1880 as an “invention which was at once the most philosophic in principle, the most powerful in action, and the most economic, of all the contrivances for producing heat by the combustion of coal.”

The furnace consists essentially of three parts; (1) the gas producer, which converts the solid coal into gaseous fuel; (2) the regenerators, usually four in number, which are filled with fire-brick piled in such a way as to break up into many parts a current of air or gas passing through them; (3) the furnace proper, where the combustion is actually accomplished. In using the furnace, the gaseous fuel and air are conducted through one pair of regenerators to the combustion chamber; the heated gases from this, on their way to the chimney, pass through the other pair of regenerators, heating them in their passage. In the course of, say, one hour, the currents are reversed, so that the comparatively cold gas and air pass over these heated regenerators before entering the furnace, and rob them of their heat. While this is going on, the first pair of regenerators is being heated again, and thus, by working them in alternate pairs, nearly all the heat, which would otherwise have escaped unused into the chimney, is utilised.

By this process of accumulation the highest possible temperature (only limited by the point at which its materials begin to melt), can be obtained in the furnace chamber, without an intensified draft, and with inferior fuel.

It has been found that this furnace is capable of making a ton of crucible steel with _one-sixth_ of the fuel required without it, and that while the temperature of the furnace chamber exceeded 4,000° Fahrenheit, the waste products of combustion escaped into the chimney at 240° Fahrenheit, or very little above the temperature at which water boils in the open air.

At the locomotive works of the London and North Western Railway at Crewe, where these furnaces have long been used, it was formerly the practice to lock a piece of pitch pine into the flue leading to the chimney, and if at the end of the week the wood was charred, it was evidence that more heat had been wasted than ought to have been, and the men in charge of the furnace were fined.

This all-important national question, the waste of fuel, which in modern phraseology may be truly called the waste of energy, was constantly before the mind of Sir William Siemens, who lost no opportunity, in his public utterances, of impressing his hearers, and that still wider circle which he reached through the medium of the press, with a sense of the weighty consequences which it involved. In an address at Liverpool in 1872, as President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, he estimated the total coal consumption of this country at one hundred and twenty million tons, which at 10s. per ton amounted to sixty millions sterling. He strongly asserted that one-half of this might be saved by the general adoption of improved appliances which were within the range of actual knowledge; and he went on to speak of outside speculations, which would lead to the expectation of accomplishing these ends with one-eighth or even one-tenth of the actual expenditure. In 1873 he delivered a famous lecture on Fuel to the operative classes at Bradford, on behalf of the British Association, in which he illustrated how fuel should be used by three examples, typical of the three great branches of consumption: _a_, the production of steam power; _b_, the domestic hearth; _c_, the metallurgical furnace. In connection with the last point he mentioned that the Sheffield pot steel-melting furnace only utilised _one-seventieth_ part of the theoretical heat developed in the combustion, and contrasted with it his own furnace for melting steel. In discussing the question of the duration of our coal supply, he indicated what should be our national aim in the following suggestive and inspiring passage:

“In working through the statistical returns of the progressive increase of population, of steam power employed, and of production of iron and steel, &c., I find that our necessities increase at a rate of not less than 8 per cent. per annum, whereas our coal consumption increases only at the rate of 4 per cent., showing that the balance of 4 per cent. is met by what may be called our ‘intellectual progress.’ Now, considering the enormous margin for improvement before us, I contend that we should not be satisfied with this rate of intellectual progress, involving as it does an annual deficit of four million tons to be met by increased coal production, but that we should bring our intellectual progress up to the rate of our industrial progress, by which means we should make the coal production nearly a constant quantity for several generations to come.”

One of the direct results of this lecture, which was read and warmly commended by some of the most eminent men of the time, was that Dr. Siemens was consulted by Mr. Mundella in reference to parliamentary action by the Board of Trade in regard to the coal question.

In 1874 he received the Albert Gold Medal from the Society of Arts “for his researches in connection with the laws of heat, and for services rendered by him in the economisation of fuel in its various applications to manufactures and the arts,” and in 1877 he devoted nearly the whole of his address to the Iron and Steel Institute, of which he was then President, to the same subject, in which, as regards the probable duration of our coal supply, he had been for some time engaged in a controversy with the late Professor Jevons, maintaining that “the ratio of increase of population and output of manufactured goods would be nearly balanced for many years to come by the further introduction of economical processes, and that our annual production would remain substantially the same within that period, which would probably be a period of comparatively cheap coal.”

One of the most important applications of the regenerative furnace has been to the manufacture of steel, and he soon perceived that it was necessary for himself to solve the various difficulties which others regarded as practically insuperable. “Having,” he says, “been so often disappointed by the indifference of manufacturers and the antagonism of their workmen, I determined in 1865 to erect experimental or ‘sample steel works’ of my own at Birmingham, for the purpose of maturing the details of these processes, before inviting manufacturers to adopt them.” The success of experiments in 1867-68, in making steel rails, brought about the formation of the Landore Siemens Steel Co., whose works were opened in 1874. When Dr. Siemens was knighted, the employés of this company embodied their congratulations in an address, and had prepared for him a very beautiful model of a steel furnace in ivory and silver; the presentation of these was prevented by his premature death, but the address stated that “the quantity of steel made here to the end of last year on your process was upwards of 400,000 tons!” In the ten years ending in 1882, the annual production of open-hearth steel in the United Kingdom increased from 77,500 tons to 436,000 tons. During an action in the Superior Courts of the United States, it was stated that the inventor had received a million dollars in royalties, the annual saving in that country by his process being 3¾ millions of dollars! These statements refer mainly, I believe, to the conversion of cast or wrought iron into steel, either by the “direct” process of acting on pig-iron with iron ore in an open hearth, or by the “scrap process” (Siemens-Martin) of melting wrought-iron and steel scrap in a bath of pig-metal. Both of these require the preliminary treatment of the blast furnace, and in speaking of them in 1873, Dr. Siemens said that “however satisfactory these results might appear, I have never considered them in the light of final achievements. On the contrary, I have always looked upon the direct conversion of iron and steel from the ore, without the intervention of blast furnaces and the refinery, as the great object to be attained.” How far he succeeded in this may be gathered from the fact that in a paper read on April 29, 1883, before the Iron and Steel Institute, on the “Manufacture of Iron and Steel by the Direct Process,” he showed how to produce 15 cwt. of wrought iron direct from the ore in three hours, with a consumption of 25 cwt. of coal per ton of metal, which is one-half the quantity previously required for the production of a ton of pig-iron only, in the blast furnace! The long and costly experiments which ended in the realisation of his views extended over twenty-five years; and it is worthy of note that he told the Parliamentary Committee on Patents that he would not have continued them if the English patent law had not insured such a period of protection as would repay him for his labor.

Great, however, as the economic results of the gas-producer have been, its inventor looked forward to still more remarkable applications of it. In 1882 he told the British Association, in his presidential address, that he thought “the time is not far distant when both rich and poor will largely resort to gas as the most convenient, the cleanest, and the cheapest of heating agents, and when raw coal will be seen only at the colliery or the gas-works. In all cases where the town to be supplied is within, say, thirty miles of the colliery, the gas-works may with advantage be planted at the mouth, or, still better, at the bottom of the pit, whereby all haulage of fuel would be avoided, and the gas, in its ascent from the bottom of the colliery, would acquire an onward pressure sufficient probably to impel it to its destination. The possibility of transporting combustible gas through pipes for such a distance has been proved at Pittsburg, where natural gas from the oil district is used in large quantities.” It may be well to point out here that as a step towards this, it was a favorite project of his—practically carried out in some places—to divide the gaseous products of the ordinary distillation of coal into two, the middle portions being illuminating gas of 18 to 20 candle power instead of 16, and the first and last portions, which under this system may be largely increased, being heating gas; such gas he expected to see sold at 1_s._ per 1,000 cubic feet. The obvious and only practicable objection to the plan is the necessity for doubling all the mains and service-pipes. That we shall eventually burn gaseous fuel on the domestic hearth, as we have lately learnt to do on the metallurgical, I have not the smallest doubt; it is a mere question of the time necessary for the education of the public mind upon the question; the apter the pupil, the more speedy will be the desired result. Let it be thoroughly understood by every one that the soot which hangs in a pall over London in a single day is _equivalent to at least fifty tons of coal_, and then there will be no difficulty in seeing that the true and the only remedy for our London fogs, with all their attendant ills, is—gaseous fuel. May we not hope that, though Sir William Siemens has gone from among us, the great movement for smoke abatement, in which he so earnestly labored during the last three years of his life, may have full effect?

If I have dwelt thus long upon this particular branch of my subject, it is because I know of no other which so well illustrates two points in Sir William Siemens’ character which I have alluded to at the outset: his unwavering devotion to general principles and their consequences, and his ardent desire to promote the practical welfare of mankind. There is, however, as the late Professor Rolleston remarked to him, no subject which more impresses the minds even of persons who are laymen as regards science, than the history of Telegraphy (and I may perhaps be permitted to add, of Electrical Engineering generally), now so inseparably connected with his name. The University of Göttingen, at which he studied, was the cradle, if not the birthplace, of the electric telegraph in 1833. Shortly after, Sir Charles Wheatstone in England, and Mr. Morse in the United States, were simultaneously working at the same problem, and each claimed the honor of having solved it.

The telegraph, however, was still in a very undeveloped state when the Brothers Siemens began to study it, and their series of inventions, especially for long-distance telegraphy, largely aided in bringing it to its present condition. One of their first was the Relay, an electro-magnet so delicate that it will move with the weakest current. By the use of five of Siemens’ polarised relays, a message can be sent by the Indo-European Telegraph from London to Teherán, a distance of 3,800 miles, without any retransmission by hand, and during the Shah of Persia’s visit in 1873, Dr. Siemens arranged for messages to be thus regularly despatched from a room in Buckingham Palace. In 1858, Messrs. Siemens Brothers established near London the well-known telegraph works, and the construction by them in 1868 and following years of the Indo-European Telegraph—the overland double line to India through Prussia, Southern Russia, and Persia—was the first great undertaking of the kind. Writing of it in August, 1882, during the first Egyptian campaign, Dr. Siemens said, “At the present time our communication with India, Australia, and the Cape depends, notwithstanding the nominal existence of the line through Turkey, on the Indo-European Telegraph.”

The Messrs. Siemens were also pioneers in submarine telegraphy, the first cable covered with gutta-percha having been laid across the Rhine by Dr. Werner Siemens in 1847. The invention of the machine for coating the conducting wire with the insulating material, gutta-percha, or india rubber, is entirely due to Dr. William Siemens, who also subsequently designed the steamship _Faraday_ for the special work of laying and repairing submarine cables. This unique vessel was launched on Feb. 16, 1874, and when she was completed, Dr. Siemens invited all his scientific friends to inspect her, and challenged them to suggest any improvements in her arrangements. She was first used in laying the Direct United States Cable, which is above 3,000 miles in length. In this connection I may perhaps be permitted to relate a very characteristic anecdote. When Dr. Siemens took a contract for a cable, the electrical tests of which were specified, it was his invariable habit to give out to the works a considerably higher test, which every section of the cable had to pass, or be rejected _in toto_. In the case of this cable, probably during manipulation on board ship, a minute piece of wire penetrated the insulating material, bringing down the electrical test to a point below the “works” test, but still decidedly above the contract test. The discovery was not made until so late that to cut out the faulty piece involved a delay of some days in the middle of the Atlantic, but Dr. Siemens insisted upon its being done; after this, stormy weather came on, and the cable had to be cut and buoyed, while the _Faraday_ had to winter on the American side, and resume operations next spring. The money loss involved amounted, I am told, to more than £30,000. Perhaps the most remarkable of the later feats was the fulfilment of a contract with the Compagnie Française du Telegraphe de Paris à New York, who ordered a cable 3,000 miles long from the Messrs. Siemens in March, 1879, and it was handed over to them in perfect working order in September of the same year! There are now nearly 90,000 miles of submarine cable at work, costing about £32,000,000, and a fleet of thirty-two ships are employed in laying, watching, and repairing these cables, of which there are now eleven across the Atlantic alone.

In connection with the subject of telegraphy, and as an instance of the versatility of Dr. Siemens’s inventive powers, I may point out that in 1876 he brought out the pneumatic postal telegraph tube, by which, as is pretty generally known, written messages are blown or sucked through tubes on various metropolitan routes, instead of being transmitted electrically. About the same time, also, he constructed his ingenious bathometer, for ascertaining the depth of the sea at any given point, without the tedious operation of sounding; and some years previously he worked out his electrical thermometer or pyrometer, enabling the observer to read the temperature (whenever he desired) at any distant and inaccessible point, such as the top of a mountain, the bottom of the sea, the air between the layers of a cable, or the interior of a furnace.

Probably the most prominent idea associated in the public mind with the name of Siemens is that of electric lighting, and perhaps electric tram and railroads. As I have more than once pointed out in this room, the dynamo-machine, by which mechanical energy is converted into that form of energy known as electricity (which may be used both for lighting and for the transmission of power), is derived from a principle discovered by Faraday in 1831. Sir William Siemens’ devotion to this, and the important practical consequences which he deduced from it, constitute another example of that mental characteristic to which I have already alluded. Faraday’s discovery, briefly described, was that when a bar magnet was suddenly inserted into a coil of wire, or when a wire was suddenly moved through a magnetic field, a momentary current of electricity was developed in the wire. Although this current is exceedingly small and brief, it is capable of unlimited multiplication by mechanical arrangements of a simple kind. One means for accomplishing this multiplication was the Siemens armature of 1857, which consisted, at first, of a piece of iron with wire wound round it longitudinally, not transversely, the whole to be rotated between the poles of a powerful magnet; in its present form it is one of the most powerful and perfect things of its kind, and the evolution of the Siemens armature, as we now have it, from the rudimentary type of a quarter of a century ago, has been characterised by Sir W. Thomson as one of the most beautiful products of inventive genius, and more like the growth of a flower than to almost anything else in the way of mechanism made by man.

Ten years afterwards came his classical paper “On the Conversion of Dynamical into Electrical Force, without the use of permanent Magnetism,” which was read before the Royal Society on February 14, 1867. Strangely enough, the discovery of the same principle was enunciated at the same meeting by Sir Charles Wheatstone, while there is yet a third claimant in the person of Mr. Cromwell Varley, who had previously applied for a patent in which the idea was embodied. It can never be quite certain, therefore, who was the first discoverer of the principle upon which modern dynamo-machines are constructed. I need not describe here the way in which this principle is carried out in all dynamo-machines. Suffice it to say that they differ from Faraday’s magneto-electric machines in having electro-magnets in the place of permanent steel magnets, and that these electro-magnets are, if I may be allowed the expression, self-excited by the play of mutual give and take between the armature and the magnet.

It was the invention of the dynamo-machine which made practicable the application of electricity to industrial purposes. Experiments have shown that it is capable of transforming into electrical work 90 per cent. of the mechanical energy employed as motive power. Its practical application is still in its infancy. In 1785 Watt completed his “improvements” in the steam-engine, and the century which has since elapsed has not sufficed to demonstrate the full extent of its utility. What may we not expect in the next hundred years from the extension of the dynamo-machine to practical purposes?

In the development of appliances for the production of the electric light Sir William Siemens took a leading part, and, as is well known, his firm has been _facile princeps_ at all the important electrical exhibitions. But while ever zealous to promote its progress, he never took a partisan view of its utility, candidly admitting that gas must continue to be the poor man’s friend. In 1882 he told the Society of Arts that “Electricity must win the day _as the light of luxury_, but gas will find an ever-increasing application for the more humble purposes of diffusing light.”