Chapter C: F. Birdseye Believes They Bring Undergraduates More Under Influence (9)

At forty years of age Henry M. Whitney was a fairly rich man, but known to few people. The work that made his name known throughout the country came afterward. He had begun to deal in suburban real estate in the vicinity of Boston, and had picked Brookline as especially fitted for development. It was a section much favored as a place of residence by Boston business men, and as a first step in the development of his holdings Whitney built, chiefly at his own expense, a magnificent boulevard from the town to Boston. Over this the men who had offices in the city were accustomed to drive daily, just as to-day they go in their automobiles.

The development and extension of the trolley in the late eighties gave Whitney another opportunity, and he built a trolley line from Brookline to Boston. When he reached the city limits he found himself against a stone wall.

The Boston horse-car companies would not allow him to transfer his passengers without their paying another fare, and would make no provisions for connections between the cars. They would not permit him to get a franchise, and they ridiculed the idea that their own lines would ever be operated by electricity. The Brookline line was sandbagged and rendered worthless, for all it could offer passengers was a pleasant, and, at the time, a novel ride to the Boston city line.

Whitney made several attempts to persuade the Boston companies to allow him to use their tracks, and offered to stand part of the expense of installing electric equipment. The offer was turned down, and the little “West End” road still hung on the ragged edge.

Then Whitney went to work in another way. He quietly bought up the stock of the various companies, and when at last matters came to a test he and his friends were in control, and the “West End” entered Boston. Later it gave its name to practically the whole Boston street railroad service.

As a first result of Whitney’s control and amalgamation of the Boston streetcar lines, that city was among the earliest in the country to benefit from an adequate trolley service.

In 1893 Whitney got control of the Cape Breton coal mines. Before then the mines had dragged along, doing a fair business, but not advancing to any extent. The people in Cape Breton did not have the money to develop them, and the English capitalists in control were disinclined to advance any money for the purpose.

Whitney saw a chance to push Cape Breton coal into new markets, and soon the mines at Louisbourg and Glace Bay were doubling and trebling their output, and Sydney and North Sydney became thriving ports. He had also entered the gas business in Boston, and he began importing Cape Breton coal for the gas and coke works at Everett, near Boston. Such an increase in industry gave a tremendous impetus to Cape Breton, but it was not until Whitney added steel, coke, and gas plants that Cape Breton realized the full benefit of his work.

About the time Whitney entered the coal-mining industry, a fisherman had come in with a killock so peculiar that it drew attention. Examination showed that it was almost pure iron ore. He had found it near Belle Isle, between Newfoundland and Labrador. Further search showed that there were enormous deposits of excellent iron ore at Belle Isle.

The Sydneys had a good port and coal in abundance. Whitney made the combination that has resulted in the building of the great iron works at North Sydney. Fifteen years ago the two towns together did not have much more than four thousand inhabitants. At present they have nearly five times that number, and are thriving, growing cities, shipping enormous quantities of coal, and the Dominion Iron and Steel Company at North Sydney is regularly turning out twenty thousand tons of steel a month. About three-fourths of this is steel rails, and the enormous development of Canada’s railroad extension easily calls for much more than that.

Cape Breton is no longer a negligible section of the world, dependent on its fisheries, the scanty farm produce that its stony soil yields, and its mines slovenly managed and ill-developed. It is steadily growing rich, and the workers are prosperous. Both of these conditions are directly due to the foresight and management of Henry M. Whitney.

PEGGED ON TO FORTUNE.

The Career of a Future Governor Illustrates Soundness of the Adage:
“Cobbler, Stick to Thy Last.”

William L. Douglas, who stands well in the forefront of the American shoe manufacturers, alone makes more shoes every year than were manufactured in the entire country when he started to learn the business.

Mr. Douglas was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1845, and when he was five years old his father died. At seven he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and was put to pegging shoes. Practically every operation was done by hand, though Howe’s sewing-machine was used by the more progressive manufacturers for stitching the uppers. But the rest of the work, fastening the soles included, was done by hand, and the larger factories employed only a dozen or so men.

Douglas worked at the bench from six o’clock in the morning until evening made it too dark to see where to drive his awl. At fifteen he could make a shoe, from cutting the uppers and trimmings and preparing the bottom stocks and heels to sandpapering the soles and blackening and burnishing the edges and heels. Then he began to look around for easier and more remunerative work.

The cotton mills of the State seemed to offer it, and he started in, as bobbin-boy, to learn a new trade. He remained at it only a few years, for he heard the glowing stories of how much skilled shoemakers were needed in the West. When he was nineteen he went to Colorado, and after working through a number of mining-camps he located at Denver and opened a cobbling shop.

The prices he received for his work were big, but they were nearly offset by the prices he had to pay to live, and he was forced to work sometimes sixteen hours a day. He was of slight build, and the strain began to tell on him to such an extent that he was forced to abandon the business and return East.

By 1876 machinery had begun to revolutionize the shoe business, and Massachusetts was making shoes for the whole country. Douglas had a few hundred dollars, the savings of the long days in Colorado, and he began manufacturing. He could not afford to buy all the machines necessary.

He commenced with three men, working himself. The little shop prospered and grew. Before long it was sending out shoes all over the country. As machinery was improved and a greater output became possible, the shop increased its business and began to export shoes. From the original output of forty-eight pairs of shoes a week it has grown to fifteen thousand pairs a day, and the shoes are sent all over the world.

The making of shoes and the organization of a great Industry has not absorbed Mr. Douglas’s whole attention. As a Democrat he has been a member of the Massachusetts House and Senate, Mayor of Brockton, and in 1903 he was elected Governor of Massachusetts, though the State is usually Republican. He worked during his campaign the way he worked in business, putting in the number of hours a day necessary to complete the task set, and he kept his political lieutenants working the same way. By this means he became the first Democratic executive the State has had since 1893, and he gave the people a business administration they liked.

It was Governor Douglas who settled the disastrous Fall River strike, after a number of futile attempts had been made to bring about an understanding, and his findings appealed to both sides, for the workers knew he had once worked in the mill and the employers recognized his acute business sense.

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[Sidenote: Fortune.]

Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter and the seed, which our soul, more powerful than she, turns and applies as she best pleases, being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition. All external accessions receive taste and color from the internal constitution, as clothes warm us not with their heat, but our own, which they are adapted to cover and keep in.—=Michel Eyquem de Montaigne.=

THE BLACKBIRD’S SONG.

Though the fame of Henry Kingsley (1830–1876) is eclipsed by that of
his elder brother, Charles, many critics have been bold enough to
predict that the time will come when the English-speaking world will
recognize the younger of these brothers as the greater writer. Henry
Kingsley, leaving Oxford without taking a degree, went to Australia
when he was twenty-three years old, and it was not until his return to
England, five years later, that he addressed himself to novel-writing.
His most popular books were “Geoffrey Hamlin” and “Ravenshoe.” He
wrote few poems, and of these “The Blackbird’s Song,” which is here
reprinted for the readers of THE SCRAP BOOK, probably is the best
known. It has the real lilt of the English blackbird, and this,
together with its quaint diction, gives to it a peculiar quality that
causes it to linger in the mind long after the book containing the
poem has been laid aside.

BY HENRY KINGSLEY.

Magdalen at Michael’s gate
Tirled at the pin;
On Joseph’s thorn sang the blackbird,
“Let her in! let her in!”

“Hast thou seen the wounds?” said Michael;
“Know’st thou thy sin?”
“It is evening, evening,” sang the blackbird,
“Let her in! let her in!”

“Yes, I have seen the wounds,
And I know my sin.”
“She knows it well, well, well,” sang the blackbird:
“Let her in! let her in!”

“Thou bringest no offerings,” said Michael,
“Naught save sin.”
And the blackbird sang, “She is sorry, sorry, sorry;
Let her in! let her in!”

When he had sung himself to sleep,
And night did begin,
One came and opened Michael’s gate,
And Magdalen went in.

LOVE IN FOUR CENTURIES.

A Collection of Verses Which Prove That However Great May Be the Changes
Wrought By Time on Other Products of Human Endeavor, the Art of
Expressing the “Grande Passion” Remains Immutable.

SWEET-AND-TWENTY.

By William Shakespeare (1564–1616).

Oh, mistress mine, where are you roaming?
Oh, stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no farther, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lover’s meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-Twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

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GO, LOVELY ROSE.

By Edmund Waller (1605–1687).

Go, lovely Rose—
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

Then die—that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

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