114 '^HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



8, 1843, in a commission-liouse for the sale of domestic cotton 

 goods. In 1848 lie entered the service of manufacturing com- 

 l^anies, and from that date until 1878 was engaged as treasurer or 

 manager of factory corporations. In 1878 he became President of 

 the Boston Manufacturers' Mutual Fire-insurance Company, and 

 has since devoted his time largely to the study of the prevention 

 of fire in factories. 



In one of his essays he says that he first began to think in the 

 Free-Soil campaign of 1848 ; that he then despised statistics, and 

 was under the profound conviction that every advocate of free 

 trade had a cloven foot. He held to these opinions until about 

 the beginning of the war. Being prevented from entering the 

 service by home duties, he devoted himself to the study of the 

 resources of the United States, and from the study of facts rather 

 than of books, and from his long experience, he became an advo- 

 cate of hard money, opposed to the Legal-Tender Act, and in 1866 

 he also became a convert to free trade, subject in its application 

 to such consideration as might rightly be given to branches of 

 industry whose course had been somewhat altered by the long 

 continuance of the protective system. 



Besides his studies in economic science, and above them, ac- 

 cording to his own estimation, Mr. Atkinson is the inventor of a 

 form of cooking apparatus by which the process of preparing 

 food is greatly facilitated, while the quality of the product is cer- 

 tain to be improved. It comprises two ovens, one heated by a 

 column of water, the other heated by a column of air, the heat 

 being derived from common kerosene-oil lamps so arranged that 

 the products of the combustion of the oil can not touch the food. 

 Having baked twenty pounds of bread in one oven with one cent's 

 worth of oil, and being able either to simmer in one vessel or to 

 roast in the hot-air oven thirty pounds of meat at a cost of not 

 exceeding two cents' worth of oil, he believes that he has accom- 

 plished economy in domestic cookery in a way which Count Rum- 

 ford attempted but failed to make popular, but which might 

 become the common practice of all, now that kerosene-oil yields 

 a cheap source of heat. These inventions are not patented, but 

 are purposely left open for public use. 



By his connection with an association of New England mill- 

 owners, for prevention of fires in their factories and for insurance, 

 he has been instrumental in raising the profession of underwriter 

 from a mere system of betting on the chances of loss by fire on 

 property, as it may happen to be at any given time, to one in 

 which science shall be applied at every point, both in the con- 

 struction and occupation of buildings, and to the prevention of 

 such losses, under the direction and instruction of capable officers 

 of insurance companies, who will consider every loss by fire an 



