SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION OF MECHANICS AND ARTISANS. 191 



turer in irou and steel, in Birmingham, the em[)orinm of skilled labor 

 for the British Empire. Under these new auspices his progress was a 

 continuous triumph — a triumph which, however, was his, only because 

 his partner was a just and true-hearted man; for it is under precisely 

 such circumstances that in numerous instances the actual inventor has 

 succumbed to the skilled and able artisan, while Boultou left to Watt 

 the fame that was his rightful due, and took care that his long years of 

 toil and want should be crowned by an old age of ease and affluence. 



Attempts at navigation bj^ steam were made at intervals for a century 

 and a half, or more, but generally by men who had more science than 

 art; often by those who had neither, but only a vague conception of the 

 capacity and destiny of this mighty agent which was to inaugurate a 

 new era for human industry and enterprise. Some of these experiments 

 were partially successful, yet failed to combine the essential conditions 

 of power, speed, manageableness, and durability. Fitch, had he been 

 a well-trained mechanician, would undoubtedly have antedated by sev- 

 eral years the establishment of steam-navigation on our western waters. 

 But the glory was reserved for Fulton, who, though not educated as a 

 mechanic, had made himself one by taste, study, and matured i>ractice, 

 and was as familiar with the details of material, method, and workman- 

 ship as with the scientific conditions to which all these are subservient. 

 Yet even he was retarded in the successful execution of his plans by 

 the fact that he was not by profession a machinist or a ship-builder. 

 The idea, full grown and available, preceded its final embodiment by at 

 least fourteen years, an interval in which he had exj)erimented in France 

 under disadvantages and discouragements that would have been facal 

 to the scheme, but for his indomitable elasticity and hopefulness. Had 

 he been master of a machine-shop or a building-yard of his own, he 

 would undoubtedly have launched the Clermont not later than the first 

 5'ear of this century instead of the seventh, and would ha.ve been spared 

 the litigations with rival claimants which imbittercd the residue of his 

 life, and hastened its close, leaving, as his biographer says, for "the only 

 patrimony of his children, the load of debt which their parent con- 

 tracted in those pursuits that ought to command the gratitude, as they 

 do the admiration of mankind." 



Of the disabilities under vv^hich an inventor may labor in consequence 

 of his not being an artisan by profession, we have a striking illustration 

 in Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin. In his case the concep- 

 tion and the execution were united. He was a man of thorough literary 

 and scientific education, and at the same time of a native mechanical 

 genius, which attested itself in his very boyhood by the manufacture of 

 tools, cutlery, and musical instruments, of peculiaiiy good qualitj" and 

 finish. After graduating at Yale College he went to Georgia under an 

 engagement as a teacher. Cotton was at tliat time almost worthless as 

 a staple of agriculture and commerce, as it could be cleaned from the 

 seed only by hand, at the rate of a pound of the gross cotton per day 



