238 REPORT — 1872. 



and as liigli as doutle and even close upon quadruple that number), that I feel it 

 would be an unwarrantable waste of the time ot the Section if I were to invite 

 them to follow me into calculations, or rather siDecidations, as to the exact 

 savino- that would be made in the consumption of coal consequent upon improving 

 the whole of our steam-engines up to the present highest standard. It will, how- 

 ever, be quite sufficient, to show the importance of the question, for me to say 

 (and I am sure I should be perfectly safe in saying) that such saving would have 

 to be estimated by millions of tons. 



Such a saving, as I have said, is one that might be made with our present know- 

 ledge ; but when we recollect that an engine burning even as little as 2 lbs. of coal 

 per indicated horse-power per hour is still developing only one tenth of all the 

 power which, according to calculation, resides in that coal, there is manifestly a 

 vast scope for our mechanical engineers in the exercise of their talents for producing 

 further economy. 



But let not users of coal remain indifferent to savings on their present consump- 

 tion until those improvements are discovered by scientific men ; on the contrary, 

 let them forthwith do every thing in their power to reduce the consumption 

 to the extent to which present science and, in some instances, present practice 

 show the consumption can be reduced. One is apt, at first sight, to marvel that 

 owners of steam-engines should be so blind to their own interest, and should permit 

 waste to go on day after day and j-ear after year — a waste not only prejudicial to 

 the community at large and to succeeding generations, but a waste causing constant 

 expense to those who commit it, and a waste, therefore, that one would think such 

 persons woidd only be too ready to stop ; but the fact is, there are several reasons 

 why manufacturers and others permit the waste to go on. 



In prosperous times those engaged in manufactures are too busy earning and 

 saving money to attend to a reorganization of their plant ; in bad times they are 

 too dispirited and too little inclined to spend the money that in better times they 

 have saved in replacing old and wasteful appliances by new and economical ones ; 

 and one feels that there is a very considerable amount of seeming justification for 

 their conduct in both instances, and that it requires a really comprehensive and 

 large intelligence and a belief in the future, possessed by only a few out of the bulk 

 of mankind, to cause the manufacturer to pursue that which would be the true 

 policy as well for his own interests as for those of the community. But there 

 is a furth.er and a perpetual bugbear in the way of such improvements, and that 

 bugbear is the so-called " practical man ;" and he was in my mind when, in pre- 

 vious parts of this address, I have hinted at the existence of an obstacle to the 

 adoption of improvement. 



I do not wish the Section for one moment to suppose that I, brought up as an 

 apprentice in a workshop, and who all my life have practised my profession, intend 

 to say one word against the tnily practical man. On the contrary, he is the man 

 of all others that I admire, and by whom I would wish persons to be guided — because 

 the tridy practical man is one who knows the reason of that which he practises, 

 who can give an account of the faith that is in him, and who, while he possesses 

 the readiness of mind and the dexterity which arise from the long-continued and 

 dailj' intercourse with the subject of his profession, possesses also that necessary 

 amount of theoretical and scientific knowledge which justifies him in pursuing any 

 process he adopts, which in many cases enables him to devise new processes, or 

 which, at all events, if he be not of an inventive qualitj' of mind, will enable him 

 to appreciate and value the new processes devised by others. This is the truly 

 practical man, about whom I have nothing to say except that which is most lauda- 

 tory ; but the practical man as commonly understood means a man who knows 

 the practice of his trade and knows nothing else concerning it — the man whose 

 wisdom consists in standing by seeing, but not investigating, the new discoveries 

 which are taking place around him, in decrying those discoveries, in applying 1o 

 those who invent improvements, even the very greatest, the epithet of "schemers," 

 and then, when he finds that, beyond all dispute, some new matter is good and has 

 come into general practice, taking to it grumblingiy, but still taking to it, because 

 if he did not he could not compete with his co-manufacturers, the aim and object 

 of such a man being to ensure that he should never malce a mistake by embarking 



