The World Grown Young. Being a brief record of Reforms carried out from 1894-1914 by the late Mr. P. Adams, Millionaire and Philanthropist [A romance.] By W. Herbert

Front matter

BEING A BRIEF BECOED OF REFORMS CARRIED OUT FROM 1894-1914 BY THE LATE MR. PHILIP ADAMS MILLIONAIRE AND PHILANTHROPIST BY WILLIAM HERBERT LONDON : W. H. ALLEN & CO., Ltd., 13 WATEBLOO PLACE. AND AT CALCUTTA. LON LION PRINTED BT W. H. ALLEN AND CO., LIMITED. 13, WATERLOO PLACE. S.W. Provided with boundless wealth and a reasonable amount of rational philanthropy, to what use would the ordinary common sense Briton, unprejudiced by party spirit, and unmindful of self-indulgence, desire to put the enormous power which his wealth would confer? The present volume is an attempt to solve the problem. A dream is the accepted method of looking into the future ; but there has been so much dreaming of late, that perhaps this device of a philanthropic millionaire may be accepted as an agreeable change.

Preface

My readers will have heard with the very greatest sorrow and consternation of the sad accident which only a fortnight ago occurred to Mr. Philip Adams, the benefactor of his species, the righter of wrongs, the brightest, most gifted, and withal, kindliest man, that this small world of ours has ever counted in the sum of its humanity. He was extremely fond of hunting, and though seventy years of age, took every available opportunity of following the hounds. His horse stumbled at a fence ; he was thrown on to his head, and was killed almost immediately. We can confidently predict that his loss will be more widely felt than that of any man or woman who has died within the past one hundred years. The world will mourn for him. Statues and memorials of every de scription will be erected, but the great soul is no more.

He himself has gone never to return. For many years I have had the honour and pleasure of being his secretary and confidant. A mass of papers, including his diary and numerous letters, has been handed over to me, and in a year's

PREFACE.

. time I hope to do justice to the task entrusted to me, by putting the public in possession of a voluminous biography which shall record all that will ever be known of this most remarkable man. In the mean while, I publish the following small volume in order to temporarily satisfy the craving of all classes to know something of the genius who has so untimely taken his flight, and also to forestall certain un principled authors who have written and are writing garbled accounts of Mr. Adams's life. The following volume is of necessity sketchy and incomplete, but it is the only edition authorized by his sorrowing wife and relatives. The truth of every line is un impeachable. Mr. Adams's life, apart from the reforms which he effected, was uneventful ; hence, in the following pages, I have almost wholly confined myself to an account of these reforms.

This is also in deference to his own expressed wish. Our fathers were wont to boast that from 1820 to 1894 the world progressed further than during the previous three thousand years. Thanks to Mr. Adams's untiring perseverance, vigour, ability, and large-heartedness, we have the privilege of continuing this boast, and of saying that the world's progress during the last twenty years has been greater than even that which was the pride of our sires. W. H. December 1st, 1914. THE WORLD GROWN YOUNG.

Chapter I

The late Mr. Philip Adams was born in Sheffield in the year 1840. His father was a manufacturer in the iron trade ; and though not possessing large means, yet was sufficiently rich to give his son what was then considered a first-class education. For six years the boy was sent to Winchester, after which he read at Trinity College, Cambridge, and took a degree with second-class honours. His father then associated him in his own business, in which Philip remained for close upon thirty years. His was one of those brains which ripen slowly ; and during this time, though he always showed marked ability, yet he does not seem to have given proof of that commanding genius which has since made him so famous. In the year 1870 his father died, leaving his only son the sole charge of the business. Philip was then only thirty, yet his strict business habits caused him to be widely respected.

He was looked up to by all as an eminent citizen, of sound though not exceptional ability ; but beyond fulfilling the duties of Alderman and Justice of the Peace, the public did not expect him to rise any higher than did his father before him. In the year 1891 he made a voyage to India, which was destined ever after to be memorable as forming the turning-point in his career. In the spring of that year he was travelling by railway from Lahore to Peshawur, when the train which bore him passed through a flight of locusts. The insects fell in myriads on the line. The iron wheels ground them to death, but, still driven forward by those behind, they came in endless numbers, until the line was covered inches deep by the plague. The wheels and lines at last became so greasy with the blood of the insects that the driver found he could proceed at only half his former speed, owing to the wheels of his engine refusing to grip the lines.

Incidents like this not seldom occur in our Eastern Dependency. Other travellers had experienced the like inconvenience ; but to Mr. Adams it was left to turn the accident to account. The following jottings from his diary show the current of his thoughts : — " Why cannot the train advance ? " Because there is not sufficient friction to allow of the engine-wheels grasping the line. " What has decreased this friction? •' The greasing of the lines and wheels by the juices from the dead bodies of the locusts. " And yet it is this very friction which prevents the engine with dry lines and wheels from pulling more than a certain weight with the expenditure of a certain amount of coal and at a given speed. " Friction is usually found disadvantageous ; yet here Nature shows us how it is to be done away with, and we, instead of being grateful and learning her lesson, shut our eyes to the truth she desires to teach, and repay her by grumbling at the delay caused to our train."

At the first opportunity Mr. Adams bought a toy engine, train, and set of lines, and, to the vast astonishment of the friends with whom he was staying, he fell to experimenting with what thej were pleased to regard as children's toys. He first of all laid down his rails on an elevated plain, which had a pulley rigged up at one end directly between the lines. He placed a toy carriage on the rails heavily weighted with bricks, attached a cord to it, and passed this over the pulley. To this cord he now attached weights until the accumulation of their power caused the carriage to run forward with its burden towards the pulley. He then repeated the experiment, this time holding a stop-watch in his hand and marking the time which the carriage took to traverse a certain space. His next step was to oil the carriage-wheels and the lines, and then to proceed as before.

To his delight he discovered that the carriage now came forward in obedience to a force scarcely more than half that required before the oil was applied. The time also which the car took to traverse the given space was from 30 to 40 per cent. less. Here then was a great discovery, which, like all other great discoveries, had remained unaccountably 1 * hid for untold ages from the eyes and minds of the cleverest men, and had been revealed only by a mere accident. With business-like discretion, Mr. Adams said not a word concerning his experiments or discovery. He took the first train to Bombay and the first steamer to England. Arrived in Sheffield, he immediately took steps to put his discovery to the test on a large scale. He built trucks of a similar pattern to railway-trucks, placed them on rails, lubricated wheels and rails with oil, and found much the same result to ensue as when he was experimenting with toys in India.

It would be a useless task for me here to describe every minutiæ of the great discovery, all the experiments the great man made, or all the ingenious con trivances he adapted or invented in order to perfect the discovery in every detail. For fullest particulars I must refer the curious reader to the larger work to which I have alluded in the preface. For their thorough comprehension a considerable knowledge of engineering is absolutely essential. During the twenty years that have since elapsed his discovery has been immensely improved, inso much that his first efforts seem to us now crude and clumsy, but to the astonished world at the time they were as marvellous as was the first steam-engine constructed by the Stephensons. Without actually putting his invention to the proof, he could not be sure of the speed that could be attained or the amount of force that would be saved, but his experiments assured him that these would be great.

It was some months before he was satisfied of the certainty of success ; but once satisfied, his further actions were marked by astonishing swiftness and promptitude. He took out patents for every detail of his scheme, first of all in the United Kingdom, then in France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, and every other country of Europe where patents were attain able. Then he travelled to both North and South America, to Australia, India, Persia — in fact all over the world, breathing not a word about his plans, but silently obtaining his patents, and passing on to the next field of labour. He travelled unceasingly for almost eighteen months, never giving himself rest, but pushing on with a truly marvellous energy to the goal that he kept in view. Then, with his patents obtained, he felt himself master of the situation, and one day — we remember it was October 15, 1894, a day for ever memorable in our history — he burst upon an astonished world with the news of his great discovery.

At first he was met with blank incredulity, but in spite of his heavy ex penses, he still had sufficient means left to enable him to prove by ocular demonstration the truth of what he averred. He showed the railway companies that his plan — which, broadly stated, rested on the two principles of running the engine on a separate pair of inside rails, and the carriages on an outer pair, and secondly, of lubricating the outer wheels and lines with oil — en abled a train to proceed at a speed of from 100 to 200 miles an hour, with a smooth, easy motion that scarcely allowed the traveller to feel that he was moving, and with a less expenditure of coal than was used on the old system. Lubricating the wheels[and lines allowed the combination of the advantages of the wheel and the sledge. If there was no friction the wheel slipped as if the carriage were on a runner, and there was absolutely no pull on the engine.

If friction existed, no matter how little, the wheel turned, so that even this minimum of friction was made to vanish. High wheels he discarded in favour of small ones, which brought the centre of gravity to within a few inches of the surface and rendered an upset almost an impossibility. To these wheels, by a simple but most ingenious contrivance, he applied the principle of ball-bearings, so that friction both at the axle and on the circumference was reduced to a quantity that might almost be disregarded. The smooth motion caused the carriages to last for many years, and at the same time added greatly to the comfort of the travellers. He spent the whole of his available fortune in order to prove this with absolute certainty. He laid down a track of a mile in circumference, and to show the capabilities of his invention he himself drove an engine and a train of ten carriages round and round one hundred and fifty times in an hour.

He then descended and set the engine so that it could drive itself, placing the handle that turns off the steam in connection with the works of a clock. The engine with its train continued to run for ten hours, during which time it traversed what was then considered the phenomenal distance of 1,000 miles. The experiment was watched by thousands of spectators, comprising the elite of society, and deputations from every railway company in the United Kingdom. When Mr. Adams further showed that his plan could be easily adapted to the existing state of things, that the same engines, lines, and carriages, with a few changes, could be made to fulfil every requisite condition of the new system, his audience were en tirely satisfied of the great value of his discovery, and congratulated him and themselves on a discovery which they were sure would revolutionize mankind.

Nor, indeed, were they far wrong, for from that moment dates the era of rapid progress, initiated and pushed on by the matter-of-fact man of business whose face glowed with pride at the success of his efforts. It is somewhat strange that Mr. Adams did not himself open a large manufactory in which his patents could be made and issued. The fact was that all his life he had been gradually working out a giant scheme for the reform of suffering humanity. His ideas were in many cases original, but such as they were he kept them to himself, feeling that he had not the oratorical powers required to carry any large section of the community with him, and that without oratory he could not succeed, in the then existing condition of things, in carrying through any new measure. Besides, he had his business to attend to.

This, while it furnished him with one or two thousand pounds of income, yet required incessant care and an undivided attention. Thus it happened that for half a century he had concealed his views on the regeneration of his race ; but it must not be supposed because he concealed them that he had no opinions. His convictions were strong. He watched contemporary events with the full vigilance and force of an exceptionally clear and penetrating intellect, formed and corrected his views, but bided his time, as one who watches for an opportunity, feeling sure that all things come to him who will wait. And now the opportunity had come. He could not launch out on the new phase of life, and still keep himself in touch with the old. He wished to regene rate mankind. He could not do this as fully as he desired if he still were bound to the cares of business.

Accordingly he started no new manufactory, but con tented himself with selling the rights which his patents conferred to the different railway companies. He had, as we have shown, taken out patents almost in every country of the inhabitable globe. He made a separate bargain with each board of directors. I am not in a position to state the amounts he received, but in no case was it less than £100,000, and, in many cases, three or four times as much. When we remember the number of companies in the globe, and take into consideration the fact that each paid a large sum, either in cash or securities, we can then form some estimate of the enormous wealth that Mr. Adams contrived to amass within the space of one or two years. It was not less than fifty millions sterling ; it may have been much more.

We know, from some notes entered in his diary, that at no time did Mr. Adams receive less than 10 per cent, on his investments. Wealth, he found, is like a rolling avalanche, difficult to call into being from the little ball of snow which forms the nucleus, but when once the ball attains a certain size it rolls onward, en larging rapidly and almost of its own accord, till it attains a gigantic size. With a small capital it is difficult for the poor man to get more than 5 per cent, on his investments ; but the rich man with his millions will, with precisely the same amount of security, get 10 to 20 per cent., and, in some cases, very much more. From the moment Mr. Adams started on his new career of philanthropist he was not in recep tion of a less income than five millions sterling. He was not the first to discover that money makes money.

He made many shrewd speculations, which greatly added to his already unequalled wealth, and though what the precise amount of that wealth was or is no one well can say ; yet, perhaps, I do not exceed the limits of the truth when I affirm that during the last twenty years his income must have averaged eight to twelve millions a year. It is not too much to say that Mr. Adams was the richest man ever heard of in the history of our globe. His wealth was drawn from every province under the sun. Yet it was not the fruit of bloody victories, or guilty conquests ; it was purchase-money given for the possession of certain secrets, which possession largely repaid to the donors the sum they had disbursed. As Mr. Adams was the richest of men, so he has shown himself to be the most en lightened and philanthropic. In this chapter I have shown how his wealth was attained. In the following chapters I shall show what use he made of his riches.

Chapter II

Within a few months the necessary changes had been made in the railway lines, and the trains were running in the metropolis at an average speed of 100 miles an hour, including stoppages, and in the country at 150 to 200 miles. Two hours were sufficient for a journey from London to Edinburgh, half an hour to Birmingham, and one hour to Liverpool. Before a year had passed Mr. Adams's system was adopted, and was an accomplished fact throughout the world. There was an enormous increase of traffic, and a corresponding decrease in the cost of production. Men travelled more and farther, associated more with their fellows of foreign climes, and became rapidly civilized. Ignorance disappeared, hatred also gradually vanished, and was replaced by brotherly kindness. Wealth increased while the cost of production decreased.

As both capital and labour acquired more knowledge, they saw the folly of dissension, and the wisdom of proceeding in union and friendship. Mr. Adams had thrown a stone into the pool, and from the centre the circles went multiplying and enlarging to the farthest limits of the water. He, however, having thrown his stone, did not sit idly down to watch the effects. With characteristic energy and simple-mindedness he went at once to work on what he considered the greatest evil of the age, the condition of the poor. He commenced by printing a pamphlet and sowing it broadcast through out the kingdom. It consisted of only fifty pages, in which, in the simplest English, and in the briefest language, he set forth his views on the great question. Short as the pamphlet was, I have not space here to reproduce it.

It was filled with statistics which he guaranteed to be correct, and which he advanced in proof of the position he took up. I will, however, briefly set forth the main line of argument. He began by making what was then considered to be a most remarkable and revolutionary statement, that all men, however poor and wretched, have the right to live, by which he meant not only to exist, but to exist in circumstances consistent with health of mind and body. Every man has been called into existence not by his own will, but by the will of the society to which he belongs ; and hence that society is responsible at least for this much — that that life which it gave of its own free will, and not at the request of the recipient, shall not become a burden and a misery to the latter. The old motto, that if a man will not work, neither shall he eat, was the out come of a barbarous age, the age of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

A man was made by the circumstances around him, tempered by the heredi tary taints and faculties he had received from his parents. Society, meaning mankind in general, was the father of these circumstances, taints, and faculties, and hence should be held responsible for the effects resulting therefrom. A man was poor, miserable, idle, vicious, criminal, because his associates were so, or because his parents and ancestors, and their parents and ancestors, were cursed with these evil qualities. If he be poor and cannot work, then it is the duty of society to support him free of cost and not looking for any return as long as the man is ill or decrepit. If he can work but cannot find work, it is equally the duty of society to give him work, or to maintain him free of cost until work is found. But, lastly, if he can work and will not work, it is incum bent on society to give him food to eat, and a roof for his head, and to do what else is necessary to keep that man in a reasonable condition of health and strength.

Society should find him work, and insist upon his doing it, not in payment for the com forts it confers, but simply and solely because a condition of idleness is bad. The mind of the idle man necessarily degenerates and becomes vicious. It is the business of society to improve, and not to deteriorate, and for this reason alone should the man be made to work, if he is capable of working. But, whether he work or not, he must be supplied with the minimum of physical comfort which is necessary to keep him in average health. Having set forth the ethics of the great question, Mr. Adams went on to his second point, that from an economical point of view it was the best policy that a community could pursue to give in their ad herence to the gospel which he preached, tbat it was the right of every man to live in health.

As a mat ter of hard bargaining, it was the best thing they could do, not only to believe his gospel, but to act up to it. He calculated, from a mass of statistics, what is the bill the rich man pays in order that the poor man shall continue in misery and disease. It was in vain we attempted to dissociate disease from misery. The two were like the Siamese twins, always together and impossible to separate. If a man went for weeks, months, and years with a starving stomach, insufficiently clad, unwashed from the day he was born, sleeping when and how he could, his body became a hot-bed of disease, a forcing-house where germs, microbes, and bacilli in creased and multiplied with terrible swiftness and fertility ; and as long as the man continued in this state it would be impossible to eradicate the poisonous germs either from him, or from the society of which he was a part.

In vain would it be to be clean, virtuous, and sanitary in the high places ; the rich and the well-to-do might strive to purify themselves, but as long as they left the wretched in their misery and disease, so long would the germs, driven out by the cleanliness and sanitation of the middle and upper classes, find a ground for recuperating their numbers and vitality in the bodies of the poor, whence they would be perpetually sallying forth to carry the war once more into the homes and houses of the healthy and the happy. By all means let the prosperous set their houses in order, study the laws of health, wash, dress, eat, and drink in obedience to these laws; let them attend to sanitation, and have everything around them scrupulously neat and clean. Let the doctors and men of science study disease in its every aspect, let them trace effect back to cause ; let them study the natural history of the bacillus — how it is born, how it lives, and how it dies.

All these things are good ; but unless the seat of the disease be attacked, unless the recruiting ground, whither the enemy, when defeated, can retire and accumulate fresh force, be invaded and over-run, it will be impossible to prevent their periodical return. The health of the rich man is dependent on the health of the poor man. The former cannot entirely dissociate himself from the latter. As master and servant, employer and labourer, in the house, the streets, the country, in the mill, the railway-carriage, the steamer, the hotel, in every act of buying and selling, producing and consuming, all classes are perpetually running together, breathing the same air, touching the same things, drinking the same liquids, eating the same viands, wearing the same kinds of cloth ; and, if any one class be tainted with disease, it is impossible but that every other class shall become more or less tainted and corrupt.

However much they may purify themselves, tainted and corrupt they will remain, to a greater or less degree, as long as the source from which the taint arises be permitted to remain. The average death-rate might be fixed at 20 per thousand for Great Britain. If death were only caused by accident, or from purely natural causes, such as old age or hereditary tendency, this death rate would be halved. In other words, 10 per thou sand, or more than a quarter of a million people every year died from preventible causes. Apart from the sorrow and desolation caused by these deaths, the amount of waste in capital, and physical and mental power was simply appalling. This was the disease bill for the nation. Now turn to individuals. Each man was subject, on an average, to at least three severe maladies during his life, which, as an effect, greatly shortened the length of that life, greatly reduced the amount of happiness and strength, prevented the individual from working for many months, caused a waste of capital — first, by his support during his compulsory term of idleness, and secondly, by causing a highly-educated set of men to give their time and abilities to the task of curing him — and, at the same time, caused him to be a vehicle of disease to his friends and associates.

There were very few diseases which could not be entirely eradicated in a few years, if the breeding ground of the bacilli which caused them were once purged and made clean. As long as this was not done, an army of doctors was necessary to attack the effect — a vain contest ; for however often they renewed the combat, however skilfully they fought, they were bound to be defeated as long as the enemy had a secure place of retreat. The money which went to support this army was another item in the bill which the rich man paid in order to have the luxury of keeping the poor man in disease and wretchedness. What this amounts to it was impossible to calculate ; but, counting fees and the cost of medicines, patent and otherwise, it was certainly not less than twenty millions a year. In summing up the cost of the disease which was communicated to the upper classes by the lower, Mr. Adams computed that, at the lowest, each man pays i'l a year, and is curtailed three years of his life, for no other reason save that his brother the poor man is starved and lives in squalor and misery.

The cost of charity and the amount paid in obedience to the poor-law were two more items in the bill. If no man however poor suffered any longer from hunger, and if every man was healthfully housed at night, the reason for giving charity or paying poor-taxes disappeared with the wretchedness they were intended to relieve. At that time large funds were squandered under these two heads ; but as they were spent upon no fixed principle which should go to the root of the matter, they were almost worse than useless. The noble-hearted poor shrank from begging or presenting themselves at the work house. They felt, and felt rightly, that they would lose their self-respect if they were to accept relief grudgingly given, or given as a favour as a bone is thrown to a dog. These people endured any extent of misery rather than make such application.

They starved in silence, preferring this to the chance of subjecting themselves to rebuff and insolence. As a consequence, their bodies being unhealthy became a rich bed for the cultivation and propagation of the germs of disease. On the other hand, the base hearted were rendered even baser by private and public eleemosynary action. They boldly and un blushingly begged, dressed themselves in rags, made a boast of their dirt, gloried in their sores and infirmi ties, deliberately fostered them in order to make a larger gain, starved their children, and then dragged them about in order to excite the readier compassion, shirked work under every pretext, and altogether lived an idle, dissolute life, bad for themselves and bad for their children, extremely bad for the really deserving poor from whose real wretchedness public attention was thus diverted, and worst of all for the rich who paid the alms, yet, far from deriving any good from their gifts, were actually punished by having the dunghill below them enlarged and added to.