the best manager of
works of his day. He entered the service of the Carnegie Steel Company
as a young mechanic at two dollars per day, a perfect copy of Murdoch in
many important respects. Reading Murdoch's history, we have found
ourselves substituting the "captain," a title well earned on the field
in the war for the Union, which he entered as a private. Once he was
offered an interest in the firm, which would have made him one of the
band of young millionaires. His reply was, "Thank you, don't want to
have anything to do with business. These works (Steel rail mills,
Pittsburg) give me enough to think of. You just give me a 'thundering
salary.'" "All right, Captain, the salary of the president of the United
States is yours." Also like Murdoch, he was an inventor. His principal
invention, recently sustained by the Supreme Court, would easily yield
from those who appropriated it and refused payment, at least five
millions of dollars in royalties. Captain Jones was born in Pennsylvania
of Welsh parents. Murdoch won promotion at last, and was first
superintendent of one of the special departments, and later had general
supervision of the mechanical department, becoming "the right hand man"
of the firm. The young partners dealt generously with him, and treated
him with reverence and affection to the end. He died in his eighty-fifth
year. Captain Jones was injured at the works and passed away just as a
touch of age came upon him, as many war veterans did. Fortunate is the
firm that discovers a William Murdoch or a William Jones, and gives him
swing to do the work of an original in his own way.

[3] Since the above was put in type I learn that in his forthcoming book
upon "The Development of the Locomotive," which promises to become the
standard, Mr. Angus Sinclair says: "The first suggestion of a railroad
for goods transportation appears to have been made before The Literary
and Philosophical Society of Newcastle by a Mr Thomas, of Denton, in
February, 1800. Two years later Richard Edgeworth, father of the famous
novelist, suggested that it should be extended for the carrying of
passengers." There is no record of Thomas's suggestion, as far as we
know, but only tradition. Even if made, however, it seems to have lain
dead. Edgeworth evidently knew nothing of it, and as it was his letter
to Watt which seems first to have attracted public attention, the
passage is allowed to stand as written.

CHAPTER VII

SECOND PATE