cted, but for
which they never paid him a shilling of royalty. These men of gigantic
fortunes have owed much--we might almost say everything--to the ruined
projector of "the little mill at Fontley." Their wealth has enriched
many families of the older aristocracy, and has been the foundation of
several modern peerages. Yet Henry Cort, the rock from which they were
hewn, is already all but forgotten; and his surviving children, now
aged and infirm, are dependent for their support upon the slender
pittance wrung by repeated entreaty and expostulation from the state.

The career of Richard Crawshay, the first of the great ironmasters who
had the sense to appreciate and adopt the methods of manufacturing iron
invented by Henry Cort, is a not unfitting commentary on the sad
history we have thus briefly described. It shows how, as respects mere
money-making, shrewdness is more potent than invention, and business
faculty than manufacturing skill. Richard Crawshay was born at
Normanton near Leeds, the son of a small Yorkshire farmer. When a
youth, he worked on his father's farm, and looked forward to occupying
the same condition in life; but a difference with his father unsettled
his mind, and at the age of fifteen he determined to leave his home,
and seek his fortune elsewhere. Like most unsettled and enterprising
lads, he first made for London, riding to town on a pony of his own,
which, with the clothes on his back, formed his entire fortune. It
took him a fortnight to make the journey, in consequence of the badness
of the roads. Arrived in London, he sold his pony for fifteen pounds,
and the money kept him until he succeeded in finding employment. He
was so fortunate as to be taken upon trial by a Mr. Bicklewith, who
kept an ironmonger's shop in York Yard, Upper Thames Street; and his
first duty there was to clean out the office, put the stools and desks
in order for the other clerks, run errands, and act as porter when
occasion required. Young Crawshay was very attentive, industrious, and
shrewd; and became known in the office as "The Yorkshire Boy." Chiefly
because of his "cuteness," his master appointed him to the department
of selling flat irons. The London washerwomen of that day were very
sharp and not very honest, and it used to be said of them that where
they bought one flat iron they generally contrived to steal two. Mr.
Bicklewith thought he could not do better than set the Yorkshireman to
watch the w