BLUNDERS THAT HAVE MADE FORTUNES.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 297, 4 June 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

BLUNDERS THAT HAVE MADE FORTUNES.

Somewhere about the autumn of 1856 a man was in Boaroh of a particular wool warehouse, (situated in a certain street iii the City of London. He hid forgotten the number, and, not, being familiar with the exterior of the building in question, he was somewhat puzzled. However, he •' spotted " a likely-looking place and entered ; but finding it to bo a silk warehouse instead of the woollen emporium ho was looking for, he apologised and turned to leave.

At that instant his keen gaze lighted upon a pile of rubbish which strongly attracted his attention.. He had never seen anything like it before. He inquired what it was, and was told that it was waste silk.

" Whit do you do witli it 1" ho asked. " Sell it for rubbish," was the reply ; " it is impossiblo to do anythiug else with it."

The visitor felt it, polced his nose into it, and pulled it about in a manner that astonished the London warehousemen.

It was neither agreeable to tbo feel, the smell, nor the touch, but was simply a mass of knotty, dirty, impure stuff, full of broken bits of stick, dried leaves, dead silkworms, and pierced cocoons. Nevertheless, in the end an offer of a halfpenny a pound was nude for the " rubbish," and promptly accepted, the vendor being naturally delighted to get rid of it on such advantageous terms.

Just an ordinary, everyday, commonplace blunder, such as we have most nf us mtde more than once in our lives —the mistaking of one place for another. But it was a mistake that put 20 millions of pounds sterling into the pockets of the man who committed it For the blunderer was none other than he who became afterwards known to fame as Sir S. Cuu-liffe-Lister, merchant prince and millowner ; and from that evil-smelling agglomeration of eilk-wastc was evolved, after 10 years of patient experimenting and expenditure of more than £350,000, a new and beautiful fabric, known to all the world to-day by tho name of plush. Tin? late Mr Winans's enormous fortune was made as a railway contractor, and he entered into that business through beiug pitched out of a sieigh botwecn Mokcow and St. Petersburg, the journey itself beiug undertaken in conscqucuce of a wrongly-deciphered telegram. " Beastly roads !" he exclaimed to a high Court oilicial on his arrival at the capital. " Why on earth don't you build a railway between here and Moscow P" " Why, indeed !" thoughtfully responded the Emperor Nicholas, who had chanced to overhear the remark. Three months later Russia's first great trunk line was in process of construction, Winans and his brother being tho contractors ; and as they practically bad a free hand from the Czar, they naturully turned tho opportunity to good account. One of the biggest fortunes ever recorded at Somerset llouso was mado by another railway Mr Thomas Brassoy. In his early lifp he earned his living as a working engineer, and when the Liverpool and Manchester railway was in process of construction ho applied for work in that department. Through the

blunder of a foreman sranger ho was Bot to work us a navvy. He said nothing: at the time, deeming it useless, but started shovelling with the rest. Ho was at once struck with the terrible waste involved in letting out the work of construction to a whole host of small contractors. One man, or at most two or three, he reflected, could do the work better, cheaper, and more expeditiouly. Thou oamo the startling thought : " Why should not the one man bo me ?" A few years passed by, and Tom Brassey was at tho head of a great labour army, comprising dozons of battalions of navvies, and engaged in building the railways not only of England and Scotland, but of Prance, Germatfy and Belgium as well. And all because a foreman mistook a akillod for an unskilled workman.

The highest-paid choir-singer in the world, Mhe Clementina do Vere, of Paxton Church, New York, who receives £9OO a year, owes her "job" to an inopportune " nap." She was earning her living as a music teacher, and one evoning, while- journeying to keep an appointment with a pupil at Englewood. a village in New Jersey, sho fell asleep in the train, and was carried some distance beyond her destination. This mishap necessitated a wait of three quarters of an hour at a lonely wayside station, and to while away tho time she commenced to sing portions of Haydn's " Creation." Another belated passenger, the Rev. John Sturges, then pastor of the church in question, recognised tho marvellous strength and purity of the singer's voice, and asked her name and address. Not long after sho was permanently installed as chief solo singer in Now York's most fashionable place of worship. Ono of the principal onuses of the prospsrity of the Staffordshire pottery manufacture was tho discovery of a cheap durable glaze. This was entirely duo to the blunder of a servant girl employed at Stanley Farm, near Burslem. She was engaged one day in heating a solution of common salt, to be used in curing pork, and during her temporary absence the liquid boiled over. The result was that the strong brine, acting on the almost red-hot surface of the unglazed cooking vessel, produced a vitreous coating of enamel, which did not peel off when cold, and which experiment proved to be impervious to water.

Tho discovery brought neither profit nor honour to the poor girl—only a severe scolding. But it created what was practicully a new industry, provided permanent employment to tens of thousands of artisans, and put millions sterling into the pockets of the master potters. Samuel Fox, tho inventor of " Paragon " frame for umbrellas, in which the ribs are made hollow instead of solid, was led to adopt the device throught an injury to his right arm, causing him to feel acutely the discomfort of carrying tho heavy, clumsy ''gamps" then in vogue. Ho realised an immense fortune, and left behind him £170,000. finally, the phonograph, the invention which more than any other brought fame and fortune to Edison, came into being through the pricking of a finger. "I was singing," says Mr Edison, " into the mouthpiece of a telephone when tho vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger. That set me thinking If I could record the actions of the point, and send a needle over the same surface afterwards, I saw no reason way the thing would not talk. I tried the experiment first on a strip of telegraph paper, and found that the point made an alphabet I shouted the words 'Halloo! halloo !' into the mouthpiece, ran the piper back over the steel point, and heard a faint ' Halloo ! halloo !' in return. I determined then to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistants instructions, telling them what I had discovered. They laughed at me. That is the whole story."