Leaders of Modern Industry by G. Barnett Smith: Prefatory Note
PREFATORY NOTE.
IT is almost a truism to say that the industries of Great Britain are the backbone of the country. Yet we are so accustomed to their operations and developments, that we are sometimes in danger of losing sight of the fact. Napoleon taunted us with being a nation of shopkeepers; but it is surely better to add to the prosperity and happiness of a nation, and to fill the seas with the peaceful argosies of commerce, than it is to devastate continents by the ravages of war. We are proud, then, that the England of Shakespeare, of Bacon, and of Milton, is also the England of representative men in science, trade, and commerce.
The career of various pioneers of industry whose names have become household words I have endeavoured to trace in the following pages. The materials for these biographies have been gathered from numerous sources, which I have endeavoured faithfully to indicate. The reader will, I believe, find a great amount of interesting information condensed into a small compass, and I may add that, wherever possible, I have sought to avoid the use of purely technical terms. The lives of these great industrial leaders should act as a stimulus, especially to the new generation, and should make them resolve that England's scientific and commercial supremacy shall never be wrested from her.
G. B. S. Bournemouth, April, 1891.
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