house (in Poland Street, Oxford Street) as Mazzini, and presenting introductions to (Sir) Rowland Hill. On his way north he visited Ebenezer ElUott at Sheffield. Thence in answer to a newspaper advertisement, he passed to Leeds to fulfil an engagement on the 'Leeds Times,' an organ of advanced radicalism, from the editorship of which Robert Nicoll [q. v.] had just retired. In Nov. 1838 Smiles became editor at a salary of 200’'l. a year.
At Leeds Smiles combined with his editorial duties an active share in political agitation in the advanced liberal cause. He was the first secretary of the Leeds 'Household Suffrage Association' for the redistribution and extension of the franchise. At public meetings in the city and its neighbourhood he advocated the anti-corn law movement. He corresponded with Cobden and enthusiastically supported Joseph Hume's abortive candidature for the representation of Leeds at the general election of 1841. While he opposed chartism, he urged the social and intellectual amelioration of the working classes, and interested himself in industrial organisation and the progress of mechanical science. In 1842 he resigned the editorship of the 'Leeds Times.' Devoting himself to popular lecturing and literary haclc work, he prepared guides to America and the colonies, and brought out in 1843, in monthly numbers, 'A History of Ireland and the Irish People under the Government of England,' which was published collectively in 1844.
In June 1840 Smiles had attended the opening of the North Midland railway from Leeds to Derby, and met for the first time George Stephenson. When, at the end of 1845, the Leeds and Thirsk railway was projected. Smiles was appointed assistant secretary. He was closely associated with railway enterprise for the next twenty-one years. The new Thirsk line was opened on 9 July 1849. In the same year Smiles published an essay on 'Railway Property, its Conditions and Prospects,' which ran through two editions. Smiles also acted as secretary of the board which managed the new Leeds central station, into which many companies ran their trains. He was prominent in the negotiations for the amalgamation of the Leeds and Thirsk railway with the North Eastern, which was effected in 1854 and abolished his own office. Thereupon he left Leeds for London on being appointed secretary to the South Eastern railway (11 Nov.). He held the post for twelve years, in the course of which he successfully arranged for the extension of the line from Charing Cross to Cannon Street (1858-9).
Smiles's railway work had not blunted his energies as an advocate, in the press and on the lecture platform, of political and social reform, in agreement with the principles of the Manchester school. In the 'Constitutional,' a Glasgow paper, he urged the transference of private bills to local legislatures. He wrote much in behalf of workmen's benefit societies in the ’Leeds Mercury' and elsewhere, and for a time edited the 'Oddfellows' Magazine.' He championed state education. The formation of public libraries was one of his strenuous interests, and he gave evidence in their favour before a House of Commons committee in 1849, welcoming the permissive Library and Museums Act of the following year. From 1855 Smiles wrote occasionally on industrial subjects to the 'Quarterly Review' ; an article on 'Workmen's Earnings, Strikes, and Savings' was reissued as a pamphlet in 1861. A speech at Huddersfield on the ’Industrial education of foreign and English workmen' was published in 1867.
Smiles was drawn to the study and writing of biography, in which he made his chief reputation, by the sanguine belief that concrete examples of men who had achieved great results by their own efforts best indicated the true direction and goal of social and industrial progress. On the death in 1848 of George Stephenson, with whom he had come into occasional contact at Leeds, he wrote a memoir in 'Eliza Cook's Journal' in 1849, and afterwards persuaded Stephenson's son Robert to allow him to write a full life. The book appeared in June 1857, and was received with enthusiasm ; 2500 copies were sold before September, 7500 within a year. An American reprint appeared at Boston in 1858. An 18th thousand was reached in 1864, and an abridgment came out in 1859. The biography fully maintained its popularity in subsequent years. Fresh work on the same lines soon followed. In 1861-2 he produced 'Lives of the Engineers' (3 vols.); in 1863 'Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers' ; and in 1865 'Lives of Boulton and Watt.' A new edition of the 'Life of George Stephenson' in 1868 contained an account of the son, Robert Stephenson. All these volumes were reissued under the single title of the 'Lives of the Engineers' in 1874 in 5 vols, (popular edit. 1904). Smiles had full access to manuscript sources, and
