patent for the cotton-gin. In his memorial he presented the history of
the struggles he had been forced to make in defence of his rights,
observing that he had been unable to obtain any decision on the merits
of his claim until thirteen years of his patent had expired. He states
also that his invention had been a source of opulence to thousands of
the citizens of the United States; that as a labor-saving machine it
would enable one man to perform the work of a thousand men, and that it
furnished to the whole family of mankind, at a very cheap rate, the most
essential material for their clothing. Although so great advantages had
already been experienced, and the prospect of future benefits was so
promising, still, many of those whose interest had been most promoted
and the value of whose property had been most enhanced by this
invention, had obstinately persisted in refusing to make any
compensation to the inventor. From the State in which he had first made,
and where, he had first introduced his machine, and which had derived
the most signal benefits--Georgia--he had received nothing; and from no
State had he received the amount of half a cent per pound on the cotton
cleaned with his machines in one year. Estimating the value of the labor
of one man at twenty cents a day, the whole amount which had been
received by him for his invention was not equal to the value of the
labor saved in one hour by his machines then in use in the United
States. He continues:
"It is objected that if the patentee succeeds in procuring the
renewal of his patent he will be too rich. There is no probability
that the patentee, if the term of his patent were extended for
twenty years, would ever obtain for his invention one-half as much
as many an individual will gain by the use of it. Up to the present
time the whole amount of what he had acquired from this source,
after deducting his expenses, does not exceed one-half the sum which
a single individual has gained by the use of the machine in one
year. It is true that considerable sums have been obtained from some
of the States where the machine is used, but no small portion of
these sums has been expended in prosecuting his claim in a State
where nothing has been obtained, and where his machine has been used
to the greatest advantage."
Notwithstanding these cogent arguments, the application was rejected by
the courts. Some liberal-minded and enlightened men from the cotton
districts favored the petition, but a majority of the members from that
part of the Union were warmly opposed to granting it. In a letter to
Robert Fulton, Whitney says:
"The difficulties with which I have to contend have originated,
principally, in the want of a disposition in mankind to do justice.
My invention was new and distinct from every other; it stood alone.
It was not interwoven with anything before known; and it can seldom
happen that an invention or improvement is so strongly marked and
can be so clearly and specifically identified; and I have always
believed that I should have no difficulty in causing my right to be
respected, if it had been less valuable, and been used only by a
small portion of the community. But the use of this machine being
immensely profitable to almost every planter in the cotton
districts, all were interested in trespassing upon the patent-right,
and each kept the other in countenance. Demagogues made themselves
popular by misrepresentations and unfounded clamors, both against
the right and against the law made for its protection. Hence there
arose associations and combinations to oppose both. At one time, but
few men in Georgia dared to come into court and testify to the most
simple facts within their knowledge, relative to the use of the
machine. In one instance I had great difficulty in proving that the
machine had been used in Georgia, although at the same moment there
were three separate sets of this machinery in motion within fifty
yards of the building in which the court sat, and all so near that
the rattling of the wheels was distinctly heard on the steps of the
court-house."
Such perseverance, patience, and uncommon skill were not, however, to go
wholly unrewarded. Whitney's factory of arms in New Haven made money for
him, and the Southern States were not all guilty of ingratitude.
Moreover, in his private life he was extremely fortunate. In January,
1817, he married Henrietta Edwards, the youngest daughter of Judge
Pierpont Edwards, of Connecticut. A son and three daughters contributed
to the sunshine of the close of a somewhat stormy and eventful life. His
last years were his happiest. He found prosperity and honor in New
Haven, where he died on January 8, 1825, after a tedious illness.
In person Whitney was of more than usual height, with much dignity of
manner and an open, pleasant face. Among his particular friends no man
was more esteemed. Some of the earliest of his intimate associates were
among the latest. His sense of honor was high, and his feeling of
resentment and indignation under injustice correspondingly strong. He
could, however, be cool when his opponents were hot, and his strong
sense of the injuries he had suffered did not impair the natural
serenity of his temper. The value of his famous invention has so
steadily grown that its money importance to this country can scarcely be
estimated in figures. His tomb in New Haven is after a model of that of
Scipio, at Rome, and bears the following inscription:
ELI WHITNEY,
THE INVENTOR OF THE COTTON-GIN.
OF USEFUL SCIENCE AND ARTS, THE EFFICIENT PATRON
AND IMPROVER.
IN THE SOCIAL RELATIONS OF LIFE, A MODEL OF EXCELLENCE.
WHILE PRIVATE AFFECTION WEEPS AT HIS TOMB, HIS
COUNTRY HONORS HIS MEMORY.
BORN DEC. 8, 1765. DIED JAN. 8, 1825.
IV
ELIAS HOWE.
[Illustration: Elias Howe.]
In looking over the history of great inventions it is remarkable how
uniformly those discoveries that helped mankind most have been derided,
abused, and opposed by the very classes which in the end they were
destined to bless. Nearly every great invention has had literally to be
forced into popular acceptance. The bowmen of the Middle Ages resisted
the introduction of the musket; the sedan-chair carriers would not allow
hackney carriages to be used; the stagecoach lines attempted by all
possible devices to block the advance of the railway. When, in 1707, Dr.
Papin showed his first rude conception of a steamboat, it was seized by
the boatmen, who feared that it would deprive them of a living. Kay was
mobbed in Lancashire when he tried to introduce his fly-shuttle;
Hargreaves had his spinning-frame destroyed by a Blackburn mob; Crampton
had to hide his spinning-mule in a lumber-room for fear of a similar
fate; Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-frame, was denounced as
the enemy of the working-classes and his mill destroyed; Jacquard
narrowly escaped being thrown into the river Rhone by a crowd of furious
weavers when his new loom was first put into operation; Cartwright had
to abandon his power-loom for years because of the bitter animosity of
the weavers toward it. Riots were organized in Nottingham against the
use of the stocking-loom.
It is not therefore surprising that the greatest labor-saving machine of
domestic life, the sewing-machine, should have been received with
anything but thanks. Howe was abused, ridiculed, and denounced as the
enemy of man, and especially of poor sewing-women, the very class whose
toil he has done so much to lighten. Curses instead of blessings were
showered upon him during the first years that followed the successful
working of his wonderful machine. Fortunately for the inventor, the age
of persecution had almost passed, and Howe lived to receive the rewards
he so fully deserved.
Elias Howe, Jr., was born in Spencer, Mass., in 1819. His father was a
farmer and miller, and the eight children of the family, as was common
with all poor people of the time, were early taught to do light work of
one kind or another. When Elias was six years old he was set with his
brothers and sisters at sticking wire teeth through the leather straps
used for cotton-cards. When older he helped his father in the mill, and
in summer picked up a little book knowledge at the district school. As a
boy he was frail in constitution, and he was slightly lame. When eleven
years old he attempted farm labor for a neighbor, but, was not strong
enough for it and returned to his father's mill, where he remained
until he was sixteen. It was here that he first began to like machinery.
A friend who had visited Lowell gave him such an account of that
bustling city and its big mills that young Howe, becoming dissatisfied,
obtained his father's consent to leave, and found employment in one of
the Lowell cotton-mills. The financial crash of 1837 stopped the looms,
and Howe obtained a place in a Cambridge machine-shop in which his
cousin, Nathaniel P. Banks, afterward Governor of Massachusetts, also
worked. Howe's first job happened to be upon a new hemp-carding machine
of Treadwell.
At the age of twenty-one Howe married and moved to Boston, finding
employment in the machine-shop of Ari Davis. He is described as being a
capital workman, more full of resources than of plodding industry,
however, and rather apt to spend more time in suggesting a better way of
doing a job than in following instructions. With such a disposition, and
inasmuch as his suggestions were not considered of value, he had rather
a hard time of it. Three children were born to the young couple. As
Howe's earnings were slight and his health none of the best, his wife
tried to add to the family income, and at evening, when Howe lay
exhausted upon the bed after his day's work, the young mother patiently
sewed. Her toil was to some purpose. With his natural bent for
mechanics, Howe could not be a silent witness of this incessant and
poorly paid labor without becoming interested in affording aid.
Moreover, he was constantly employed upon new spinning and weaving
machines for doing work that for thousands of years had been done
painfully and slowly by hand. The possibility of sewing by machinery had
often been spoken of before that day, but the problem seemed to present
insuperable difficulties.
Elias Howe had, as we know, peculiar fitness for such work. He had seen
much of inventors and inventions, and knew something of the dangers and
disappointments in store for him. In the intervals between important
jobs at the shop he nursed the idea of a sewing-machine, keeping his own
counsel. In his first rude attempt it appeared to him, that
machine-sewing could only be accomplished with very coarse thread or
string; fine thread would not stand the strain. For his first machine he
made a needle pointed at both ends, with an eye in the middle; it was
arranged to work up and down, carrying the thread through at each
thrust. It was only after more than a year's work upon this device that
he decided it would not do. This first attempt was a sort of imitation
of sewing by hand, the machine following more or less the movements of
the hand. Finally, after repeated failures, it became plain to him that
something radically different was needed, and that there must be another
stitch, and perhaps another needle or half a dozen needles, in such a
machine. He then conceived the idea of using two threads, and making the
stitch by means of a shuttle and a curved needle with the eye near the
point. This was the real solution of the problem. In October, 1844, he
made a rough model of his first sewing-machine, all of wood and wire,
and found that it would actually sew.
In one of the earliest accounts of the invention it is thus described:
"He used a needle and a shuttle of novel construction, and combined them
with holding surfaces, feed mechanism, and other devices as they had
never before been brought together in one machine.... One of the
principal features of Mr. Howe's invention is the combination of a
grooved needle having an eye near its point, and vibrating in the
direction of its length, with a side-pointed shuttle for effecting a
locked stitch, and forming, with the threads, one on each side of the
cloth, a firm and lasting seam not easily ripped."
Meanwhile Howe had given up work as a machinist and had moved to his
father's house in Cambridge, where the elder Howe had a shop for the
cutting of palm-leaf used in the manufacture of hats. Here Elias and his
little family lived, and in the garret the inventor put up a lathe upon
which he made the parts of his sewing-machine. To provide for his family
he did such odd jobs as he could find; but it was hard work to get
bread, to say nothing of butter, and to make matters worse his father
lost his shop by fire. Elias knew that his sewing-machine would work,
but he had no money wherewith to buy the materials for a machine of
steel and iron, and without such a machine he could not hope to interest
capital in it. He needed at least $500 with which to prove the value of
his great invention.
Fortune threw in his way a coal and wood dealer of Cambridge, named
Fisher, who had some money. Fisher liked the invention and agreed to
board Howe and his family, to give Howe a workshop in his house, and to
advance the $500 necessary for the construction of a first machine. In
return he was to become a half owner in the patent should Howe succeed
in obtaining one. In December, 1844, Howe accordingly moved into
Fisher's house, and here the new marvel was brought into the world. All
that winter Howe worked over his device in Fisher's garret, making many
changes as unforeseen difficulties arose. He worked all day, and
sometimes nearly all night, succeeding by April, 1845, in sewing a seam
four yards long with his machine. By the middle of May the machine was
completed, and in July Howe sewed with it the seams of two woollen
suits, one for himself and the other for Fisher; the sewing was so well
done that it promised to outlast the cloth. For many years this machine
was exhibited in a shop in New York. It showed how completely, at really
the first attempt, Howe had mastered the enormous difficulties in his
way. Its chief features are those upon which were founded all the
sewing-machines that followed.
Late in 1845 Howe obtained his first patent and began to take means to
introduce his sewing-machine to the public. He first offered it to the
tailors of Boston, who admitted its usefulness, but assured him that it
would never be adopted, as it would ruin their trade. Other efforts
were equally unsuccessful; the more perfectly the machine did its work,
the more obstinate and determined seemed to be the resistance to it.
Everyone admitted and praised the ingenuity of the invention, but no one
would invest a dollar in it. Fisher became disheartened and withdrew
from the partnership, and Howe and his family moved back into his
father's house.
For a time the poor inventor abandoned his machine and obtained a place
as engineer on a railway, driving a locomotive, until his health
entirely broke down. Forced to turn again to his beloved sewing-machine
for want of anything better to do, Howe decided to send his brother
Amasa to England with a machine. Amasa reached London in October, 1846,
and met a certain William Thomas, to whom he explained the invention.
Thomas was much impressed with its possibilities and offered $1,250 for
the machine and also to engage Elias Howe at $15 a week if he would
enter his business of umbrella and corset maker. This was at least a
livelihood to the latter, and he sailed for England, where for the next
eight months he worked for Thomas, whom he found an uncommonly hard
master. He was indeed so harshly treated that, although his wife and
three children had arrived in London, he threw up his situation. For a
time his condition was a piteous one. He was in a strange country,
without friends or money. For days at a time the little family were
without more than crusts to live upon.
Believing that he could struggle along better alone, Howe sent his
family home with the first few dollars that he could obtain from the
other side and remained in London. There were certain things which
caused him to hope for better times ahead. But such hopes were delusive,
it seems, and after some months of hardship he followed his family to
this country, pawning his model and his patent papers in order to obtain
the necessary money for the passage. As he landed in New York with less
than a dollar in his pocket, he received news that his wife was dying of
consumption in Cambridge. He had no money for travelling by rail, and he
was too feeble to attempt the journey on foot. It took him some days to
obtain the money for his fare to Boston, but he arrived in time to be
present at the death-bed of his wife. Before he could recover from this
blow he had news that the ship by which he had sent home the few
household goods still remaining to him had gone to the bottom.
This was poor Howe's darkest hour. Others had seen the value of the
sewing-machine, and during his absence in England several imitations of
it had been made and sold to great advantage by unscrupulous mechanics,
who had paid no attention to the rights of the inventor. Such machines
were already spoken of as wonders by the newspapers, and were beginning
to be used in several industries. Howe's patent was so strong that it
was not difficult to find money to defend it, once the practical value
of the invention had been well established, and in August, 1850, he
began several suits to make his rights clear. At the same time he moved
to New York, where he began in a small way to manufacture machines in
partnership with a business man named Bliss, who undertook to sell them.
It was not until Howe's rights to the invention had been fully
established, which was done by the decision of Judge Sprague, in 1854,
that the real value of the sewing-machine as a money-making venture
began to be apparent and even then its great importance was so little
realized, even by Bliss, who was in the business and died in 1855, that
Howe was enabled to buy the interest of his heirs for a small sum. It
was during these efforts to introduce the sewing-machine that occurred
what were known as the sewing-machine riots--disturbances of no special
importance, however--fomented by labor leaders in the New York shops in
which cheap clothing was manufactured. Howe's sewing-machine was
denounced as a menace to the thousands of men and women who worked in
these shops, and in several establishments the first Howe machines
introduced were so injured by mischievous persons as to retard the
success of the experiment for nearly a year. Failing to stop their
introduction by such means a public demonstration against them was
organized and for a time threatened such serious trouble that some of
the large shops gave up the use of the machine; but in small
establishments employing but a few workmen they continued to be used and
were soon found to be so indispensable that all opposition faded away.
The patent suits forced upon Howe by a number of infringers were costly
drains upon the inventor, but in the end all other manufacturers were
compelled to pay tribute to him, and in six years his royalties grew
from $300 to more than $200,000 a year. In 1863 his royalties were
estimated at $4,000 a day. At the Paris Exposition of 1867 he was
awarded a gold medal and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
Howe's health, never strong, was so thoroughly broken by the years of
struggle and hardship he met with while trying to introduce his machine
that he never completely recovered. If honors and money were any comfort
to him, his last years must have been happy ones, for his invention made
him famous, and he had been enough of a workingman to recognize the
blessing he had conferred upon millions of women released from the
slavery of the needle; he had answered Hood's "Song of the Shirt." He
died on October 3, 1867, at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Those who knew Howe personally speak of him as rather a handsome man,
with a head somewhat like Franklin's and a reserved, quiet manner. His
bitter struggle against poverty and disease left its impress upon him
even to the last. One trait frequently mentioned was his readiness to
find good points in the thousand and one variations and sometimes
improvements upon his invention. During the years 1858-67, when he died,
there were recorded nearly three hundred patents affecting the
sewing-machine, taken out by other inventors. Howe was always ready to
help along such improvements by advice and often by money. He fought
sturdily for his rights, but once those conceded he was a generous
rival.
V.
SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
[Illustration: Birthplace of S.F.B. Morse, Built 1775.]
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was the eldest son of the Rev. Jedediah
Morse, an eminent New England divine. The Rev. Samuel Finley, D.D.,
second president of the College of New Jersey, Princeton, was his
maternal great-grandfather, after whom he was named. Breese was the
maiden name of his mother. The famous inventor of the telegraph was born
at the foot of Breed's Hill, Charlestown, Mass., April 27, 1791. Dr.
Belknap, of Boston, writing to Postmaster-General Hazard, New York,
says:
"Congratulate the Monmouth judge (Mr. Breese, the grandfather) on the
birth of a grandson. Next Sunday he is to be loaded with names, not
quite so many as the Spanish ambassador who signed the treaty of peace
of 1783, but only four. As to the child, I saw him asleep, so can say
nothing of his eye, or his genius peeping through it. He may have the
sagacity of a Jewish rabbi, or the profundity of a Calvin, or the
sublimity of a Homer for aught I know, but time will bring forth all
things."
Jedediah Morse studied theology under the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Edwards.
Before he began preaching, and while teaching school in New Haven, he
began his "American Geography," which was afterward indentified with his
name. He began his ministry at Norwich, whence he was called back to be
tutor in Yale. His health was inadequate to the work and he went to
Georgia, returning to Charlestown, Mass., as pastor of the First
Congregational Church, on the day that Washington was inaugurated as
President in New York, April 30, 1789. Dr. Eliot, speaking of Jedediah
Morse, said: "What an astonishing impetus that man has!" President
Dwight said: "He is as full of resources as an egg is of meat." Daniel
Webster spoke of him as "always thinking, always writing, always
talking, always acting."
[Illustration: S.F.B. Morse.]