[Illustration: _Works at Elizabeth, N.J. The Singer Manufacturing
Company_]
Genius Rewarded;
OR,
The Story of the Sewing Machine
[Illustration: The Story of the Sewing Machine]
NEW YORK:
JOHN J. CAULON, PRINTER, NO. 20 VESEY STREET.
COPYRIGHT, 1880, BY JOHN SCOTT.
THE
STORY OF THE SEWING MACHINE.
CHAPTER I.
THE SEWING MACHINE’S RIVALS.
“With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch—
Would that its tone could reach the Rich!—
She sang the ‘Song of the Shirt.’”
[Illustration:
THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.
]
In a back street of Boston two men sat one sultry August midnight upon a
pile of boards. They were penniless and friendless; they were smarting
under failure and keen and bitter disappointment. Actual want stared
them in the face and made them desperate. And yet, upon the outcome of
that midnight scene mighty issues hung quivering. All the world had a
stake in the thoughts of those poor, friendless, desperate men. One of
them had heard from across the seas the “Song of the Shirt;” he had
heard its sad echo even from the more prosperous homes of our own land,
and its dismal chords had awakened in his breast a burning desire to
still its horrible refrain, and carry relief and help to the weary
seamstress. Golden visions, too, had floated before him of the princely
reward the world would offer for such service to its great sisterhood.
With great difficulty he had persuaded two other men to join him. One
furnished the scanty capital of _forty dollars_; the other gave the use
of his machine shop, workmen and tools. Day and night he had worked to
produce a SEWING MACHINE, sleeping but three or four hours out of the
twenty-four, and eating, generally, but once a day, as he knew the
machine must be built for forty dollars or not be built at all. The hour
of trial had come that very day. The machine had been completed and put
together, and _did not work_! One by one the workmen left him in
disgust, but still the inventor clung tenaciously to his purpose, and
refused to yield to defeat. All were gone but this companion, who held
the lamp while the inventor worked. Loss of sleep, insufficient food,
and incessant work and anxiety made him weak and nervous, and he could
not get tight stitches. Sick at heart, the task was abandoned at last,
and at midnight the worn and wearied men turned their backs upon their
golden dreams and started for their lodgings. On their way they sat down
upon the pile of boards, and were gloomily discussing the sad fate of
the project, when his companion mentioned to the inventor that “the
loose loops of thread were all upon the upper side of the cloth.”
Instantly it flashed upon the inventor what the trouble was, and back
through the night the men trudged to the shop, re-lighted the lamp,
tightened a little tension screw, and in a few minutes ISAAC MERRITT
SINGER had produced the first Sewing Machine that ever was practically
successful.
[Illustration:
THE CRITICAL MOMENT.
]
It _was_ a great stake which the world had in the gloomy midnight
reflections of two desperately poor men, seated upon that pile of
boards, thirty years ago! Rarely has so much hung upon the thoughts of
two humble men. That midnight scene settled the question whether woman
should have a tireless helper in her weary task of stitching—whether or
not the world should thenceforward have a machine for sewing. Out of
that lumber-pile conference came the Sewing Machine and all the mighty
interests involved in its manufacture, sale, and use. It was the answer
to the “Song of the Shirt;” its dolorous tone had reached—not the
rich—but a poor, struggling mechanic; and his invention has done for
woman and for the home-circle what no other invention ever has done. We
look back upon James Watt, sitting before the open fireplace, watching
the pot lid rise and fall with the then undiscovered power of steam, as
the scene whence issued all the blessings which followed the
Steam-engine. We think of Franklin flying his storm-riding kite and
drawing down the lightning, as thereby bringing to us all the civilizing
influences of the Telegraph. But neither of these men, if they could
have looked down the dim vista of the coming centuries, and foreseen
what their inventions should do for humanity, could have contemplated
results more surprising than those which Isaac Merritt Singer lived to
see crowning the invention which hung trembling upon the results of that
talk upon that pile of boards!
The Telegraph and Steam-engine live daily in the broad blaze of public
view; the Sewing Machine modestly hides itself away beneath three
million of the nine million roofs of America. They are public blessings;
the Sewing Machine is a purely domestic one. It earns a woman’s dime;
they earn a railroad king’s millions. They deal with the great arteries
of trade and commerce; it deals with the fireside circle. The Telegraph
and Steam-engine proudly boast their alliance and familiarity with
Capital; the Sewing Machine contentedly takes up its humble quarters
mainly with people who never drew a dividend in all their lives. Capital
and wealth must run the former; slender and humble feet most often run
the latter. The Locomotive puffs defiantly in nearly every legislative
hall; the Sewing Machine sings its tireless tune to ears that would not
know what “_lobby_” meant. The former haughtily issues its dictum to
primaries and conventions; the latter could not control a solitary vote.
Steam and the Telegraph deal mainly with creation’s lord; the Sewing
Machine with his lowlier sister.
A certain class of people are apt to underrate domestic affairs, simply
because they are domestic, forgetting that the real progress of the
world is always made beneath the shelter of the homestead roof, not
under the resounding domes of Senate Chambers; and that a Nation’s
surest hope for greatness and for safety is found in the character of
its _homes_, rather than in the shrewdness of its merchants or the skill
of its artisans. It is the atmosphere of the boy’s early home which
clings like an indestructible and exhaustless aroma to his entire life;
it is the influence and memory of what his home and his mother were
which mould his after life, control his habits of thought, and make him
a power for good or for evil in the world. And for the most part he
remains unconscious of any such influence. He has imbibed it with his
daily sustenance and inhaled it with every breath of his native air,
until he involuntarily weighs everything, measures all affairs, and
judges all men according to the standards and traditions that prevailed
in the now hallowed precincts of his early home.
Whatever, therefore, brings added comfort to the matron and the maiden;
whatever saves the busy housewife’s time and increases her opportunities
for culture; whatever lifts any of the heavy household burdens, and
disenthralls to any degree the WOMEN of our day, contributes an
ever-augmenting influence towards the highest and best progress of the
world.
[Illustration:
“HAPPY HOMES”—EFFECTS OF THE ANSWER.
]
And so the importance of the Sewing Machine in its influence upon the
home; in the countless hours it has added to woman’s leisure for rest
and refinement; in the increase of time and opportunity for that early
training of children, for lack of which so many pitiful wrecks are
strewed along the shores of life; in the numberless avenues it has
opened for female labor; and in the comforts it has brought within the
reach of all, which once could be attained only by the wealthy few,
becomes so apparent that few, if any, will dispute its right to stand at
least beside its powerful rivals, the Steam-engine and Telegraph.