About the year 1800 was born in New Haven, Connecticut, Charles
Goodyear. He received only a public school education, and when
twenty-one years of age joined his father in the hardware trade in the
city of Philadelphia; but in the financial troubles of 1830, the firm
went under, and the next three years was spent in looking for a
life-work.
Passing a store in the city of New York, his eye was attracted by the
words "INDIA RUBBER FOR SALE." Having heard much of this new article of
late, he purchased a life-preserver which he carried home and so
materially improved, in conception, that he was induced to return to the
store for the purpose of explaining his ideas. At the store he was now
told of the great discouragements with which the rubber trade was
contending, the merchants giving this as a reason for not taking to his
improvement. The rubber, as then made, would become as hard as flint
during cold weather, and if exposed to heat would melt and decay.
Returning to Philadelphia, Goodyear commenced experiments, trying to
discover the secret of how to remedy this trouble. He was very poor, and
to support his family he 'cobbled' for his neighbors. He tried every
experiment within his grasp of intellect, but met only with failure. His
friends, who had helped him, left him one by one; his failures
continued, but he would not give up. The last piece of furniture was
sold, and his family moved into the country, taking up cheap lodgings.
Finally he found a druggist who agreed to furnish him what he needed
from his store to use in his investigations and purchasing small
quantities of rubber at a time he continued his experiments. At length,
after three years he discovered that the adhesiveness of the rubber
could be obviated by dipping it in a preparation of nitric acid. But
this only affected the exterior, and he was once more plunged into the
worst of poverty. It was generally agreed that the man who would
proceed further, in a cause of this sort, was fairly deserving of all
the distress brought on himself, and justly debarred the sympathy of
others. His suffering during the years that followed is simply
incredible. The prejudice against him was intense. Everybody
characterized him as a fool, and no one would help him. A witness
afterwards testified in a trial: "They had sickness in the family; I was
often in and found them very poor and destitute, for both food and fuel.
They had none, nor had they anything to buy any with. This was before
they boarded with us, and while they were keeping house. They told me
they had no money with which to buy bread from one day to another. They
did not know how they should get it. The children said they did not know
what they should do for food. They dug their potatoes before they were
half-grown, for the sake of having something to eat. Their son Charles,
eight years old, used to say that they ought to be thankful for the
potatoes, for they did not know what they should do without them. We
used to furnish them with milk, and they wished us to take furniture and
bed-clothes in payment, rather than not pay for it. At one time they had
nothing to eat, and a barrel of flour was unexpectedly sent them."
It is a record of destitution, imprisonment for debt, and suffering from
this time until 1841, when he began to see day-light. By accident he one
day allowed a piece of rubber to drop on the stove, when, lo! he had
found the secret, heat was the thing needed. Six years had he struggled
on through untold hardships, and now he seemed crowned with success. He
had found the desired solution of the problem, but he made a fatal
mistake here. Instead of settling down and manufacturing his discovery,
which would have brought him a fortune, he sold rights and kept on
experimenting. By certain legal informalities he secured no benefit
whatever from his patent in France and he was cheated entirely out of it
in England. Although he lived to see large factories for its
manufacture spring up in both America and Europe, employing 60,000
operatives, still he died in 1860 at the age of seventy-one, leaving his
family unprovided for. The cause was not lack of perseverance nor
energy, but the sole cause was lack of judgment in business matters.
The vulcanized rubber trade is one of the greatest industries of the
world to-day, amounting to millions of dollars annually. The usefulness
of India rubber is thus described in the _North American Review_: "Some
of our readers have been out on the picket-line during the war. They
know what it is to stand motionless in a wet and miry rifle-pit in the
chilly rain of a southern winter's night. Protected by India rubber
boots, blanket and cap, the picket-man is in comparative comfort; a duty
which, without that protection, would make him a cowering and shivering
wretch, and plant in his bones a latent rheumatism, to be the torment of
his old age. Goodyear's India rubber enables him to come in from his pit
as dry as when he went into it, and he comes in to lie down with an
India rubber blanket between him and the damp earth. If he is wounded it
is an India-rubber stretcher or an ambulance, provided with India-rubber
springs, that gives him least pain on his way to the hospital, where, if
his wound is serious, a water-bed of India rubber gives ease to his
mangled frame, and enables him to endure the wearing tedium of an
unchanged posture. Bandages and supporters of India rubber avail him
much when first he begins to hobble about his ward. A piece of India
rubber at the end of his crutch lessens the jar and the noise of his
motions, and a cushion of India rubber is comfortable to his arm-pit.
The springs which close the hospital door, the bands which excludes the
drafts from doors and windows, his pocket-comb and cup and thimble are
of the same material. From jars hermetically closed with India rubber he
receives the fresh fruit that is so exquisitely delicious to a fevered
mouth. The instrument case of his surgeon, and the store-room of his
matron contains many articles whose utility is increased by the use of
it, and some that could be made of nothing else. In a small rubber case
the physician carries with him and preserves his lunar caustic, which
would corrode any metallic surface. His shirts and sheets pass through
an India rubber clothes-wringer, which saves the strength of the
washer-woman and the fibre of the fabric. When the government presents
him with an artificial leg, a thick heel and elastic sole of India
rubber give him comfort every time he puts it on the ground. In the
field this material is not less strikingly useful. During the late war
armies have marched through ten days of rain and slept through as many
nights, and come out dry into the returning sunshine with their
artillery untarnished and their ammunition not injured, because men and
munitions were all under India rubber."
Ought we soon to forget him to whom we are indebted, in a large measure,
for all this? The American people will long remember Charles Goodyear
when others have faded from memory.