that no man in the world but Charles Goodyear could have interpreted,
nor he, but for his five years' previous investigation. At Woburn one
day, in the spring of 1839, he was standing with his brother and
several other persons near a very hot stove. He held in his hand a
mass of his compound of sulphur and gum, upon which he was expatiating
in his usual vehement manner,--the company exhibiting the indifference
to which he was accustomed. In the crisis of his argument he made a
violent gesture, which brought the mass in contact with the stove,
which was hot enough to melt India-rubber instantly; upon looking at
it a moment after, he perceived that his compound had not melted in
the least degree! It had charred as leather chars, but no part of the
surface had dissolved. There was not a sticky place upon it. To say
that he was astonished at this would but faintly express his ecstasy
of amazement. The result was absolutely new to all experience,
--India-rubber not melting in contact with red-hot iron! A man must
have been five years absorbed in the pursuit of an object to
comprehend his emotions. He felt as Columbus felt when he saw the
land-bird alighting upon his ship, and the driftwood floating by. But,
like Columbus, he was surrounded with an unbelieving crew. Eagerly he
showed his charred India-rubber to his brother, and to the other
bystanders, and dwelt upon the novelty and marvellousness of his fact.
They regarded it with complete indifference. The good man had worn
them all out. Fifty times before, he had run to them, exulting in some
new discovery, and they supposed, of course, that this was another of
his chimeras.
He followed the new clew with an enthusiasm which his friends would
have been justified in calling frenzy, if success had not finally
vindicated him. He soon discovered that his compound would not melt at
any degree of heat. It next occurred to him to ascertain at how low a
temperature it would char, and whether it was not possible to _arrest_
the combustion at a point that would leave the India-rubber elastic,
but deprived of its adhesiveness. A single experiment proved that this
was possible. After toasting a piece of his compound before an open
fire, he found that, while part of it was charred, a rim of
India-rubber round the charred portion was elastic still, and even
more elastic than pure gum. In a few days he had established three
facts;--first, that this rim of India-rubber would bear a temperature
of two hundred and seventy-eight degrees without charring; second,
that it would not melt or soften at any heat; third, that, placed
between blocks of ice and left out of doors all night, it would not
stiffen in the least degree. He had triumphed, and he knew it. He
tells us that he now "felt himself amply repaid for the past, and
quite indifferent as to the trials of the future." It was well he was
so, for his darkest days were before him, and he was still six years
from a practicable success. He had, indeed, proved that a compound of
sulphur and India-rubber, in proper proportions and in certain
conditions, being subjected for a certain time to a certain degree of
heat, undergoes a change which renders it perfectly available for all
the uses to which he had before attempted in vain to apply it. But it
remained to be ascertained what were those proper proportions, what
were those conditions, what was that degree of heat, what was that
certain time, and by what means the heat could be best applied.
The difficulty of all this may be inferred when we state that at the
present time it takes an intelligent man a year to learn how to
conduct the process with certainty, though he is provided, from the
start, with the best implements and appliances which twenty years'
experience has suggested. And poor Goodyear had now reduced himself,
not merely to poverty, but to isolation. No friend of his could
conceal his impatience when he heard him pronounce the word
India-rubber. Business-men recoiled from the name of it. He tells us
that two entire years passed, after he had made his discovery, before
he had convinced one human being of its value. Now, too, his
experiments could no longer be carried on with a few pounds of
India-rubber, a quart of turpentine, a phial of aquafortis, and a
little lampblack. He wanted the means of producing a high, uniform,
and controllable degree of heat,--a matter of much greater difficulty
than he anticipated. We catch brief glimpses of him at this time in
the volumes of testimony. We see him waiting for his wife to draw the
loaves from her oven, that he might put into it a batch of
India-rubber to bake, and watching it all the evening, far into the
night, to see what effect was produced by one hour's, two hours',
three hours', six hours' baking. We see him boiling it in his wife's
saucepans, suspending it before the nose of her teakettle, and hanging
it from the handle of that vessel to within an inch of the boiling
water. We see him roasting it in the ashes and in hot sand, toasting
it before a slow fire and before a quick fire, cooking it for one hour
and for twenty-four hours, changing the proportions of his compound
and mixing them in different ways. No success rewarded him while he
employed only domestic utensils. Occasionally, it is true, he produced
a small piece of perfectly vulcanized India-rubber; but upon
subjecting other pieces to precisely the same process, they would
blister or char.
Then we see him resorting to the shops and factories in the
neighborhood of Woburn, asking the privilege of using an oven after
working hours, or of hanging a piece of India-rubber in the "man-hole"
of the boiler. The foremen testify that he was a great plague to them,
and smeared their works with his sticky compound; but, though they all
regarded him as little better than a troublesome lunatic, they all
appear to have helped him very willingly. He frankly confesses that he
lived at this time on charity; for, although _he_ felt confident of
being able to repay the small sums which pity for his family enabled
him to borrow, his neighbors who lent him the money were as far as
possible from expecting payment. Pretending to lend, they meant to
give. One would pay his butcher's bill or his milk bill; another would
send in a barrel of flour; another would take in payment some articles
of the old stock of India-rubber; and some of the farmers allowed his
children to gather sticks in their fields to heat his hillocks of sand
containing masses of sulphurized India-rubber. If the people of New
England were not the most "neighborly" people in the world, his family
must have starved, or he must have given up his experiments. But, with
all the generosity of his neighbors, his children were often sick,
hungry, and cold, without medicine, food, or fuel. One witness
testifies: "I found (in 1839) that they had not fuel to burn nor food
to eat, and did not know where to get a morsel of food from one day to
another, unless it was sent in to them." We can neither justify nor
condemn their father. Imagine Columbus within sight of the new world,
and his obstinate crew declaring it was only a mirage, and refusing to
row him ashore! Never was mortal man surer that he had a fortune in
his hand, than Charles Goodyear was when he would take a piece of
scorched and dingy India-rubber from his pocket and expound its
marvellous properties to a group of incredulous villagers. Sure also
was he that he was just upon the point of a practicable success. Give
him but an oven, and would he not turn you out fire-proof and
cold-proof India-rubber, as fast as a baker can produce loaves of
bread? Nor was it merely the hope of deliverance from his pecuniary
straits that urged him on. In all the records of his career, we
perceive traces of something nobler than this. His health being always
infirm, he was haunted with the dread of dying before he had reached a
point in his discoveries where other men, influenced by ordinary
motives, could render them available.
By the time that he had exhausted the patience of the foremen of the
works near Woburn, he had come to the conclusion that an oven was the
proper means of applying heat to his compound. An oven he forthwith
determined to build. Having obtained the use of a corner of a factory
yard, his aged father, two of his brothers, his little son, and
himself sallied forth, with pickaxe and shovels, to begin the work:
and when they had done all that unskilled labor could effect towards
it, he induced a mason to complete it, and paid him in bricklayers'
aprons made of aqua-fortized India-rubber. This first oven was a
tantalizing failure. The heat was neither uniform nor controllable.
Some of the pieces of India-rubber would come out so perfectly "cured"
as to demonstrate the utility of his discovery; but others, prepared
in precisely the same manner, as far as he could discern, were
spoiled, either by blistering or charring. He was puzzled and
distressed beyond description; and no single voice consoled or
encouraged him. Out of the first piece of cloth which he succeeded in
vulcanizing he had a coat made for himself, which was not an
ornamental garment in its best estate; but, to prove to the
unbelievers that it would stand fire, he brought it so often in
contact with hot stoves, that at last it presented an exceedingly
dingy appearance. His coat did not impress the public favorably, and
it served to confirm the opinion that he was laboring under a mania.
In the midst of his first disheartening experiments with sulphur, he
had an opportunity of escaping at once from his troubles. A house in
Paris made him an advantageous offer for the use of his aquafortis
process. From the abyss of his misery the honest man promptly replied,
that that process, valuable as it was, was about to be superseded by a
new method, which he was then perfecting, and as soon as he had
developed it sufficiently he should be glad to close with their
offers. Can we wonder that his neighbors thought him mad?
It was just after declining the French proposal that he endured his
worst extremity of want and humiliation. It was in the winter of
1839--40. One of those long and terrible snow-storms for which New
England is noted had been raging for many hours, and he awoke one
morning to find his little cottage half buried in snow, the storm
still continuing, and in his house not an atom of fuel nor a morsel of
food. His children were very young, and he was himself sick and
feeble. The charity of his neighbors was exhausted, and he had not the
courage to face their reproaches. As he looked out of the window upon
the dreary and tumultuous scene, "fit emblem of his condition," he
remarks, he called to mind that, a few days before, an acquaintance, a
mere acquaintance, who lived some miles off, had given him upon the
road a more friendly greeting than he was then accustomed to receive.
It had cheered his heart as he trudged sadly by, and it now returned
vividly to his mind. To this gentleman he determined to apply for
relief, if he could reach his house. Terrible was his struggle with
the wind and the deep drifts. Often he was ready to faint with
fatigue, sickness, and hunger, and he would be obliged to sit down
upon a bank of snow to rest. He reached the house and told his story,
not omitting the oft-told tale of his new discovery,--that mine of
wealth, if only he could procure the means of working it! The eager
eloquence of the inventor was seconded by the gaunt and yellow face of
the man. His generous acquaintance entertained him cordially, and lent
him a sum of money, which not only carried his family through the
worst of the winter, but enabled him to continue his experiments on a
small scale. O.B. Coolidge, of Woburn, was the name of this
benefactor.
On another occasion, when he was in the most urgent need of materials,
he looked about his house to see if there was left one relic of better
days upon which a little money could be borrowed. There was nothing
except his children's school-books,--the last things from which a
New-Englander is willing to part. There was no other resource. He
gathered them up and sold them for five dollars, with which he laid in
a fresh stock of gum and sulphur, and kept on experimenting.
Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts, he now resolved to
make a desperate effort to get to New York, feeling confident that the
specimens he could take with him would convince some one of the
superiority of his new method. He was beginning to understand the
causes of his many failures, but he saw clearly that his compound
could not be worked with certainty without expensive apparatus. It was
a very delicate operation, requiring exactness and promptitude. The
conditions upon which success depended were numerous, and the failure
of one spoiled all. To vulcanize India-rubber is about as difficult as
to make perfect bread; but the art of bread-making was the growth of
ages, and Charles Goodyear was only ten years and a half in perfecting
his process. Thousands of ingenious men and women, aided by many happy
accidents, must have contributed to the successive invention of bread;
but he was only one man, poor and sick. It cost him thousands of
failures to learn that a little acid in his sulphur caused the
blistering; that his compound must be heated almost immediately after
being mixed, or it would never vulcanize; that a portion of white lead
in the compound greatly facilitated the operation and improved the
result; and when he had learned these facts, it still required costly
and laborious experiments to devise the best methods of compounding
his ingredients, the best proportions, the best mode of heating, the
proper duration of the heating, and the various useful effects that
could be produced by varying the proportions and the degree of heat.
He tells us that many times, when, by exhausting every resource, he
had prepared a quantity of his compound for heating, it was spoiled
because he could not, with his inadequate apparatus, apply the heat
soon enough.
To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get there cost
him a severer and a longer effort than men in general are capable of
making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles distant, where he hoped
to be able to borrow from an old acquaintance fifty dollars, with
which to provide for his family and pay his fare to New York. He not
only failed in this, but he was arrested for debt and thrown into
prison. Even in prison, while his father was negotiating to secure his
release, he labored to interest men of capital in his discovery, and
made proposals for founding a factory in Boston. Having obtained his
liberty, he went to a hotel, and spent a week in vain efforts to
effect a small loan. Saturday night came, and with it his hotel bill,
which he had no means of discharging. In an agony of shame and
anxiety, he went to a friend, and entreated the sum of five dollars to
enable him to return home. He was met with a point-blank refusal. In
the deepest dejection, he walked the streets till late in the night,
and strayed at length, almost beside himself, to Cambridge, where he
ventured to call upon a friend and ask shelter for the night. He was
hospitably entertained, and the next morning walked wearily home,
penniless and despairing. At the door of his house a member of his
family met him with the news that his youngest child, two years of
age, whom he had left in perfect health, was dying. In a few hours he
had in his house a dead child, but not the means of burying it, and
five living dependants without a morsel of food to give them. A
storekeeper near by had promised to supply the family, but,
discouraged by the unforeseen length of the father's absence, he had
that day refused to trust them further. In these terrible
circumstances, he applied to a friend upon whose generosity he knew he
could rely, one who had never failed him. He received in reply a
letter of severe and cutting reproach, enclosing seven dollars, which
his friend explained was given only out of pity for his innocent and
suffering family. A stranger, who chanced to be present when this
letter arrived, sent them a barrel of flour,---a timely and blessed
relief. The next day the family followed on foot the remains of the
little child to the grave.
A relation in a distant part of the country, to whom Goodyear revealed
his condition, sent him fifty dollars, which enabled him to get to New
York. He had touched bottom. The worst of his trials were over. In New
York, he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of two
brothers, William Rider and Emory Eider, men of some property and
great intelligence, who examined his specimens, listened to his story,
believed in him, and agreed to aid him to continue his experiments,
and to supply his family until he had rendered his discovery
available. From that time, though he was generally embarrassed in his
circumstances, his family never wanted bread, and he was never obliged
to suspend his experiments. Aided by the capital, the sympathy, and
the ingenuity of the brothers Rider, he spent a year in New York in
the most patient endeavors to overcome the difficulties in heating his
compound. Before he had succeeded, their resources failed. But he had
made such progress in demonstrating the practicability of his process,
that his brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a noted woollen
manufacturer, took hold of the project in earnest, and aided him to
bring it to perfection. Once more, however, he was imprisoned for
debt. This event conquered his scruples against availing himself of
the benefit of the bankrupt act, which finally delivered him from the
danger of arrest. We should add, however, that, as soon as he began to
derive income from his invention, he reassumed his obligations to his
old creditors, and discharged them gradually.
It was not till the year 1844, more than ten years after he began to
experiment, and more than five years after discovering the secret of
vulcanization, that he was able to conduct his process with absolute
certainty, and to produce vulcanized India-rubber with the requisite
expedition and economy. We can form some conception of the
difficulties overcome by the fact, that the advances of Mr. De Forrest
in aid of the experiment reached the sum of forty-six thousand
dollars,--an amount the inventor did not live long enough to repay.
His triumph had been long deferred, and we have seen in part how much
it had cost him. But his success proved to be richly worth its cost.
He had added to the arts, not a new material merely, but a new class
of materials, applicable to a thousand diverse uses. His product had
more than the elasticity of India-rubber, while it was divested of all
those properties which had lessened its utility. It was still
India-rubber, but its surfaces would not adhere, nor would it harden
at any degree of cold, nor soften at any degree of heat. It was a
cloth impervious to water. It was paper that would not tear. It was
parchment that would not crease. It was leather which neither rain nor
sun would injure. It was ebony that could be run into a mould. It was
ivory that could be worked like wax. It was wood that never cracked,
shrunk, nor decayed. It was metal, "elastic metal," as Daniel Webster
termed it, that could be wound round the finger or tied into a knot,
and which preserved its elasticity almost like steel. Trifling
variations in the ingredients, in the proportions, and in the heating,
made it either as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as
whalebone, or as rigid as flint.
All this is stated in a moment, but each of these variations in the
material, as well as every article made from them, cost this
indefatigable man days, weeks, months, or years of experiment. It cost
him, for example, several years of most expensive trial to obviate the
objection to India-rubber fabrics caused by the liability of the gum
to peel from the cloth. He tried every known textile fabric, and every
conceivable process before arriving at the simple expedient of mixing
fibre with the gum, by which, at length, the perfect India-rubber
cloth was produced. This invention he considered only second in value
to the discovery of vulcanization. The India-rubber shoe, as we now
have it, is an admirable article,--light, strong, elegant in shape,
with a fibrous sole that does not readily wear, cut, or slip. As the
shoe is made and joined before vulcanization, a girl can make
twenty-five pairs in a day. They are cut from the soft sheets of gum
and joined by a slight pressure of the hand. But almost every step of
this process, now so simple and easy, was patiently elaborated by
Charles Goodyear. A million and a half of pairs per annum is now the
average number made in the United States by his process, though the
business languishes somewhat from the high price of the raw materials.
The gum, which, when Goodyear began his experiments, was a drug at
five cents a pound, has recently been sold at one dollar and twenty
cents a pound, with all its impurities. Even at this high price the
annual import ranges at from four to five millions of pounds.