Goodyear was always a prey to necessity. Nor was he ever a good man of
business. He was too entirely an inventor to know how to dispose of
his inventions to advantage; and he could never feel that he had
accomplished his mission with regard to India-rubber. As soon as he
had brought his shoemaking process to the point where other men could
make it profitable, he withdrew from manufacturing, and sold rights to
manufacture for the consideration of half a cent per pair. Five cents
had been reasonable enough, and would have given him ample means to
continue his labors. Half a cent kept him subject to necessity, which
seemed to compel him to dispose of other rights at rates equally low.
Thus it happened that, when the whole India-rubber business of the
country paid him tribute, or ought to have paid it, he remained an
embarrassed man. He had, too, the usual fate of inventors, in having
to contend with the infringers of his rights,--men who owed their all
to his ingenuity and perseverance. We may judge, however, of the
rapidity with which the business grew, by the fact that, six years
after the completion of his vulcanizing process, the holders of rights
to manufacture shoes by that process deemed it worth while to employ
Daniel Webster to plead their cause, and to stimulate his mind by a
fee of twenty-five thousand dollars. It is questionable if Charles
Goodyear ever derived that amount from his patents, if we deduct from
his receipts the money spent in further developing his discovery. His
ill-health obliged him to be abstemious, and he had no expensive
tastes. It was only in his laboratory that he was lavish, and there he
was lavish indeed. His friends still smiled at his zeal, or reproached
him for it. It has been only since the mighty growth of the business
in his products that they have acknowledged that he was right and that
they were wrong. They remember him, sick, meagre, and yellow, now
coming to them with a walking-stick of India-rubber, exulting in the
new application of his material, and predicting its general use, while
they objected that his stick had cost him fifty dollars; now running
about among the comb factories, trying to get reluctant men to try
their tools upon hard India-rubber, and producing at length a set of
combs that cost twenty times the price of ivory ones; now shutting
himself up for months, endeavoring to make a sail of India-rubber
fabric, impervious to water, that should never freeze, and to which no
sleet or ice should ever cling; now exhibiting a set of cutlery with
India-rubber handles, or a picture set in an India-rubber frame, or a
book with India-rubber covers, or a watch with an India-rubber case;
now experimenting with India-rubber tiles for floors, which he hoped
to make as brilliant in color as those of mineral, as agreeable to the
tread as carpet, and as durable as an ancient floor of oak. There is
nothing in the history of invention more remarkable than the devotion
of this man to his object. No crusader was ever so devoted to his vow,
no lover to his mistress, as he was to his purpose of showing mankind
what to do with India-rubber. The doorplate of his office was made of
it; his portrait was painted upon and framed with it; his book, as we
have seen, was wholly composed of it; and his mind, by night and day,
was surcharged with it. He never went to sleep without having within
reach writing materials and the means of making a light, so that, if
he should have an idea in the night, he might be able to secure it.
Some of his best ideas, he used to say, were saved to mankind by this
precaution.
It is not well for any man to be thus absorbed in his object. To
Goodyear, whose infirm constitution peculiarly needed repose and
recreation, it was disastrous, and at length fatal. It is well with no
man who does riot play as well as work. Fortunately, we are all
beginning to understand this. We are beginning to see that a devotion
to the business of life which leaves no reserve of force and time for
social pleasures and the pursuit of knowledge, diminishes even our
power to conduct business with the sustained and intelligent energy
requisite for a safe success. That is a melancholy passage in one of
Theodore Parker's letters, written in the premature decline of his
powers, in which he laments that he had not, like Franklin, joined a
club, and taken an occasional ramble with young companions in the
country, and played billiards with them in the evening. He added, that
he intended to lead a better life in these particulars for the future;
but who can reform at forty-seven? And the worst of it is, that
ill-health, the natural ally of all evil, favors intensity, lessening
both our power and our inclination to get out of the routine that is
destroying us. Goodyear, always sick, had been for so many years the
slave of his pursuit, he had been so spurred on by necessity, and
lured by partial success, that, when at last he might have rested, he
could not.
It does not become us, however, who reap the harvest, to censure him
who wore himself out in sowing the seed. The harvest is
great,--greater than any but he anticipated. His friends know now that
he never over-estimated the value of his invention. They know now what
he meant when he said that no one but himself would take the trouble
to apply his material to the thousand uses of which it was capable,
because each new application demanded a course of experiments that
would discourage any one who entered upon it only with a view to
profit. The India-rubber manufacture, since his death, has increased
greatly in extent, but not much in other respects, and some of the
ideas which he valued most remain undeveloped. He died, for example,
in the conviction that sails of India-rubber cloth would finally
supersede all others. He spent six months and five thousand dollars in
producing one or two specimens, which were tried and answered their
purpose well; but he was unable to bring his sail-making process to an
available perfection. The sole difficulty was to make his sails as
light as those of cloth. He felt certain of being able to accomplish
this; but in the multiplicity of his objects and the pressure of his
embarrassments, he was compelled to defer the completion of his plans
to a day that never came.
The catalogue of his successful efforts is long and striking. The
second volume of his book is wholly occupied with that catalogue. He
lived to see his material applied to nearly five hundred uses, to give
employment in England, France, Germany, and the United States to sixty
thousand persons, who annually produced merchandise of the value of
eight millions of dollars. A man does much who only founds a new kind
of industry; and he does more when that industry gives value to a
commodity that before was nearly valueless. But we should greatly
undervalue the labors of Charles Goodyear, if we regarded them only as
opening a new source of wealth; for there have been found many uses of
India-rubber, as prepared by him, which have an importance far
superior to their commercial value. Art, science, and humanity are
indebted to him for a material which serves the purposes of them all,
and serves them as no other known material could.
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 chilling rain of a Southern winter's night. Protected by
India-rubber boots, blanket, and cap, the picket man performs 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 he was 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 armpit. The
springs which close the hospital door, the bands which exclude the
drafts from doors and windows, his pocket comb and cup and thimble,
are of the same material. From jars thermetically 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 storeroom of his matron contain many articles whose utility is
increased by the use of it, and some that could be made of nothing
else. His shirts and sheets pass through an India-rubber
clothes-wringer, which saves the strength of the washerwoman 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 to the ground. An India-rubber pipe with
an inserted bowl of clay, a billiard-table provided with India-rubber
cushions and balls, can solace his long convalescence.
In the field, this material is not less strikingly useful. During this
war, armies have marched through ten days of rain, and slept through
as many rainy nights, and come out dry into the returning sunshine,
with its artillery untarnished and its ammunition uninjured, because
men and munitions were all under India-rubber. When Goodyear's ideas
are carried out, it will be by pontoons of inflated India-rubber that
rivers will be crossed. A pontoon-train will then consist of one wagon
drawn by two mules; and if the march is through a country that
furnishes the wooden part of the bridge, a man may carry a pontoon on
his back in addition to his knapsack and blanket.
In the naval service we meet this material in a form that attracts
little attention, though it serves a purpose of perhaps unequalled
utility. Mechanics are aware, that, from the time of James Watt to the
year 1850, the grand desideratum of the engine builder was a perfect
joint,--a joint that would not admit the escape of steam. A
steam-engine is all over joints and valves, from most of which some
steam sooner or later would escape, since an engine in motion produces
a continual jar that finally impaired the best joint that art could
make. The old joint-making process was exceedingly expensive. The two
surfaces of iron had to be most carefully ground and polished, then
screwed together, and the edges closed with white lead. By the use of
a thin sheet of vulcanized India-rubber, placed between the iron
surfaces, not only is all this expense saved, but a joint is produced
that is absolutely and permanently perfect. It is not even necessary
to rub off the roughness of the casting, for the rougher the surface,
the better the joint. Goodyear's invention supplies an article that
Watt and Fulton sought in vain, and which would seem to put the
finishing touch to the steam-engine,--if, in these days of
improvement, anything whatever could be considered finished. At
present, all engines are provided with these joints and valves, which
save steam, diminish jar, and facilitate the separation of the parts.
It is difficult to compute the value of this improvement, in money. We
are informed, however, by competent authority, that a steamer of two
thousand tons saves ten thousand dollars a year by its use. Such is
the demand for the engine-packing, as it is termed, that the owners of
the factory where it is chiefly made, after constructing the largest
water-wheel in the world, found it insufficient for their growing
business, and were obliged to add to it a steam-engine of two hundred
horse-power. The New York agent of this company sells about a million
dollars' worth of packing per annum.
Belting for engines is another article for which Goodyear's compound
is superior to any other, inasmuch as the surface of the India-rubber
clings to the iron wheel better than leather or fabric. Leather
polishes and slips; India-rubber does not polish, and holds to the
iron so firmly as to save a large percentage of power. It is no small
advantage merely to save leather for other uses, since leather is an
article of which the supply is strictly limited. It is not uncommon
for India-rubber belts to be furnished, which, if made of leather,
would require more than a hundred hides. Emery-wheels of this material
have been recently introduced. They were formerly made of wood coated
with emery, which soon wore off. In the new manufacture, the emery is
kneaded into the entire mass of the wheel, which can be worn down till
it is all consumed. On the same principle the instruments used to
sharpen scythes are also made. Of late we hear excellent accounts of
India-rubber as a basis for artificial teeth. It is said to be
lighter, more agreeable, less expensive, than gold or platina, and not
less durable. We have seen also some very pretty watch-cases of this
material, elegantly inlaid with gold.
It thus appears, that the result of Mr. Goodyear's long and painful
struggles was the production of a material which now ranks with the
leading compounds of commerce and manufacture, such as glass, brass,
steel, paper, porcelain, paint. Considering its peculiar and varied
utility, it is perhaps inferior in value only to paper, steel, and
glass. We see, also, that the use of the new compound lessens the
consumption of several commodities, such as ivory, bone, ebony, and
leather, which it is desirable to save, because the demand for them
tends to increase faster than the supply. When a set of ivory
billiard-balls costs fifty dollars, and civilization presses upon the
domain of the elephant, it is well to make our combs and our
paper-knives of something else.
That inventions so valuable should be disputed and pirated was
something which the history of all the great inventions might have
taught Mr. Goodyear to expect. We need not revive those disputes which
embittered his life and wasted his substance and his time. The
Honorable Joseph Holt, the Commissioner who granted an extension to
the vulcanizing patent in 1858, has sufficiently characterized them in
one of the most eloquent papers ever issued from the Patent Office:--
"No inventor probably has ever been so harassed, so trampled
upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious class of
infringers known in the parlance of the world, with no
exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates,' The spoliations of
their incessant guerilla warfare upon his defenceless rights
have unquestionably amounted to millions. In the very front
rank of this predatory band stands one who sustains in this
case the double and most convenient character of contestant
and witness; and it is but a subdued expression of my
estimate of the deposition he has lodged, to say that this
Parthian shaft--the last that he could hurl at an invention
which he has so long and so remorselessly pursued--is a
fitting finale to that career which the public justice of
the country has so signally rebuked."
Mr. Holt paid a noble tribute to the class of men of whose rights he
was the official guardian:--
"All that is glorious in our past or hopeful in our future
is indissolubly linked with that cause of human progress of
which inventors are the _preux chevaliers_. It is no poetic
translation of the abiding sentiment of the country to say,
that they are the true jewels of the nation to which they
belong, and that a solicitude for the protection of their
rights and interests should find a place in every throb of
the national heart. Sadly helpless as a class, and offering,
in the glittering creations of their own genius, the
strongest temptations to unscrupulous cupidity, they, of all
men, have most need of the shelter of the public law, while,
in view of their philanthropic labors, they are of all men
most entitled to claim it. The schemes of the politician and
of the statesman may subserve the purposes of the hour, and
the teachings of the moralist may remain with the generation
to which they are addressed, but all this must pass away;
while the fruits of the inventor's genius will endure as
imperishable, memorials, and, surviving the wreck of creeds
and systems, alike of politics, religion, and philosophy,
will diffuse their blessings to all lands and throughout all
ages."
When Mr. Goodyear had seen the manufacture of shoes and fabrics well
established in the United States, and when his rights appeared to have
been placed beyond controversy by the Trenton decision of 1852, being
still oppressed with debt, he went to Europe to introduce his material
to the notice of capitalists there. The great manufactories of
vulcanized India-rubber in England, Scotland, France, and Germany are
the result of his labors; but the peculiarities of the patent laws of
those countries, or else his own want of skill in contending for his
rights, prevented him from reaping the reward of his labors. He spent
six laborious years abroad. At the Great Exhibitions of London and
Paris, he made brilliant displays of his wares, which did honor to his
country and himself, and gave an impetus to the prosperity of the men
who have grown rich upon his discoveries. At the London Exhibition, he
had a suite of three apartments, carpeted, furnished, and decorated
only with India-rubber. At Paris, he made a lavish display of
India-rubber jewelry, dressing-cases, work-boxes, picture-frames,
which attracted great attention. His reward was, a four days' sojourn
in the debtors' prison, and the cross of the Legion of Honor. The
delinquency of his American licensees procured him the former, and the
favor of the Emperor the latter.
We have seen that his introduction to India-rubber was through the
medium of a life-preserver. His last labors, also, were consecrated to
life-saving apparatus, of which he invented or suggested a great
variety. His excellent wife was reading to him one evening, in London,
an article from a review, in which it was stated that twenty persons
perished by drowning every hour. The company, startled at a statement
so unexpected, conversed upon it for some time, while Mr. Goodyear
himself remained silent and thoughtful. For several nights he was
restless, as was usually the case with him when he was meditating a
new application of his material. As these periods of incubation were
usually followed by a prostrating sickness, his wife urged him to
forbear, and endeavor to compose his mind to sleep. "Sleep!" said he,
"how can I sleep while twenty human beings are drowning every hour,
and I am the man who can save them?" It was long his endeavor to
invent some article which every man, woman, and child would
necessarily wear, and which would make it impossible for them to sink.
He experimented with hats, cravats, jackets, and petticoats; and,
though he left his principal object incomplete, he contrived many of
those means of saving life which now puzzle the occupants of
state-rooms. He had the idea that every article on board a vessel
seizable in the moment of danger, every chair, table, sofa, and stool,
should be a life-preserver.
He returned to his native land a melancholy spectacle to his
friends,--yellow, emaciated, and feeble,--but still devoted to his
work. He lingered and labored until July, 1860, when he died in New
York, in the sixtieth year of his age. Almost to the last day of his
life he was busy with new applications of his discovery. After
twenty-seven years of labor and investigation, after having founded a
new branch of industry, which gave employment to sixty thousand
persons, he died insolvent, leaving to a wife and six children only an
inheritance of debt. Those who censure him for this should consider
that his discovery was not profitable to himself for more than ten
years, that he was deeply in debt when he began his experiments, that
his investigations could be carried on only by increasing his
indebtedness, that all his bargains were those of a man in need, that
the guilelessness of his nature made him the easy prey of greedy,
dishonorable men, and that his neglect of his private interests was
due, in part, to his zeal for the public good.
Dr. Dutton of New Haven, his pastor and friend, in the Sermon
dedicated to his memory, did not exaggerate when he spoke of him as
"one who recognized his peculiar endowment of inventive
genius as a divine gift, involving a special and defined
responsibility, and considered himself called of God, as was
Bezaleel, to that particular course of invention to which he
devoted the chief part of his life. This he often expressed,
though with his characteristic modesty, to his friends,
especially his religious friends. His inventive work was his
religion, and was pervaded and animated by religious faith
and devotion. He felt like an apostle commissioned for that
work; and he said to his niece and her husband, who went,
with his approbation and sympathy, as missionaries of the
Gospel to Asia, that he was God's missionary as truly as
they were."
Nothing more true. The demand for the raw gum, almost created by him,
is introducing abundance and developing industry in the regions which
produce it. As the culture of cotton seems the predestined means of
improving Africa, so the gathering of caoutchouc may procure for the
inhabitants of the equatorial regions of both continents such of the
blessings of civilization as they are capable of appropriating.
An attempt was made last winter to procure an act of Congress
extending the vulcanizing patent for a further period of seven years,
for the benefit of the creditors and the family of the inventor. The
petition seemed reasonable. The very low tariff paid by the
manufacturers could have no perceptible effect upon the price of
articles, and the extension would provide a competence for a worthy
family who had claims upon the gratitude of the nation, if not upon
its justice. The manufacturers generally favored the extension, since
the patent protected them, in the deranged condition of our currency,
from the competition of the foreign manufacturer, who pays low wages
and enjoys a sound currency. The extension of the patent would have
harmed no one, and would have been an advantage to the general
interests of the trade. The son of the inventor, too, in whose name
the petition was offered, had spent his whole life in assisting his
father, and had a fair claim upon the consideration of Congress. But
the same unscrupulous and remorseless men who had plundered poor
Goodyear living, hastened to Washington to oppose the petition of his
family. A cry of "monopoly" was raised in the newspapers to which they
had access. The presence in Washington of Mrs. Goodyear, one of the
most retiring of women, and of her son, a singularly modest young man,
who were aided by one friend and one professional agent, was denounced
as "a powerful lobby, male and female," who, having despoiled the
public of "twenty millions," were boring Congress for a grant of
twenty millions more,--all to be wrung from an India-rubber-consuming
public. The short session of Congress is unfavorable to private bills,
even when they are unopposed. These arts sufficed to prevent the
introduction of the bill desired, and the patent has since expired.
The immense increase in the demand for the gum has frequently
suggested the inquiry whether there is any danger of the supply
becoming unequal to it. There are now in Europe and America more than
a hundred and fifty manufactories of India-rubber articles, employing
from five to five hundred operatives each, and consuming more than ten
millions of pounds of gum per annum. The business, too, is considered
to be still in its infancy. Certainly, it is increasing. Nevertheless,
there is no possibility of the demand exceeding the supply. The belt
of land round the globe, five hundred miles north and five hundred
miles south of the equator, abounds in the trees producing the gum,
and they can be tapped, it is said, for twenty successive seasons.
Forty-three thousand of these trees were counted in a tract of country
thirty miles long and eight wide. Each tree yields an average of three
table-spoonfuls of sap daily, but the trees are so close together that
one man can gather the sap of eighty in a day. Starting at daylight,
with his tomahawk and a ball of clay, he goes from tree to tree,
making five or six incisions in each, and placing under each incision
a cup made of the clay which he carries. In three or four hours he has
completed his circuit and comes home to breakfast. In the afternoon he
slings a large gourd upon his shoulder, and repeats his round to
collect the sap. The cups are covered up at the roots of the tree, to
be used again on the following day. In other regions the sap is
allowed to exude from the tree, and is gathered from about the roots.
But, however it is collected, the supply is superabundant; and the
countries which produce it are those in which the laborer needs only a
little tapioca, a little coffee, a hut, and an apron. In South
America, from which our supply chiefly comes, the natives subsist at
an expense of three cents a day. The present high price of the gum in
the United States is principally due to the fact that greenbacks are
not current in the tropics; but in part, to the rapidity with which
the demand has increased. Several important applications of the
vulcanized gum have been deferred to the time when the raw material
shall have fallen to what Adam Smith would style its "natural price."
Charles Goodyear's work, therefore, is a permanent addition to the
resources of man. The latest posterity will be indebted to him.
HENRY WARD BEECHER AND HIS CHURCH
Is there anything in America more peculiar to America, or more curious
in itself, than one of our "fashionable" Protestant churches,--such as
we see in New York, on the Fifth Avenue and in the adjacent streets?
The lion and the lamb in the Millennium will not lie down together
more lovingly than the Church and the World have blended in these
singular establishments. We are far from objecting to the coalition,
but note it only as something curious, new, and interesting.