[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF ELIAS HOWE
_Amid these humble surroundings the inventor of the sewing machine was
born at Spencer, Massachusetts, in 1819._]
[Illustration: BEFORE THE WAR
_A sewing machine of 1851._]
Very different, but also of great value, was the service rendered by
Elias Howe of sewing machine fame. There are two stories as to the
genesis of this wonderful labor-saving device. One is that it was
suggested to Howe by the chance remark of a visitor to the Boston
machine shop in which he was employed. The other and more romantic
story is that the idea of a machine for sewing garments originated
from a desire on Howe’s part to lighten the labor of his wife, who,
when he was ill and out of work, was obliged to take in sewing and toil
far into the night.
Whichever version is correct, it is certain that in 1843 (Howe was
then only twenty-four years old) he set to work in the garret of his
father’s home in Cambridge, and about a year later gave to the world
a sewing machine that embodied the principal features of the most
up-to-date models of the present day. For long, however, the world was
reluctant to accept this splendid invention. The tailors of Boston,
to whom he first offered it, refused to adopt it, on the ground that
it would ruin their business; and later, in New York, there were
anti-sewing machine demonstrations, fomented by labor leaders, who
failed to realize that in the end labor-saving devices of any real
merit were always certain to increase, not decrease, the demand and
opportunities for the workingman and workingwoman.
[Illustration: A SEWING MACHINE OF 1860
“_It has stitched many hundred miles of seam, and is still in good
working order._”]
In the case of the sewing machine the truth of this has long since been
demonstrated. Not only has it become a familiar household adjunct,
freeing millions of women from the slavery of the needle, and thus most
effectively answering the piteous plea of Hood’s “Song of the Shirt,”
but it has also brought about a marvelous expansion of the clothing
industry. It has in fact created an entirely new and most important
branch of that industry,--the ready-made clothing business,--giving
employment to hundreds of thousands of people, and providing well
patterned and well finished garments at prices undreamed of in other
days. Surely Howe, no less than Fulton and Whitney, deserves to be
regarded as a benefactor of humanity.
So, too, with Samuel F. B. Morse, and Alexander Graham Bell, the one
the father of the electric telegraph, the other the inventor of the
telephone. If anybody had told Samuel Morse in 1811, when as a youth
of twenty he sailed from New York to Liverpool to study painting under
Benjamin West, that he would be known to posterity as an inventor
rather than as an artist, he would have laughed the prophecy to scorn.
But, as has happened to other gifted men, circumstances conspired to
turn and fix the thoughts of this brilliant son of New England on
problems unconnected with the routine of his daily life, yet appealing
to him with such force as to change the whole course of his career.
[Illustration: THE FIRST BOBBIN WINDER]