Part 10

His first important discovery on the road to real success was the result of accident. He liked pretty things, and it was a constant effort with him to make his productions as attractive to the eye as possible. Upon one occasion, while bronzing a piece of rubber cloth, he applied aqua fortis to it for the purpose of removing part of the bronze. It took away the bronze, but it also destroyed the cloth to such a degree that he supposed it ruined and threw it away. A day or two later, happening to pick it up, he was astonished to find that the rubber had undergone a remarkable change, and that the effect of the acid had been to harden it to such an extent that it would now stand a degree of heat which would have melted it before. Aqua fortis contained sulphuric acid. Goodyear was thus on the threshold of his great discovery of vulcanizing rubber. He called his new process the "curing" of india-rubber.

The "cured" india-rubber was subjected to many tests and passed through them successfully, thus demonstrating its adaptability to many important uses. Goodyear readily obtained a patent for his process, and a partner with a large capital was found ready to aid him. He hired the old india-rubber works on Staten Island and opened a salesroom in Broadway. He was thrown back for six weeks at this important time by an accident which happened to him while experimenting with his fabrics and which came near causing his death. Just as he was recovering and preparing to begin the manufacture of his goods on a large scale the terrible commercial crisis of 1837 swept over the country, and by destroying his partner's fortune at one blow, reduced Goodyear to absolute beggary. His family had joined him in New York, and he was entirely without the means of supporting them. As the only resource at hand he decided to pawn an article of value--one of the few which he possessed--in order to raise money to procure one day's supply of provisions. At the very door of the pawnbroker's shop he met one of his creditors, who kindly asked if he could be of any further assistance to him. Weak with hunger and overcome by the generosity of his friend the poor man burst into tears and replied that, as his family was on the point of starvation, a loan of $15 would greatly oblige him. The money was given him on the spot and the necessity for visiting the pawnbroker averted for several days longer. Still he was a frequent visitor to that person during the year, and one by one the relics of his better days disappeared. Another friend loaned him $100, which enabled him to remove his family to Staten Island, in the neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works, which the owners gave him permission to use so far as he could. He contrived in this way to manufacture enough of his "cured" cloth, which sold readily, to enable him to keep his family from starvation. He made repeated efforts to induce capitalists to come to the factory and see his samples and the process by which they were made, but no one would venture near him. There had been money enough lost in such experiments, these acquaintances said, and they were determined to risk no more.

Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had the slightest hope of accomplishing anything with india-rubber, and that one was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded him as a monomaniac. He not only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it, wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of advertising it. He was certainly an odd figure, and in his appearance justified the remark of one of his friends, who, upon being asked how Mr. Goodyear could be recognized, replied: "If you see a man with an india-rubber coat on, india-rubber shoes, and india-rubber cap, and in his pocket an india-rubber purse with not a cent in it, that is Goodyear."

In September, 1837, a new gleam of hope lit up his pathway. A friend having loaned him a small sum of money he went to Roxbury, taking with him some of his best specimens. Although the Roxbury Company had gone down with a fearful crash, Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the first process of making rubber goods in this country, was still firm in his faith that india-rubber would at some future time justify the expectations of its earliest friends. He welcomed Goodyear cordially and allowed him to use the abandoned works of the company for his experiments. The result was that Goodyear succeeded in making shoes and cloths of india-rubber of a quality so much better than any that had yet been seen in America that the hopes of the friends of india-rubber were raised to a high point. Offers to purchase rights for certain portions of the country came in rapidly, and by the sale of them Goodyear realized between four and five thousand dollars. He was now able to bring his family to Roxbury, and for the time fortune seemed to smile upon him.

His success was but temporary, however. He obtained an order from the general Government for one hundred and fifty india-rubber mail-bags, which he succeeded in producing, and as they came out smooth, highly polished, hard, well shaped, and entirely impervious to moisture, he was delighted and summoned his friends to inspect and admire them. All who saw them pronounced them a perfect success, but alas! in a single month they began to soften and ferment, and finally became useless. Poor Goodyear's hopes were dashed to the ground. It was found that the aqua fortis merely "cured" the surface of the material, and that only very thin cloth made in this way was durable. His other goods began to prove worthless and his promising business came to a sudden and disastrous end. All his possessions were seized and sold for debt, and once more he was reduced to poverty. His position was even worse than before, for his family had increased in size and his aged father also had become dependent upon him for support.

Friends, relatives, and even his wife, all demanded that he should abandon his empty dreams and turn his attention to something that would yield a support to his family. Four years of constant failure, added to the unfortunate experience of those who had preceded him, ought to convince him, they said, that he was hoping against hope. Hitherto his conduct, certainly had been absurd, though they admitted that he was to some extent excused for it by his partial success; but to persist in it would be criminal. The inventor was driven to despair, and being a man of tender feelings and ardently devoted to his family, might have yielded to them had he not felt that he was nearer than ever to the discovery of the secret that had eluded him so long.

Just before the failure of his mail-bags had brought ruin upon him, he had taken into his employ a man named Nathaniel Hayward, who had been the foreman of the old Roxbury works, and who was still in charge of them when Goodyear came to Roxbury, and was making a few rubber articles on his own account. He hardened his compound by mixing a little powdered sulphur with the gum, or by sprinkling sulphur over the rubber cloth and drying it in the sun. He declared that the process had been revealed to him in a dream, but could give no further account of it. Goodyear was astonished to find that the sulphur cured the india-rubber as thoroughly as the aqua fortis, the principal objection being that the sulphurous odor of the goods was frightful in hot weather. Hayward's process was really the same as that employed by Goodyear, the "curing" of the india-rubber being due in each case to the agency of the sulphur, the principal difference between them being that Hayward's goods were dried by the sun and Goodyear's with nitric acid. Hayward set so small a value upon his discovery that he readily sold it to his new employer.

Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered his difficulties. It was plain that sulphur was the great controller of india-rubber, for he had proved that when applied to thin cloth it would render it available for most purposes. The problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur and the gum in a mass, so that every part of the rubber should be subjected to the agency of the sulphur. He experimented for weeks and months with the most intense eagerness, but the mystery completely baffled him. His friends urged him to go to work to do something for his family, but he could not turn back. The goal was almost in sight, and he felt that he would be false to his mission were he to abandon his labors now. To the world he seemed a crack-brained dreamer, and some there were who, seeing the distress of his family, did not hesitate to apply still harsher names to him. Had it been merely wealth that he was working for, doubtless he would have turned back and sought some other means of obtaining it; but he sought more. He felt that he had a mission to fulfil, and that no one else could perform it.

He was right. A still greater success was about to crown his labors, but in a manner far different from his expectations. His experiments had developed nothing; chance was to make the revelation. It was in the spring of 1839, and in the following manner: Standing before a stove in a store at Woburn, Mass., he was explaining to some acquaintances the properties of a piece of sulphur-cured india-rubber which he held in his hand. They listened to him good-naturedly, but with evident incredulity, when suddenly he dropped the rubber on the stove, which was red hot. His old clothes would have melted instantly from contact with such heat; but, to his surprise, this piece underwent no such change. In amazement he examined it, and found that while it had charred or shrivelled like leather, it had not softened at all. The bystanders attached no importance to this phenomenon, but to him it was a revelation. He renewed his experiments with enthusiasm, and in a little while established the facts that india-rubber, when mixed with sulphur and exposed to a certain degree of heat for a specified time, would not melt or soften at any degree of heat; that it would only char at two hundred and eighty degrees, and that it would not stiffen from exposure to any extent of cold. The difficulty now consisted in finding out the exact degree of heat necessary for the perfecting of the rubber and the exact length of time required for the heating.

He made this discovery in his darkest days, when, in fact, he was in constant danger of arrest for debt, having already been a frequent inmate of the debtors' prison. He was in the depths of bitter poverty and in such feeble health that he was constantly haunted by the fear of dying before he had perfected his discovery--before he had fulfilled his mission. He needed an apparatus for producing a high and uniform heat for his experiments, and he was unable to obtain it. He used to bake his compound in his wife's bread-oven and steam it over the spout of her tea-kettle, and to press the kitchen fire into his service so far as it would go. When this failed, he would go down to the shops in the vicinity of Woburn and beg to be allowed to use the ovens and boilers after working hours were over. The workmen regarded him as a lunatic, but were too good-natured to deny him the request. Finally he induced a bricklayer to make him an oven, and paid him in masons' aprons of india-rubber. The oven was a failure. Sometimes it would turn out pieces of perfectly vulcanized cloth, and again the goods would be charred and ruined. Goodyear was in despair.

All this time he lived on the charity of his friends. His neighbors pretended to lend him money, but in reality gave him the means of keeping his family from starvation. He has declared that all the while he felt sure he would, before long, be able to pay them back, but they have declared with equal emphasis that, at that time, they never expected to witness his success. He was yellow and shrivelled in face, with a gaunt, lean figure, and his habit of wearing an india-rubber coat, which was charred and blackened from his frequent experiments with it, gave him a wild and singular appearance. People shook their heads solemnly when they saw him, and said that the mad-house was the proper place for him.

The winter of 1839-40 was long and severe. At the opening of the season Goodyear received a letter from a house in Paris, making him a handsome offer for the use of his process of curing india-rubber with aqua fortis. Here was a chance for him to rise out of his misery. A year before he would have closed with the offer, but since then he had discovered the effects of sulphur and heat on his compound, and had passed far beyond the aqua-fortis stage. Disappointment and want had not warped his conscience, and he at once declined to enter into any arrangements with the French house, informing them that although the process they desired to purchase was a valuable one, it was about to be entirely replaced by another which he was then on the point of perfecting, and which he would gladly sell them as soon as he had completed it. His friends declared that he was mad to refuse such an offer; but he replied that nothing would induce him to sell a process which he knew was about to be rendered worthless by still greater discoveries.

A few weeks later a terrible snow-storm passed over the land, one of the worst that New England had ever known, and in the midst of it Goodyear made the appalling discovery that he had not a particle of fuel or a mouthful of food in the house. He was ill enough to be in bed himself, and his purse was entirely empty. It was a terrible position, made worse, too, by the fact that his friends who had formerly aided him had turned from him, vexed with his pertinacity, and abandoned him to his fate. In his despair he bethought him of a mere acquaintance named Coleridge, who lived several miles from his cottage, and who but a few days before had spoken to him with more of kindness than he had received of late. This gentleman, he thought, would aid him in his distress, if he could but reach his house, but in such a snow the journey seemed hopeless to a man in his feeble health. Still the effort must be made. Nerved by despair, he set out and pushed his way resolutely through the heavy drifts. The way was long, and it seemed to him that he would never accomplish it. Often he fell prostrate on the snow, almost fainting with fatigue and hunger, and again he would sit down wearily in the road, feeling that he would gladly die if his discovery were but completed. At length, however, he reached the end of his journey, and fortunately found his acquaintance at home. To this gentleman he told the story of his discovery, his hopes, his struggles, and his present sufferings, and implored him to help him. Mr. Coleridge listened to him kindly, and after expressing the warmest sympathy for him, loaned him money enough to support his family during the severe weather and to enable him to continue his experiments.

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 someone of the superiority of his new method. He was beginning to understand the cause 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 many, and the failure of one spoiled all. 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 in 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 borrow from an old acquaintance $50, 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 old father was negotiating to procure 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 $5 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 old, 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 dependents 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 never failed him. He received in reply a letter of severe and cutting reproach, enclosing $7, 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.

This was about the darkest hour of poor Goodyear's life, but it was before the dawn. He managed to obtain $50, with which he went to New York, and succeeded in interesting two brothers, William and Emory Rider, in his discoveries. They agreed to advance to him a certain sum to complete his experiments. By means of this aid he was enabled to keep his family from want, and his experiments were pursued with greater ease and certainty. His brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a rich wool manufacturer, also came to his aid, now that success seemed in view. Nevertheless, the experiments of that and the following year cost nearly $50,000. Thanks to this timely aid, he was able in 1844, ten years after beginning his work, to produce perfect vulcanized india-rubber with economy and certainty. To the end of his life he was at work, however, endeavoring to improve the material and apply it to new uses. He took out more than sixty patents covering different processes of making rubber goods.

If Goodyear had been a man of business instincts and habits, the years following the completion of his great work might have brought him an immense fortune; but everywhere he seems to have been unfortunate in protecting his rights. In France and England he lost his patent rights by technical defects. In the latter country another man, who had received a copy of the American patent, actually applied and obtained the English rights in his own name. Goodyear, however, obtained the great council medal at the London Exhibition of 1851, a grand medal at Paris, in 1855, and later the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. In this country he was scarcely less unfortunate. His patents were infringed right and left, he was cheated by business associates and plundered of the profits of his invention. The United States Commissioner of Patents, in 1858, thus spoke of his losses:

"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 as 'pirates.' The spoliation of their incessant guerrilla warfare upon his defenceless rights has unquestionably amounted to millions."

Goodyear died in New York in July, 1860, worn out with work and disappointment. Neither Europe nor America seemed disposed to accord him any reward or credit for having made one of the greatest discoveries of the time. Notwithstanding his invention, which has made millions for those engaged in working it, he died insolvent, and left his family heavily in debt. A few years after his death an effort was made to procure from Congress an extension of his patent for the benefit of his family and creditors. The opposition of the men who had grown rich and powerful by successfully infringing his rights prevented that august body from doing justice in the matter and the effort came to nothing.

VII.

JOHN ERICSSON.

Captain John Ericsson, although not by birth an American, rendered such signal services to this country and lived here for so many years that we may fairly consider him in the light of an American inventor. The inventions to which he devoted the best years of his life were made in this country. He loved America, he died here, and though his ashes have been sent back to Sweden, the world of Europe, in common with ourselves, probably thinks of Ericsson as an American.