Part 41

Mr. Parton, in the Atlantic Monthly, said: "Singer was a poor, baffled adventurer. He had been an actor and a manager of a theatre, and had tried his hand at various enterprises, none of which had been successful." The proprietor of the shop, who had some sewing-machines there on exhibition, speaking of them, said: "These machines are an excellent invention, but have some serious defects. Now if you could make the desired improvement, there would be more money in it than in making these carving machines." This seemed to gently impress Singer, and the friend advancing $40, he at once began work. According to Singer's testimony in the Howe vs. Singer suits, the story of this wonderful man runs something like this:

"I worked day and night, sleeping but three or four hours out of the twenty-four, and eating generally but once a day, as I knew I must get a machine made for forty dollars or not get it at all. The machine was completed the night of the eleventh day from the day it was commenced. About nine o'clock that evening we got the parts of the machine together, and commenced trying it. The first attempt to sew was unsuccessful, and the workmen, who were tired out with almost unremitting work, left me, one by one, intimating that it was a failure. I continued trying the machine, with Zieber, who furnished the forty dollars, to hold the lamp for me; but in the nervous condition to which I had been reduced, by incessant work and anxiety, was unsuccessful in getting the machine to sew light stitches.

"About midnight I started with Zieber to the hotel, where I boarded. Upon the way we sat down on a pile of boards, and Zieber asked me if I had not noticed that the loose loops of thread on the upper side of the cloth came from the needle? It then flashed upon me that I had forgotten to adjust the tension upon the needle thread. Zieber and I went back to the shop. I adjusted the tension, tried the machine, and sewed five stitches perfectly, when the thread broke. The perfection of those stitches satisfied me that the machine was a success, and I stopped work, went to the hotel, and had a sound sleep. By three o'clock the next day I had the machine finished, and started with it to New York, where I employed Mr. Charles M. Keller to get out a patent for it."

The trial resulted in favor of Howe, but of the two men Singer was in every way the superior in business capacity. In fact; there never has been a sewing-machine manufacturer that could compare with I. M. Singer. "Great and manifold were the difficulties which arose in his path, but one by one he overcame them all. He advertised, he traveled, he sent out agents, he procured the insertion of articles in newspapers, he exhibited the machines at fairs in town or country. Several times he was on the point of failure, but in the nick of time something always happened to save him, and year after year he advanced toward an assured success.

"We well remember his early efforts, when he only had the back part of a small store on Broadway, and a little shop over a railroad depot; and we remember also the general incredulity with regard to the value of the machine with which his name was identified. Even after hearing him explain it at great length, we were very far from expecting to see him one day riding to the Central Park in a French diligence, drawn by five horses paid for by the sewing-machine. Still less did we anticipate that within twelve years the Singer company would be selling a thousand sewing-machines a week, at a profit of a thousand dollars a day. He was the true pioneer of the mere business of selling machines, and made it easier for all his subsequent competitors."

The peculiarity of the Singer machine is the chain stitch or single thread device, but with the employment of an eye-pointed needle, and other appliances, so as to make it admirably adopted for the general purposes of sewing. At Mr. Singer's death it was found that his estate amounted to about $19,000,000.

RICHARD M. HOE.

The recent death of Richard March Hoe, in Florence, Italy, closes the career of one whose name is known wherever the newspaper is used to spread intelligence.

He was the senior member of the firm of printing-press makers, and one of the leading inventors and developers of that great lever of public opinion. Mr. Hoe's father was the founder of the firm. He came to this country from England in 1803, and worked at his trade of carpentry. Through his skill as a workman he was sought out by a man named Smith, a maker of printer's material. He married Smith's sister, and went into partnership with Smith and brother. The printing-presses of those days were made chiefly of wood, and Hoe's skill as a wood-worker was valuable to the firm.

In 1822 Peter Smith invented a hand-press. This press was finally supplanted by the Washington press, invented by Samuel Rust in 1829. Mr. Smith died a year after securing his patent, and the firm-name was changed to R. Hoe & Co., but from the manufacture of the Smith press the company made a fortune. The demand for hand presses increased so rapidly that ten years later it was suggested that steam power might be utilized in some way to do the pulling and tugging necessary in getting an impression. At this time Richard M., one of the sons of the founder of the house, was an attentive listener to the discussions.

Young Richard M. Hoe was born in 1812. He had the advantage of an excellent education, but his father's business possessed such a fascination for him that it was with difficulty he was kept in school. He was a young man of twenty before his father allowed him to work regularly in his shop; but he had already become an expert in handling tools, and soon became one of the best workmen. He joined with his father in the belief that steam would yet be applied to the printing-press, and the numerous models and experiments they made to that end would, in the light of the present day, appear extremely ridiculous.

In 1825-30 Napier had constructed a steam printing-press, and in 1830 Isaac Adams, of Boston, secured a patent for a power press. These inventions were kept very secret; the factories in which they were made being guarded jealously. In 1830 a Napier press was imported into this country for use on the National Intelligencer. Mordecai Noah, editor of Noah's Sunday Times and Messenger, was collector of the port of New York at that time, and being desirous of seeing how the Napier press would work, sent for Mr. Hoe to put it up. He and Richard succeeded in setting up the press, and worked it successfully.

The success of Napier's press set the Hoes to thinking. They made models of its peculiar parts and studied them carefully. Then, in pursuance of a plan suggested by Richard, his father sent his partner, Mr. Newton, to England, for the purpose of examining new machinery there, and to secure models for future use. On his return with ideas, Mr. Newton and the Hoes projected and turned out for sale a novel two-cylinder press, which became universally popular and soon superseded all others, the Napier included.

Thus was steam at last harnessed to the press, but the demand of the daily papers for their increasing editions spurred the press makers to devise machines that could be worked at higher speed than was found possible with the presses, in which the type was secured to a flat bed, which was moved backward and forward under a revolving cylinder. It was seen, then, that if type could be secured to the surface of a cylinder, great speed could be attained. In Sir Rowland Hill's device the type was cast wedge-shape; that is, narrower at the bottom. A broad "nick" was cut into its side, into which a "lead" fitted. The ends of the "lead" in turn fitted into a slot in the column rules, and these latter were bolted into the cylinder. The inventor, Sir Rowland Hill, the father of penny postage in England, sunk, it is said, £80,000 in the endeavor to introduce this method.

In the meantime Richard M. had succeeded to his father's business, and was giving his attention largely to solving this problem of holding type on a revolving cylinder. It was not until 1846 that he hit on the method of doing it. After a dozen years of thought the idea came upon him unexpectedly, and was startling in its simplicity. It was to make the column rules wedge-shape instead of the type. It was this simple device, by the introduction of the "lightning press," that revolutionized the newspaper business of the world, and made the press the power it is. It brought Hoe fame and put him at the head of press makers. His business grew to such dimensions that he has in his employ in his New York factory from 800 to 1,500 hands, varying with the state of trade. His London factory employes from 150 to 250 hands.

Yet the great daily cravings demanded still faster presses. The result was the development of the Web press, in which the paper is drawn into the press from a continuous roll, at a speed of twelve miles an hour. The very latest is a machine called the supplement press, capable of printing complete a paper of from eight to twelve pages, depending on the demand of the day, so that the papers slide out of the machine with the supplements gummed in and the paper folded ready for delivery. Of late years many other remarkably ingenious presses of other makers have come into the market, but still the genius of R. M. Hoe has left an indelible mark in the development of the printing-press. He died June 6th, 1886.

CHARLES GOODYEAR.

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.

PROF. S. F. B. MORSE.

"Canst thou send lightnings that they may go and say unto thee: Here we are!" Said the Lord from the whirlwind to afflicted Job, who remained dumb for he could not answer. The question has been answered in the affirmative in our day by the perfector of the electro-magnetic telegraph, the late Professor Morse, by whose invention the promise has been fulfilled: "I'll put a girdle around the globe in forty minutes."

Samuel Finly Breese Morse was born in Charleston, Massachusetts, April 27th, 1791. His father was the first person to publish geographies in America. His father was also a celebrated Congregational minister, spending much of his time in religious controversy, in maintaining the orthodox faith throughout the New England churches and against Unitarianism. He was prominent among those who founded Andover Theological Seminary, and published many religious periodicals.

S. F. B. Morse was a graduate from Yale at the age of nineteen, and soon went to England for the purpose of studying painting. At the end of two years he received the gold medal of the Adelphia Society of Arts for an original model of a "Dying Hercules," his first attempt at sculpture. The following year he exhibited "The Judgment of Jupiter," a painting praised by his teacher, Mr. West. Becoming quite proficient in painting and sculpture, he returned home in 1815, following his profession in Boston, Charleston, South Carolina, and later in New York city. At the latter place, in connection with other artists, he organized a drawing association, which resulted in the establishment of the National Academy of Design. Prof. Morse was chosen its first President, and was continued in that office for the following sixteen years. He painted a great many portraits, among which was a full length portrait of Lafayette, which was highly prized and commended by the Association. In 1829 he visited Europe a second time to complete his studies in art reading for more than three years in the principal cities of the continent. During his absence abroad he was elected Professor of the literature of the Arts of Design in the University of New York; and in 1835 he delivered a course of lectures before that school on the affinity of those arts.

While in college Mr. Morse had paid special attention to chemistry and natural philosophy; but his love of art seemed to be the stronger; later, however, these sciences became a dominant pursuit with him. As far back as 1826-'7, he and Prof. J. Freeman Dana had been colleague lecturers at the Athenæum in the City of New York, the former lecturing on the fine arts, and the latter upon electro-magnetism. They were intimate friends, and in their conversation the subject of electro-magnetism was made familiar to the mind of Morse. The electro-magnet on Sturgeon's principle--the first ever shown in the United States--was exhibited and explained in Dana's lectures, and at a later date, by gift of Prof. Torrey, came into Morse's possession. Dana even then suggested, by his spiral volute coil, the electro-magnet of the present day; this was the magnet in use when Morse returned from Europe, and it is now used in every Morse telegraph throughout both hemispheres.