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C
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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
"I
R
S
." 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.
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