But poor Whitney did not get the good from his invention that he deserved, for a terrible misfortune happened to him. Many people came to see the invention, but he kept the workshop locked, for he did not want strangers to see it till he had it finished and his patent granted. The end was, that one night some thieves broke into the shop and stole the model, and there were some machines made and in operation before the poor inventor could make another model and secure his patent.
This is only one of the instances in which an inventor has been robbed of the work of his brain, and others have grown rich by it, while he has had trouble to make a living. A Mr. Miller, who afterward married Mrs. Greene, went into partnership with Whitney, and supplied him with funds, and he got out a patent in 1794. But the demand for the machines was so great that he could not begin to supply them, and the pirated machines, though they were much inferior to his perfected ones, were eagerly bought. Then his shop burned with all its contents, and that made him a bankrupt.
For years after that Whitney sought to obtain justice. In some of the States he was fairly treated and in others he was not, and in 1812 Congress refused to renew the patent, and the field was thrown open for everybody to make the machines. Nearly all he ever got for his invention was fifty thousand dollars paid him by the Legislature of South Carolina.
In later years Whitney began to make fire-arms for the government, and he was so successful in this that he grew rich, while he greatly improved the machinery and methods. It was he who first began to make each part separately, so it would fit in any gun, a system now used in all branches of manufacture. As for the cotton industry, to which Eli Whitney gave the first great start, it will suffice to say that its product has grown from less than one thousand bales, when he began his work, to over ten million bales a year.
HOW OLD HICKORY FOUGHT THE CREEKS.
Shall we seek to picture to our readers a scene in the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, less than a century ago, though it seems to belong to the days of barbarism? Two groups of men, made up of the most respectable citizens of the place, stood furiously shooting at each other with pistols and guns, as if this was their idea of after-dinner recreation. Their leaders were Colonel Thomas H. Benton, afterward famous in the United States Senate, and General Andrew Jackson, famous in a dozen ways. The men of the frontier in those days were hot in temper and quick in action, and family feuds led quickly to wounds and death, as they still do in the mountains of East Tennessee.
Some trifling quarrel, that might perhaps have been settled by five minutes of common-sense arbitration, led to this fierce fray, in the midst of which Jesse Benton, brother of the colonel, fired at Jackson with a huge pistol, loaded to the muzzle with bullets and slugs. It was like a charge of grape-shot. A slug from it shattered Jackson's left shoulder, a ball sank to the bone in his left arm, and another ball splintered a board by his side.
When the fight ended Jackson was found insensible in the entry of a tavern, with the blood pouring profusely from his wounds. He was carried in and all the doctors of the town were summoned, but before the bleeding could be stopped two mattresses were soaked through with blood. The doctors said the arm was so badly injured that it must be taken off at once. But when Old Hickory set his lips in his grim way, and said, "I'll keep my arm," the question was settled; no one dare touch that arm.