Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

This man, afterward so famous in the history of India-rubber manufacture, was CHARLES GOODYEAR. He was born at New Haven, Connecticut, on the 29th of December, 1800. He attended a public school during his boyhood, thus acquiring a limited education. When quite a youth, he removed with his family to Philadelphia, where his father entered into the hardware business. Upon coming of age, he was admitted to partnership with his father and one of his brothers, the style of the firm being A. Goodyear & Sons. The house was extensively engaged in the manufacture of hardware, and among the other articles which they introduced was a light hay-fork, made of spring steel, which gradually took the place of the heavy wrought iron implement formerly in general use among the farmers. It required a large outlay and a great deal of time to introduce this fork, but, once in use, it rapidly drove the old one out of the market, and proved a source of considerable profit to its inventor. The prosperity of the house, however, soon began to wane, and it was brought to bankruptcy by the crisis of 1836.

Mr. Goodyear's attention had for some time been attracted to the wonderful apparent success of the India-rubber companies of the country, and he was hopeful that his improvement in the inflating apparatus of the life-preserver would bring him the means of partially extricating himself from his difficulties. Repairing to New York, he called on the agent of the Roxbury Company, and explaining his invention to him, offered to sell it to the company. The agent was struck with the skill displayed in the improvement of Mr. Goodyear, but, instead of offering to buy it, astounded the inventor by informing him of the real state of the India-rubber trade of the country. He urged Mr. Goodyear to exert his inventive skill to discover some means of imparting durability to India-rubber goods, and assured him that if he could discover a process which would secure that end, the various companies of the United States would eagerly buy it at his own price. He explained to him the process then in use, and pointed out its imperfections. Mr. Goodyear listened carefully to his statements, forgot all about his disappointment in failing to sell his improved inflating apparatus, and went home firmly convinced that he had found his true mission in life. In after years, when success had crowned his labors, he modestly referred to this period of his career in language the substance of which is thus recorded:

"From the time that his attention was first given to the subject, a strong and abiding impression was made upon his mind that an object so desirable and important, and so necessary to man's comfort, as the making of gum elastic available to his use was most certainly placed within his reach. Having this presentiment, of which he could not divest himself under the most trying adversity, he was stimulated with the hope, of ultimately attaining this object. Beyond this, he would refer the whole to the great Creator, who directs the operations of the mind to the development of properties of matter, in his own way, at the time when they are specially needed, influencing some mind for every work or calling."

There was something sublime in the attitude of this one man, now feeble in health, the only dependence of a young family, a bankrupt in business, starting out to seek success in a field in which so many had found only ruin. He was convinced in his own mind that he would master the secret, while his friends were equally sure that he would but increase his difficulties. The firm of which he had been a member had surrendered all their property to their creditors; but they still owed thirty thousand dollars, and immediately upon his return from New York, after his visit to the agent of the Roxbury Company, he was arrested for debt, and though not actually thrown in jail, was compelled to take up his residence within prison limits.

Strong in the conviction before named, that he was the man of all others to discover the secret of controlling India-rubber, he at once began his experiments. This was in the winter of 1834-35. The gum had fallen in price to five cents per pound, and, poor as he was, he had no difficulty in procuring a sufficient quantity to begin with. By melting and working the gum thoroughly, and by rolling it upon a stone table with a rolling-pin, he succeeded in producing sheets of India-rubber which seemed to him to possess the properties which those of Mr. Chaffee had lacked. He explained his process to a friend, who, becoming interested in it, loaned him the money to manufacture a number of shoes, which at first seemed all that could be desired. Fearful, however, of meeting the fate which had befallen the Roxbury Company, Mr. Goodyear put his shoes away until the next summer, to ascertain whether they would bear the heat. His doubts were more than realized. The warm weather completely ruined them, reducing them to a mass of so offensive an odor that he was glad to throw them away.

The friend of the inventor was thoroughly disheartened by this failure, and refused to have any thing more to do with Goodyear's schemes; but the latter, though much disappointed, did not despair. He set to work to discover the cause of his failure, and traced it, as he supposed, to the mixing of the gum with the turpentine and lamp-black. Having procured some barrels of the gum in its native liquid state, he spread it on cloth without smoking it or mixing it with any thing else. He succeeded in producing a very handsome white rubber cloth, but it was one that became soft and sticky as quickly as the other had done.

It now occurred to him that there must be some mineral substance which, mixed with the gum, would render it durable, and he began to experiment with almost every substance that he could lay his hands on. All these proved total failures, with the exception of magnesia. By mixing half a pound of magnesia with a pound of the gum, he produced a compound much whiter than the pure gum, and one which was at first as firm and flexible as leather. He made book-covers and piano-covers out of it, and for a time it seemed that he had discovered the longed-for secret; but in a month his pretty product was ruined. The heat caused it to soften; then fermentation set in, and, finally, it became as hard and brittle as thin glass.

His friends, who had aided him at first, now turned from him coldly, regarding him as a dreamer; and his own stock of money was exhausted. In his extremity he was forced to pawn all his own valuables, and even some of the trinkets of his wife. In spite of this, he felt sure that he was on the road to success, and that he would very soon be enabled to rise above his present difficulties, and win both fame and fortune. He was obliged for the time, however, to remove his family to the country, depositing with his landlord, as security for the payment of the first quarter's rent, some linen which had been spun by his wife, and which he was never able to redeem. Having settled his family in the country, he set out for New York, where he hoped to find some one willing to aid him in extending his researches still further.

Arrived in the great city, he found two old acquaintances, to whom he stated his plans and his hopes. One of them offered him the use of a room in Gold Street, as a laboratory, and the other, who was a druggist, agreed to let him have such chemicals as he needed on credit. He now proceeded to boil the gum, mixed with magnesia, in quicklime and water, and, as the result, obtained sheets of his compound whose firmness and smoothness of surface won them a medal at the fair of the American Institute in 1835. He seemed now on the point of success, and readily disposed of all the sheets he could manufacture. The newspapers spoke highly of his invention, for which he obtained a patent; and he was about to endeavor to enlist some persons of means in its manufacture on a large scale, when, to his dismay, he discovered that a single drop of the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple, or diluted vinegar, would utterly destroy the influence of the lime in the compound, and reduce it to the old sticky substance that had baffled him so often.

His next step was to mix quicklime with the gum. In order to work the compound thoroughly, he used to carry the vessel containing it, on his shoulder, to a place three miles distant from his laboratory, where he had the use of horse power. The lime, however, utterly destroyed the gum, and nothing came of this experiment.