Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

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 that this revelation came to him, and in the following manner: Standing before a stove in a store at Woburn, Massachusetts, 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 cloths 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 shriveled, 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 certain time, would not melt or even 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 degree of cold. The difficulty now consisted in finding out the exact degree of heat necessary for the perfection 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 debtor's 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. His poverty was a greater drawback to him than ever before. 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 as far as it would go. When this failed, he would go 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 mason's 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 declared with equal emphasis that, at that time, they never expected to witness his success. He was yellow and shriveled 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, Mr. 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 honesty, 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 has 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 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 aid him. Mr. Coolidge[^[H]] —for such was the gentleman's name—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 some one of the superiority of his new method. He was beginning to understand the causes 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 numerous, 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, 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 fifty dollars, 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 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 five dollars 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, inclosing seven dollars, 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."

He had now reached the lowest ebb of his misery, and a brighter day was in store for him. Obtaining fifty dollars from a relative, he went to New York, where he succeeded in interesting in his discovery two brothers, William and Emory Rider. They agreed to advance him a certain sum to support his family and continue his experiments. By means of this aid he was enabled to keep his family from want in the future, and from that time his experiments never flagged. Before entire success crowned his efforts, the brothers Rider failed; but he had advanced his experiments so greatly that his brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a rich woolen manufacturer, came to his support, and supplied him with the means to go on with his labors. Mr. De Forrest's total advances amounted to forty-six thousand dollars, from which fact the reader may gain some idea of the obstacles overcome by Goodyear in this last stage of his invention.

The prize for which he had labored so long and so heroically was secured at last, and in 1844, ten years after the commencement of his experiments, he was able to produce perfectly vulcanized India-rubber with expedition and economy, and, above all, with certainty. He had won a success which added a new material to art and commerce, and one which could be applied in a thousand different ways, and all of them useful to man. But great as his success was, he was not satisfied with it. To the end of his life his constant effort was to improve his invention, and apply it to new uses. He had an unlimited faith in its adaptability, believing that there was scarcely any article of general use that could not be made of it. Upon one occasion he read in a newspaper that twenty persons perished every hour by drowning. The statement impressed him deeply, and his wife noticed that for several nights he scarcely slept at all. "Try to compose yourself, and sleep," she said to him. "Sleep!" he exclaimed, "how can I sleep when twenty human beings are drowning every hour, and I am the man that can save them?" And at this time it was his constant endeavor to invent some article of India-rubber which could be easily carried by travelers, and which would render it impossible for them to sink in water.

Having brought his process to a successful completion in this country, and obtained patents for it, he went to Europe to secure similar protections in the principal countries of the Old World. "The French laws require that the patentee shall put and keep his invention in public use in France within two years from its date. Goodyear had, at great inconvenience and expense, endeavored to comply with this and with all other requirements of the French laws, and thought he had effectually done so; but the courts of France decided that he had not in every particular complied with the strict requisitions of the law, and that, therefore, his patent in France had become void. In England he was still more unfortunate. Having sent specimens of vulcanized fabrics to Charles Mackintosh & Co., in 1842, and having opened with them a negotiation for the sale of the secret of the invention or discovery, one of the partners of that firm, named Thomas Hancock, availing himself, as he admits, of the hints and opportunities thus presented to him, rediscovered, as he affirms, the process of vulcanization, and described it in a patent for England, which was enrolled on May 21, 1844, about five weeks after the specification and publication of the discovery to the world by Goodyear's patent for vulcanization in France. And the patent of Hancock, held good according to a peculiarity of English law, thus superseded Goodyear's English patent for vulcanization, which bore date a few days later. Goodyear, however, obtained the great council medal of the exhibition of all nations at London, the grand medal of the world's exhibition at Paris, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, presented by Napoleon III."