In person Whitney was of more than usual height, with much dignity of manner and an open, pleasant face. Among his particular friends no man was more esteemed. Some of the earliest of his intimate associates were among the latest. His sense of honor was high, and his feeling of resentment and indignation under injustice correspondingly strong. He could, however, be cool when his opponents were hot, and his strong sense of the injuries he had suffered did not impair the natural serenity of his temper. The value of his famous invention has so steadily grown that its money importance to this country can scarcely be estimated in figures. His tomb in New Haven is after a model of that of Scipio, at Rome, and bears the following inscription:
ELI WHITNEY,
The Inventor of the Cotton-Gin.
OF USEFUL SCIENCE AND ARTS, THE EFFICIENT PATRON
AND IMPROVER.
IN THE SOCIAL RELATIONS OF LIFE, A MODEL OF EXCELLENCE.
WHILE PRIVATE AFFECTION WEEPS AT HIS TOMB, HIS
COUNTRY HONORS HIS MEMORY.
Born Dec. 8, 1765. Died Jan. 8, 1825.
IV
ELIAS HOWE.
Elias Howe.
In looking over the history of great inventions it is remarkable how uniformly those discoveries that helped mankind most have been derided, abused, and opposed by the very classes which in the end they were destined to bless. Nearly every great invention has had literally to be forced into popular acceptance. The bowmen of the Middle Ages resisted the introduction of the musket; the sedan-chair carriers would not allow hackney carriages to be used; the stagecoach lines attempted by all possible devices to block the advance of the railway. When, in 1707, Dr. Papin showed his first rude conception of a steamboat, it was seized by the boatmen, who feared that it would deprive them of a living. Kay was mobbed in Lancashire when he tried to introduce his fly-shuttle; Hargreaves had his spinning-frame destroyed by a Blackburn mob; Crampton had to hide his spinning-mule in a lumber-room for fear of a similar fate; Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-frame, was denounced as the enemy of the working-classes and his mill destroyed; Jacquard narrowly escaped being thrown into the river Rhone by a crowd of furious weavers when his new loom was first put into operation; Cartwright had to abandon his power-loom for years because of the bitter animosity of the weavers toward it. Riots were organized in Nottingham against the use of the stocking-loom.