Believing that he could struggle along better alone, Howe sent his family home with the first few dollars that he could obtain from the other side and remained in London. There were certain things which caused him to hope for better times ahead. But such hopes were delusive, it seems, and after some months of hardship he followed his family to this country, pawning his model and his patent papers in order to obtain the necessary money for the passage. As he landed in New York with less than a dollar in his pocket, he received news that his wife was dying of consumption in Cambridge. He had no money for travelling by rail, and he was too feeble to attempt the journey on foot. It took him some days to obtain the money for his fare to Boston, but he arrived in time to be present at the death-bed of his wife. Before he could recover from this blow he had news that the ship by which he had sent home the few household goods still remaining to him had gone to the bottom.
This was poor Howe's darkest hour. Others had seen the value of the sewing-machine, and during his absence in England several imitations of it had been made and sold to great advantage by unscrupulous mechanics, who had paid no attention to the rights of the inventor. Such machines were already spoken of as wonders by the newspapers, and were beginning to be used in several industries. Howe's patent was so strong that it was not difficult to find money to defend it, once the practical value of the invention had been well established, and in August, 1850, he began several suits to make his rights clear. At the same time he moved to New York, where he began in a small way to manufacture machines in partnership with a business man named Bliss, who undertook to sell them.
It was not until Howe's rights to the invention had been fully established, which was done by the decision of Judge Sprague, in 1854, that the real value of the sewing-machine as a money-making venture began to be apparent and even then its great importance was so little realized, even by Bliss, who was in the business and died in 1855, that Howe was enabled to buy the interest of his heirs for a small sum. It was during these efforts to introduce the sewing-machine that occurred what were known as the sewing-machine riots—disturbances of no special importance, however—fomented by labor leaders in the New York shops in which cheap clothing was manufactured. Howe's sewing-machine was denounced as a menace to the thousands of men and women who worked in these shops, and in several establishments the first Howe machines introduced were so injured by mischievous persons as to retard the success of the experiment for nearly a year. Failing to stop their introduction by such means a public demonstration against them was organized and for a time threatened such serious trouble that some of the large shops gave up the use of the machine; but in small establishments employing but a few workmen they continued to be used and were soon found to be so indispensable that all opposition faded away.
The patent suits forced upon Howe by a number of infringers were costly drains upon the inventor, but in the end all other manufacturers were compelled to pay tribute to him, and in six years his royalties grew from $300 to more than $200,000 a year. In 1863 his royalties were estimated at $4,000 a day. At the Paris Exposition of 1867 he was awarded a gold medal and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
Howe's health, never strong, was so thoroughly broken by the years of struggle and hardship he met with while trying to introduce his machine that he never completely recovered. If honors and money were any comfort to him, his last years must have been happy ones, for his invention made him famous, and he had been enough of a workingman to recognize the blessing he had conferred upon millions of women released from the slavery of the needle; he had answered Hood's "Song of the Shirt." He died on October 3, 1867, at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Those who knew Howe personally speak of him as rather a handsome man, with a head somewhat like Franklin's and a reserved, quiet manner. His bitter struggle against poverty and disease left its impress upon him even to the last. One trait frequently mentioned was his readiness to find good points in the thousand and one variations and sometimes improvements upon his invention. During the years 1858-67, when he died, there were recorded nearly three hundred patents affecting the sewing-machine, taken out by other inventors. Howe was always ready to help along such improvements by advice and often by money. He fought sturdily for his rights, but once those conceded he was a generous rival.