Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 / A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History

by Unknown

Very few inventors have achieved success in giving to the world new or improved methods of carrying on the business of life without long and hard study, repeated experiments and failures, and trying struggles with opposing elements. Many have labored through long years of poverty and obscurity to dazzle their fellow-beings in the end by the triumph of genius. The idea of an inventor has almost become coupled with that of anxiety, patient or impatient waiting, trials, and hardships. They are usually enthusiasts in the special pursuit to which they devote themselves, and the coldness and incredulity of those whose approval they seek to win, wear heavily upon them. The chilling common-sense of men more practical than themselves overwhelms them.

If the wonderful improvements of the present and the past age could be placed in comparison with the attempts, the struggles, to accomplish what has now been achieved, the list of failures would far outnumber that of successes. Many of those who have rendered priceless blessings to their own and after generations by the production of wonderful machines or methods from the fine fibre of their brains, were plundered and buffeted, even in the midst of their grand successes, to such a degree that it requires a lofty comprehension to determine whether their lives were triumphs or defeats. Sometimes the failure of one generation becomes the success of the next.

Born the same year that gave Robert Fulton to the world was Eli Whitney, who really made "cotton king," so that the great staple of the South yielded millions upon millions of dollars to the planters; but he might have died a beggar, so far as his marvellous invention affected his fortunes. Before he had fully completed his machine for separating the seeds from the cotton, which only two persons had been permitted to see, his workshop was broken open, and it was stolen. His idea was incorporated in other machines before he had obtained his patent, though it was only his own that transmuted cotton into gold. False reports, the repudiation of contracts for royalties fairly made, the refusal of Congress, through Southern influence, to renew his patent, constant litigation to protect his rights, harassed his life, and robbed him of the pecuniary results of his success. Defeated, he gave up the battle, devoted his attention to the manufacture of firearms, and finally made a fortune in this business. Fulton's experience was not very different.

On the other hand, important discoveries in methods and mechanical appliances have been made by accident, as it were, and fortunes accrued from very little labor or study; but these are the exceptions rather than the rule.

It would be difficult to estimate the influence upon the prosperity of the United States of steam-navigation. It came but a few years after the organization of the Federal Government, when the greater portion of the territorial extent of the country was a wilderness, and preceded the general use of railroads by a quarter of a century. Transportation on the inland waters of the nation was slow, difficult, and expensive, and the introduction of the steamboat upon its great lakes and rivers, notably upon the latter, was a new era in its history. On the great streams of the West flatboats floated for weeks, laden with the productions of the States, on their way to a market, where days or hours are sufficient at the present time. Between the metropolis of the nation and the capital of New York, the sloops, which were the only means of communication by water, required an average of four days to make the trip of about one hundred and fifty miles, while to-day it is accomplished in half a day or less.

Now all the navigable rivers of the country are alive with steamboats, and the growth and development of the States have been mainly indebted to the introduction of steam navigation. On the great lakes, though more available for transportation by means of sailing vessels, the same powerful agency has achieved wonders, and all of them are now covered by lines of steamers, by which, either as tow-boats or independent vessels, a large proportion of the inland commerce of the nation is carried on. On the ocean the result of the introduction of steam-navigation is even more impressive, and nations separated by thousands of miles of rolling billows now join hands, as it were, with hearts commercially united, if not more intimately, through the medium of peace-giving commerce, of which thousands of gigantic steamers are the angel-messengers. On the Atlantic a score or more of them leave the one side for the other every week, and at the present time a merchant may breakfast in New York on Saturday, and dine in London the next Saturday.

It is now conceded, both in Europe and America, that the world is indebted to Robert Fulton for the practical application of steam to the purposes of navigation. Whatever has been claimed for or by others in regard to the priority of the invention or application of the mighty power of steam to the propulsion of vessels, Fulton was "the first to apply it with any degree of practical success," as an English work states it. As one who labored for years over the idea which came from his own brain, though it also came to others, who wellnigh sacrificed his own life in its improvement, and who achieved the crowning glory of its utility, he is certainly entitled to be regarded and honored as the Father of Steam-Navigation.

Robert Fulton was born in a small village near Lancaster, in the State of Pennsylvania, in the year 1765. He was the son of a poor man of Scotch-Irish descent, who died when his son was only three years old. He obtained only a common-school education, which he afterward increased by his own efforts. He early manifested a taste for, and considerable skill in, drawing and painting, and he selected this art as his profession, though he was more inclined to mechanical occupations, and spent his leisure hours in the shops of the workmen in his vicinity. He was somewhat precocious in his development, and at the age of seventeen he established himself as a portrait painter. He could hardly have attained to any high standard in art, though it appears that he had considerable success in his occupation, for at the age of twenty-one he had purchased a small farm in the western part of the State, where he placed his mother, indicating that he had a proper filial regard for the welfare of his remaining parent. It was evident from this success that he had decided talent and that it attracted the attention of others.