But Cornell did not think the underground wire would work.
"It will work," said Morse. "While I have been fighting Congress, men have laid short lines in England which work very well. What can be done there can be done here."
For all that, it would not work. A year passed and only seven thousand dollars of the money were left, and all the wires laid were of no use.
"If it won't go underground we must try and coax it to go over-ground," said Morse.
Poles were erected; the wire was strung on glass insulators; it now worked to a charm. On May 11, 1844, the Whig National Convention at Baltimore nominated Henry Clay for President, and the news was sent to Washington in all haste by the first railroad train. But the passengers were surprised to find that they brought stale news; everybody in Washington knew it already. It had reached there an hour or two before by telegraph. That was a great triumph for Morse. The telegraph line was not then finished quite to Baltimore. When it reached there, on May 24th, the first message sent was one which Miss Ellsworth had chosen from the Bible, "What hath God wrought?" God had wrought wonderfully indeed, for since then the electric wire has bound the ends of the earth together.
If I should attempt to tell you about all our inventors I am afraid it would be a long story. There is almost no end to them, and many of them invented wonderful machines. I might tell you, for instance, about Thomas Blanchard, who invented the machine by which tacks are made, dropping them down as fast as a watch can tick. This is only one out of many of his inventions. One of them was a steamboat to run in shallow water, and which could go hundreds of miles up rivers where Fulton's steamboat would have run aground.
Then there was Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaping machine. When he showed his reaper at the London World's Fair in 1851, the newspapers made great fun of it. The London "Times" said it was a cross between a chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying-machine. But when it was put in a wheat-field and gathered in the wheat like a living and thinking machine, they changed their tune, and the "Times" said it was worth more than all the rest of the Exhibition. This was the first of the great agricultural machines. Since then hundreds have been made, and the old-fashioned slow hand-work in the fields is over. McCormick made a fortune out of his machine. I cannot say that of all inventors, for many of them had as hard a time as Morse with his telegraph. Two of them, Charles Goodyear and Elias Howe, came as near starving as Professor Morse.
All the rubber goods we have to-day we owe to Charles Goodyear. Before his time India-rubber was of very little use. It would grow stiff in the winter and sticky in the summer, and people said it was a nuisance. What was wanted was a rubber that would stand heat and cold, and this Goodyear set himself to make.
After a time he tried mixing sulphur with the gum, and by accident touched a red-hot stove with the mixture. To his delight the gum did not melt. Here was the secret. Rubber mixed with sulphur and exposed to heat would stand heat and cold alike. He had made his discovery, but it took him six years more to make it a success, and he never made much money from it. Yet everybody honors him to-day as a great inventor.
Elias Howe had as hard a time with the sewing machine. For years he worked at it, and when he finished it nobody would buy it or use it. He went to London, as Morse had done, and had the same bad luck. He had to pawn his model and patent papers to get home again. His wife was very sick, and he reached home only in time to see her die.