N. Rillieux Evaporating Pan. No. 4,879
Patented Dec. 10, 1846

[Enlarge Image]

Let us turn now to a consideration of those inventions made by colored inventors since the war period, and at a time when no obstacles stood in the way. With the broadening of their industrial opportunities, and the incentive of a freer market for the products of their talent, it was thought that the Negroes would correspondingly exhibit inventive genius, and the records abundantly prove this to have been true. But how have these records been made available? It has already been shown that no distinction as to race appears in the public records of the Patent Office, and for this reason the Patent Office has been repeatedly importuned to set in motion some scheme of inquiry that would disclose, as far as is possible, how many patents have been granted by the government for the inventions of Negroes. This has been done by the Patent Office on two different occasions. The first official inquiry was made by the Office at the request of the United States Commission to the Paris Exposition of 1900, and the second at the request of the Pennsylvania Commission conducting the Emancipation Exposition at Philadelphia in 1913. In both instances the Patent Office sent out several thousand circular letters directed to prominent patent lawyers, large manufacturing firms, and to newspapers of wide circulation, asking them to inform the Commissioner of Patents of any authentic instances known by them to be such, in which the patents granted by the Office had been for inventions by Negroes.

The replies were numerous, interesting and informing. Every one of the several thousand that came to the Patent Office was turned over to the writer who, in his capacity as an employee of that department, very willingly assumed the additional task of assorting and recording them, verifying when possible the information presented, and extending the correspondence personally when this proved to be necessary either to trace a clew or clinch a fact. The information obtained in this way showed, first, that a very large number of colored inventors had consulted patent lawyers on the subject of getting patents on their inventions, but were obliged finally to abandon the project for lack of funds; secondly, that many colored inventors had actually obtained patents for meritorious inventions, but the attorneys were unable to give sufficient data to identify the cases specifically, inasmuch as they had kept no identifying record of the same; thirdly, that many patents had been taken out by the attorneys for colored clients who preferred not to have their racial identity disclosed because of the probably injurious effect this might have upon the commercial value of their patents; and lastly, that more than a thousand authentic cases were fully identified by name of inventor, date and number of patent and title of invention, as being the patents granted for inventions of Negroes. These patents represent inventions in nearly every branch of the industrial arts—in domestic devices, in mechanical appliances, in electricity through all its wide range of uses, in engineering skill and in chemical compounds. The fact is made quite clear that the names obtained were necessarily only a fractional part of the number granted patents.

It developed through these inquiries that some very important industries now in operation on a large scale in our country are based on the inventions of Negroes. Foremost among these is the gigantic enterprise known as The United Shoe Machinery Company of Boston. In a biographical sketch of its president, Mr. Sidney W. Winslow, a multimillionaire,[19] it is related that he claims to have laid the foundation of his immense fortune in the purchase of a patent for an invention by a Dutch Guiana Negro named Jan E. Matzeliger. This inventor was born in Dutch Guiana, September, 1852. His parents were a native Negro woman and her husband, a Dutch engineer, who had been sent there from Holland to direct the government construction works at that place. As a very young man Matzeliger came to this country and served an apprenticeship as a cobbler, first in Philadelphia and later in Lynn, Massachusetts. The hardships which he suffered gradually undermined his health and before being able to realize the full value of his invention, he passed away in 1889 in the thirty-seventh year of his age.

He invented a machine for lasting shoes. This was the first appliance of its kind capable of performing all the steps required to hold a shoe on its last, grip and pull the leather down around the heel, guide and drive the nails into place and then discharge the completed shoe from the machine. This patent when bought by Mr. Winslow was made to form the nucleus of the great United Shoe Machinery Company, which now operates on a capital stock of more than twenty million dollars, gives regular employment to over 5,000 operatives, occupies with its factories more than 20 acres of ground, and represents the consolidation of over 40 subsidiary companies. The establishment and maintenance of this gigantic business enterprise forms one of the biggest items in the history of our country's industrial development.

Within the first twenty years following the formation of The United Shoe Machinery Company, in 1890, the product of American shoe manufacturers increased from $220,000,000 to $442,631,000, and during the same period the export of American shoes increased from $1,000,000 to $11,000,000, the increase being traceable solely to the superiority of the shoes produced by the new American machines, founded on the Matzeliger type. The cost of shoes was reduced more than 50 per cent. by these machines and the quality improved correspondingly. The wages of workers greatly increased, the hours of labor diminished, and the factory conditions surrounding the laborers immensely improved. The improvement thus brought about in the quality and price of American shoes has made the Americans the best shod people in the world.[20]

That invention will serve as Matzeliger's towering monument far beyond our vision of years. Throughout all shoe-making districts of New England and elsewhere the Matzeliger type of machine is well known, and to this day it is frequently referred to in trade circles as the "Nigger machine," the relic, perhaps, of a possible contemptuous reference to his racial identity; and yet there were some newspaper accounts of his life in which it was denied that he had Negro blood in him. A certified copy of the death certificate of Matzeliger, which was furnished the writer by William J. Connery, Mayor of Lynn, on Oct. 23, 1912, states that Matzeliger was a mulatto.