Inventors Part 4

WHILE PRIVATE AFFECTION WEEPS AT HIS TOMB, HIS COUNTRY HONORS HIS MEMORY.

BORN DEC. 8, 1765. DIED JAN. 8, 1825.

IV

ELIAS HOWE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cla.s.ses 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 Lancas.h.i.+re 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-cla.s.ses 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.

It is not therefore surprising that the greatest labor-saving machine of domestic life, the sewing-machine, should have been received with anything but thanks. Howe was abused, ridiculed, and denounced as the enemy of man, and especially of poor sewing-women, the very cla.s.s whose toil he has done so much to lighten. Curses instead of blessings were showered upon him during the first years that followed the successful working of his wonderful machine. Fortunately for the inventor, the age of persecution had almost pa.s.sed, and Howe lived to receive the rewards he so fully deserved.

Elias Howe, Jr., was born in Spencer, Ma.s.s., in 1819. His father was a farmer and miller, and the eight children of the family, as was common with all poor people of the time, were early taught to do light work of one kind or another. When Elias was six years old he was set with his brothers and sisters at sticking wire teeth through the leather straps used for cotton-cards. When older he helped his father in the mill, and in summer picked up a little book knowledge at the district school. As a boy he was frail in const.i.tution, and he was slightly lame. When eleven years old he attempted farm labor for a neighbor, but, was not strong enough for it and returned to his father's mill, where he remained until he was sixteen. It was here that he first began to like machinery.

A friend who had visited Lowell gave him such an account of that bustling city and its big mills that young Howe, becoming dissatisfied, obtained his father's consent to leave, and found employment in one of the Lowell cotton-mills. The financial crash of 1837 stopped the looms, and Howe obtained a place in a Cambridge machine-shop in which his cousin, Nathaniel P. Banks, afterward Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, also worked. Howe's first job happened to be upon a new hemp-carding machine of Treadwell.

At the age of twenty-one Howe married and moved to Boston, finding employment in the machine-shop of Ari Davis. He is described as being a capital workman, more full of resources than of plodding industry, however, and rather apt to spend more time in suggesting a better way of doing a job than in following instructions. With such a disposition, and inasmuch as his suggestions were not considered of value, he had rather a hard time of it. Three children were born to the young couple. As Howe's earnings were slight and his health none of the best, his wife tried to add to the family income, and at evening, when Howe lay exhausted upon the bed after his day's work, the young mother patiently sewed. Her toil was to some purpose. With his natural bent for mechanics, Howe could not be a silent witness of this incessant and poorly paid labor without becoming interested in affording aid.

Moreover, he was constantly employed upon new spinning and weaving machines for doing work that for thousands of years had been done painfully and slowly by hand. The possibility of sewing by machinery had often been spoken of before that day, but the problem seemed to present insuperable difficulties.

Elias Howe had, as we know, peculiar fitness for such work. He had seen much of inventors and inventions, and knew something of the dangers and disappointments in store for him. In the intervals between important jobs at the shop he nursed the idea of a sewing-machine, keeping his own counsel. In his first rude attempt it appeared to him, that machine-sewing could only be accomplished with very coa.r.s.e thread or string; fine thread would not stand the strain. For his first machine he made a needle pointed at both ends, with an eye in the middle; it was arranged to work up and down, carrying the thread through at each thrust. It was only after more than a year's work upon this device that he decided it would not do. This first attempt was a sort of imitation of sewing by hand, the machine following more or less the movements of the hand. Finally, after repeated failures, it became plain to him that something radically different was needed, and that there must be another st.i.tch, and perhaps another needle or half a dozen needles, in such a machine. He then conceived the idea of using two threads, and making the st.i.tch by means of a shuttle and a curved needle with the eye near the point. This was the real solution of the problem. In October, 1844, he made a rough model of his first sewing-machine, all of wood and wire, and found that it would actually sew.

In one of the earliest accounts of the invention it is thus described: "He used a needle and a shuttle of novel construction, and combined them with holding surfaces, feed mechanism, and other devices as they had never before been brought together in one machine.... One of the princ.i.p.al features of Mr. Howe's invention is the combination of a grooved needle having an eye near its point, and vibrating in the direction of its length, with a side-pointed shuttle for effecting a locked st.i.tch, and forming, with the threads, one on each side of the cloth, a firm and lasting seam not easily ripped."

Meanwhile Howe had given up work as a machinist and had moved to his father's house in Cambridge, where the elder Howe had a shop for the cutting of palm-leaf used in the manufacture of hats. Here Elias and his little family lived, and in the garret the inventor put up a lathe upon which he made the parts of his sewing-machine. To provide for his family he did such odd jobs as he could find; but it was hard work to get bread, to say nothing of b.u.t.ter, and to make matters worse his father lost his shop by fire. Elias knew that his sewing-machine would work, but he had no money wherewith to buy the materials for a machine of steel and iron, and without such a machine he could not hope to interest capital in it. He needed at least $500 with which to prove the value of his great invention.

Fortune threw in his way a coal and wood dealer of Cambridge, named Fisher, who had some money. Fisher liked the invention and agreed to board Howe and his family, to give Howe a workshop in his house, and to advance the $500 necessary for the construction of a first machine. In return he was to become a half owner in the patent should Howe succeed in obtaining one. In December, 1844, Howe accordingly moved into Fisher's house, and here the new marvel was brought into the world. All that winter Howe worked over his device in Fisher's garret, making many changes as unforeseen difficulties arose. He worked all day, and sometimes nearly all night, succeeding by April, 1845, in sewing a seam four yards long with his machine. By the middle of May the machine was completed, and in July Howe sewed with it the seams of two woollen suits, one for himself and the other for Fisher; the sewing was so well done that it promised to outlast the cloth. For many years this machine was exhibited in a shop in New York. It showed how completely, at really the first attempt, Howe had mastered the enormous difficulties in his way. Its chief features are those upon which were founded all the sewing-machines that followed.

Late in 1845 Howe obtained his first patent and began to take means to introduce his sewing-machine to the public. He first offered it to the tailors of Boston, who admitted its usefulness, but a.s.sured him that it would never be adopted, as it would ruin their trade. Other efforts were equally unsuccessful; the more perfectly the machine did its work, the more obstinate and determined seemed to be the resistance to it.

Everyone admitted and praised the ingenuity of the invention, but no one would invest a dollar in it. Fisher became disheartened and withdrew from the partners.h.i.+p, and Howe and his family moved back into his father's house.

For a time the poor inventor abandoned his machine and obtained a place as engineer on a railway, driving a locomotive, until his health entirely broke down. Forced to turn again to his beloved sewing-machine for want of anything better to do, Howe decided to send his brother Amasa to England with a machine. Amasa reached London in October, 1846, and met a certain William Thomas, to whom he explained the invention.

Thomas was much impressed with its possibilities and offered $1,250 for the machine and also to engage Elias Howe at $15 a week if he would enter his business of umbrella and corset maker. This was at least a livelihood to the latter, and he sailed for England, where for the next eight months he worked for Thomas, whom he found an uncommonly hard master. He was indeed so harshly treated that, although his wife and three children had arrived in London, he threw up his situation. For a time his condition was a piteous one. He was in a strange country, without friends or money. For days at a time the little family were without more than crusts to live upon.

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 hards.h.i.+p he followed his family to this country, p.a.w.ning his model and his patent papers in order to obtain the necessary money for the pa.s.sage. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 partners.h.i.+p 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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 hards.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+rt." 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 st.u.r.dily for his rights, but once those conceded he was a generous rival.

V.

SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Birthplace of S.F.B. Morse, Built 1775.]

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was the eldest son of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, an eminent New England divine. The Rev. Samuel Finley, D.D., second president of the College of New Jersey, Princeton, was his maternal great-grandfather, after whom he was named. Breese was the maiden name of his mother. The famous inventor of the telegraph was born at the foot of Breed's Hill, Charlestown, Ma.s.s., April 27, 1791. Dr.

Belknap, of Boston, writing to Postmaster-General Hazard, New York, says:

"Congratulate the Monmouth judge (Mr. Breese, the grandfather) on the birth of a grandson. Next Sunday he is to be loaded with names, not quite so many as the Spanish amba.s.sador who signed the treaty of peace of 1783, but only four. As to the child, I saw him asleep, so can say nothing of his eye, or his genius peeping through it. He may have the sagacity of a Jewish rabbi, or the profundity of a Calvin, or the sublimity of a Homer for aught I know, but time will bring forth all things."

Jedediah Morse studied theology under the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Edwards.

Before he began preaching, and while teaching school in New Haven, he began his "American Geography," which was afterward indentified with his name. He began his ministry at Norwich, whence he was called back to be tutor in Yale. His health was inadequate to the work and he went to Georgia, returning to Charlestown, Ma.s.s., as pastor of the First Congregational Church, on the day that Was.h.i.+ngton was inaugurated as President in New York, April 30, 1789. Dr. Eliot, speaking of Jedediah Morse, said: "What an astonis.h.i.+ng impetus that man has!" President Dwight said: "He is as full of resources as an egg is of meat." Daniel Webster spoke of him as "always thinking, always writing, always talking, always acting."

[Ill.u.s.tration: S.F.B. Morse.]

Morse's mother, Elizabeth Anne Breese, came of good Scotch-Irish stock.

She was married to Jedediah Morse in 1789, and was noted as a calm, judicious, and thinking woman, with a will of her own. When the child, Samuel F.B. Morse, was four years old he was sent to school to an old lady within a few hundred yards of the parsonage. She was an invalid, unable to leave her chair, and governed her unruly flock with a long rattan which reached across the small room in which it was gathered. One of her punishments was pinning the culprit to her own dress, and Morse remarks that his first attempts at drawing were discouraged in this fas.h.i.+on. Perhaps the fact that he selected the old lady's face as a model had something to do with it. At the age of seven he was sent to school at Andover, where he was fitted for entering Phillips Academy, and prepared here for Yale, joining the cla.s.s of 1807. When he was thirteen years old, at Andover, he wrote a sketch of Demosthenes and sent it to his father, by whom it was preserved as a mark of the learning and taste of the child. Dr. Timothy Dwight was then president of Yale and a warm friend of the elder Morse. Finley Morse, as he was then known, received therefore the deep personal interest of Dr. Dwight.

Jeremiah Day was professor of natural philosophy in Yale College, and under his instruction Morse began the study of electricity, receiving perhaps those impressions that were destined to produce so great an influence upon him and, through him, upon this century. Professor Day was then young and ardent in the pursuit of science, kindling readily the enthusiasm of his students. He afterward became president of the college. There was at the same time in the faculty Benjamin Silliman, who was professor of chemistry, and near whom Morse resided for several years. Years afterward the testimony of Professors Day and Silliman was given in court, when it was important, in the defence of his claim to priority in the invention of the telegraph. Through them Morse was able to show that he was early interested in the study of chemistry and electricity. During this litigation Morse did not know that there were scores of letters, written by him as a young student to his father, among the papers of Dr Jedediah Morse, that would have shown conclusively his interest and apt.i.tude in these studies. The papers were brought to light when the life of Morse by Prime came to be written.

The first part of Morse's life was devoted to art. At a very early age he showed his taste in this direction, and at the age of fifteen painted a fairly good picture in water colors of a room in his father's house, with his parents, himself, and two brothers around a table. This picture used to hang in his home in New York by the side of his last painting.

From that time his desire to become an artist haunted him through his collegiate life. In February, 1811, he painted a picture, now in the office of the mayor of Charlestown, Ma.s.s., depicting the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, which, with a landscape painted at about the same time, decided his father, by the advice of Stuart, to permit him to visit Europe with Was.h.i.+ngton Allston. He bore letters to West and to Copley, from both of whom he received the kindest attention and encouragement.

As a test for his fitness for a place as student in the Royal Academy, Morse made a drawing from a small cast of the Farnese Hercules. He took this to West, who examined the drawing carefully and handed it back, saying: "Very well, sir, very well; go on and finish it." "It is finished," said the expectant student. "Oh, no," said the president.

"Look here, and here, and here," pointing out many unfinished places which had escaped the eye of the young artist. Morse quickly observed the defects, spent a week in further perfecting his drawing, and then took it to West, confident that it was above criticism. The venerable president of the Academy bestowed more praise than before and, with a pleasant smile, handed it back to Morse, saying: "Very well, indeed, sir. Go on and finish it." "Is it not finished?" inquired the almost discouraged student. "See," said West, "you have not marked that muscle, nor the articulation of the finger-joints." Three days more were spent upon the drawing, when it was taken back to the implacable critic. "Very clever, indeed," said West; "very clever. Now go on and finish it." "I cannot finish it," Morse replied, when the old man, patting him on the shoulder, said: "Well, I have tried you long enough. Now, sir, you have learned more by this drawing than you would have accomplished in double the time by a dozen half-finished beginnings. It is not many drawings, but the character of one which makes a thorough draughtsman. Finish one picture, sir, and you are a painter."

Morse heeded this advice. He went to work with Allston, and encouraged by the veteran, Copley, he began upon a large picture for exhibition in the Royal Academy, choosing as his subject "The Dying Hercules." He modelled his figure in clay, as the best of the old painters did. It was his first attempt in the sculptor's art. The cast was made in plaster and taken to West, who was delighted with it. This model contended for the prize of a gold medal offered by the Society of Arts for the best original cast of a single figure, and won it. In the large room of the London Adelphi, in the presence of the British n.o.bility, foreign amba.s.sadors, and distinguished strangers, the Duke of Norfolk publicly presented the medal to Morse on May 13, 1813. At the same time the painting from this model, then on exhibition at the Royal Academy, received great praise from the critics, who placed "The Dying Hercules"

among the first twelve pictures in a collection of almost two thousand.

This was an extraordinary success for so young a man, and Morse determined to try for the highest prize offered by the Royal Academy for the best historical composition, the decision to be made in 1815. For that purpose he produced his "Judgment of Jupiter" in July of that year.

West a.s.sured him that it would take the prize, but Morse was unable to comply with the rules of the Academy, which required the victor to receive the medal in person. His father had summoned him home. West urged the Academy to make an exception in his case, but it could not be done, and the young painter had to be contented with his a.s.surances that he would certainly have won the prize (a gold medal and $250) had he remained.

West was always kind to Americans, and Morse was a favorite with him.

One day, when the venerable painter was at work upon his great picture, "Christ Rejected," after carefully examining Morse's hands and noting their beauty, he said: "Let me tie you with this cord and take that place while I paint in the hands of the Saviour." This was done, and when he released the young artist, he said to him: "You may now say, if you please, that you had a hand in this picture." A number of noted English artists--Turner, Northcote, Sir James Lawrence, Flaxman--and literary men--Coleridge, Wordsworth, Rogers, and Crabbe among them--were attracted by young Morse's proficiency and pleasant manners, and when in August, 1815, he packed his picture, "The Judgment of Jupiter," and sailed for home, he bore with him the good wishes of some of England's most distinguished men.

When Morse reached Boston, although but twenty-four years old, he found that fame had preceded him. His prestige was such that he set up his easel with high hopes and fair prospects for the future, both destined soon to be dispelled. The taste of America had not risen to the appreciation of historical pictures. His original compositions and his excellent copies of the masterpieces of the Old World excited the admiration of cultured people, but no orders were given for them. He left Boston almost penniless after having waited for months for patronage, and determined to try to earn his bread by painting the portraits of people in the rural districts of New England, where his father's name was a household word. During the autumn of 1816 and the winter of 1816-1817 he visited several towns in New Hamps.h.i.+re and Vermont, painting portraits in Walpole, Hanover, Windsor, Portsmouth, and Concord. He received the modest sum of $15 for each portrait. From Concord, N.H., he writes to his parents: "I am still here (August 16th) and am pa.s.sing my time very agreeably. I have painted five portraits at $15 each, and have two more engaged and many talked of. I think I shall get along well. I believe I could make an independent fortune in a few years if I devoted myself exclusively to portraits, so great is the desire for good portraits in the different country towns." He doubtless was candid when he wrote that he was "pa.s.sing his time in Concord very agreeably," for it was here that he met Lucretia P. Walker, who was accounted the most beautiful and accomplished young lady of the town, whom Morse subsequently married. She was a young woman of great personal loveliness and rare good sense. The young artist was attracted by her beauty, her sweetness of temper, and high intellectual qualities. All the letters that she wrote to him before and after their marriage he carefully preserved, and these are witnesses to her intelligence, education, tenderness of feeling, and admirable fitness to be the wife of such a man. Gradually Morse's portraits became so much in demand that he was enabled to increase his price to $60, and as he painted four a week upon the average, and received a good deal of money during a tour in the South, he was enabled to return to New England in 1818 with $3,000, and to marry Miss Walker on October 6th of that year.

The first years of Morse's married life were pa.s.sed in Charleston, S.C., after which he returned to New England, and having laid by some little capital, he took up again what he deemed to be his real vocation--the painting of great historical pictures. His first venture in this direction was an exhibition picture of the House of Representatives at Was.h.i.+ngton. As a business venture it was disastrous, and resulted in the loss of eighteen months of precious time. It was finally sold to an Englishman. Then began Morse's life in New York. Through the influence of Isaac Lawrence he obtained a commission from the city authorities of New York to paint a full-length portrait of Lafayette, who was then in this country. He had just completed his study from life in Was.h.i.+ngton in February, 1825, when he received the news of the death of his wife. A little more than a year afterward both his father and mother died.

Thenceforward his children and art absorbed his affections.

He was an artist, heart and soul, and his professional brethren soon had good reason to be grateful to him. The American Academy of Fine Arts, then under the presidency of Colonel John Trumbull, was in a languis.h.i.+ng state and of little use to artists. The most advanced of its members felt the need of relief, and a few of them met at Morse's rooms to discuss their troubles. At that meeting Morse proposed the formation of a new society of artists, and at a meeting held at the New York Historical Society's rooms the "New York Drawing a.s.sociation" was organized, with Morse as its president. Trumbull endeavored to compel the new society to profess allegiance to the academy, but Morse protested, and thanks to his advice, on January 18, 1826, a new art a.s.sociation was organized under the name of the "National Academy of Design." Morse was its first president, and for sixteen years he was annually elected to that office. The friends of the old academy were wrathful and a.s.sailed the new a.s.sociation. A war of words, in which Morse acted as the champion of the new society, was waged until victory was conceded to the reformers. Thus Morse inaugurated a new era in the history of the fine arts in this country. He wrote, talked, lectured incessantly for the advancement of art and the Academy of Design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Under Side of a Modern Switchboard, showing 2,000 Wires.]