Famous Americans of Recent Times Part 17

Two men have had it in their power to produce such a newspaper,--Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond. In 1841, when the Herald was six years old, the Tribune appeared, edited by Mr. Greeley, with Mr. Raymond as his chief a.s.sistant. Mr. Greeley was then, and is now, the best writer of editorials in the United States; that is, he can produce a greater quant.i.ty of telling editorial per annum than any other individual. There never lived a man capable of working more hours in a year than he. Strictly temperate in his habits, and absolutely devoted to his work, he threw himself into this enterprise with an ardor never surpa.s.sed since Adam first tasted the sweets of honorable toil. Mr. Raymond, then recently from college, very young, wholly inexperienced, was endowed with an admirable apt.i.tude for the work of journalism, and a power of getting through its routine labors,--a sustained, calm, swift industry,--unsurpa.s.sed at that time in the American press. The business of the paper was also well managed by Mr. McElrath. In the hands of these able men, the new paper made such rapid advances, that, in the course of a few months, it was fairly established, and in a year or two it had reached a circulation equal to that of the Herald. One after another, excellent writers were added to its corps;--the vigorous, prompt, untiring Dana; George Ripley, possessing that blending of scholars.h.i.+p and tact, that wisdom of the cloister and knowledge of the world, which alone could fit a man of great learning and talent for the work of a daily newspaper; Margaret Fuller, whose memory is still green in so many hearts; Bayard Taylor, the versatile, and others, less universally known.

Why, then, did not this powerful combination supplant the Herald? If mere ability in the writing of a newspaper; if to have given an impulse to thought and enterprise; if to have won the admiration and grat.i.tude of a host of the best men and women in America; if to have inspired many thousands of young men with better feelings and higher purposes than they would else have attained; if to have shaken the dominion of superst.i.tion, and made it easier for men to think freely, and freely utter their thought; if to have produced a newspaper more interesting than any other in the world to certain cla.s.ses in the community;--if all these things had sufficed to give a daily paper the first position in the journalism of a country, then the Tribune would long ago have attained that position; for all these things, and many more, the Tribune did. But they do not suffice. Such things may be incidental to a great success: they cannot cause it. Great journalism--journalism pure and simple--alone can give a journal the first place. If Mr. Raymond had been ten years older, and had founded and conducted the paper, with Mr. Greeley as his chief writer of editorials,--that is, if the _journalist_ had been the master of the journal, instead of the writer, the politician, and the philanthropist,--the Tribune might have won the splendid prize. Mr.

Greeley is not a great journalist. He has regarded journalism rather as a disagreeable necessity of his vocation, and uniformly abandoned the care of it to others. An able man generally gets what he ardently seeks. Mr. Greeley produced just such a paper as he himself would have liked to take, but not such a paper as the public of the island of Manhattan prefers. He regards this as his glory. We cannot agree with him, because his course of management left the field to the Herald, the suppression of which was required by the interests of civilization.

The Tribune has done great and glorious things for us. Not free, of course, from the errors which mark all things human, it has been, and is, a civilizing power in this land. We hope to have the pleasure of reading it every day for the rest of our lives. One thing it has failed to do,--to reduce the Herald to insignificance by surpa.s.sing it in the particulars in which it is excellent. We have no right to complain. We only regret that the paper representing the civilization of the country should not yet have attained the position which would have given it the greatest power.

Mr. Raymond, also, has had it in his power to render this great service to the civilization and credit of the United States. The Daily Times, started in 1852, r.e.t.a.r.ded for a while by a financial error, has made such progress toward the goal of its proprietors' ambition, that it is now on the home stretch, only a length or two behind. The editor of this paper is a journalist; he sees clearly the point of compet.i.tion; he knows the great secret of his trade. The prize within his reach is splendid. The position of chief journalist gives power enough to satisfy any reasonable ambition, wealth enough to glut the grossest avarice, and opportunity of doing good sufficient for the most public-spirited citizen. What is there in political life equal to it? We have no right to remark upon any man's choice of a career; but this we may say,--that the man who wins the first place in the journalism of a free country must concentrate all his powers upon that one work, and, as an editor, owe no allegiance to party. He must stand above all parties, and serve all parties, by spreading before the public that full and exact information upon which sound legislation is based.

During the present (1865-6) session of Congress we have had daily ill.u.s.tration of this truth. The great question has been, What is the condition of the Southern States and the feeling of the Southern people? All the New York morning papers have expended money and labor, each according to its means and enterprise, in getting information from the South. This was well. But every one of these papers has had some party or personal bias, which has given it a powerful interest to make out a case. The World and News excluded everything which tended to show the South dissatisfied and disloyal. The Tribune, on the other hand, diligently sought testimony of that nature. The Times, also, being fully committed to a certain theory of reconstruction, naturally gave prominence to every fact which supported that theory, and was inclined to suppress information of the opposite tendency. The consequence was, that an inhabitant of the city of New York who simply desired to know the truth was compelled to keep an eye upon four or five papers, lest something material should escape him. This is pitiful. This is utterly beneath the journalism of 1866. The final pre-eminent newspaper of America will soar far above such needless limitations as these, and present the truth in _all_ its aspects, regardless of its effects upon theories, parties, factions, and Presidential campaigns.

Presidential campaigns,--that is the real secret. The editors of most of these papers have selected their candidate for 1868; and, having done that, can no more help conducting their journals with a view to the success of that candidate, than the needle of a compa.s.s can help pointing awry when there is a magnet hidden in the binnacle. Here, again, we have no right to censure or complain. Yet we cannot help marvelling at the hallucination which can induce able men to prefer the brief and illusory honors of political station to the substantial and lasting power within the grasp of the successful journalist. He, if any one,--he more than any one else,--is the master in a free country. Have we not seen almost every man who has held or run for the Presidency during the last ten or fifteen years paying a.s.siduous and servile court, directly or indirectly, or both, to the editor of the Herald? If it were proper to relate to the public what is known on this subject to a few individuals, the public would be exceedingly astonished. And yet this reality of power an editor is ready to jeopard for the sake of gratifying his family by exposing them in Paris! Jeopard, do we say? He has done more: he has thrown it away. He has a magnet in his binnacle. He has, for the time, sacrificed what it cost him thirty years of labor and audacity to gain. Strange weakness of human nature!

The daily press of the United States has prodigiously improved in every respect during the last twenty years. To the best of our recollection, the description given of it, twenty-three years ago, by Charles d.i.c.kens, in his American Notes, was not much exaggerated; although that great author did exaggerate its effects upon the morals of the country. His own amusing account of the rival editors in Pickwick might have instructed him on this latter point. It does not appear that the people of Eatanswill were seriously injured by the fierce language employed in "that false and scurrilous print, the Independent," and in "that vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette." Mr. d.i.c.kens, however, was too little conversant with our politics to take the atrocious language formerly so common in our newspapers "in a Pickwickian sense"; and we freely confess that in the alarming picture which he drew of our press there was only too much truth.

"The foul growth of America," wrote Mr. d.i.c.kens, "strikes its fibres deep in its licentious press.

"Schools may be erected, east, west, north, and south; pupils be taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of thousands; colleges may thrive, churches may be crammed, temperance may be diffused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through the land with giant strides; but while the newspaper press of America is in or near its present abject state, high moral improvement in that country is hopeless. Year by year it must and will go back; year by year the tone of public feeling must sink lower down; year by year the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all decent men; and, year by year, the memory of the great fathers of the Revolution must be outraged more and more in the bad life of their degenerate child.

"Among the herd of journals which are published in the States, there are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of character and credit. From personal intercourse with accomplished gentlemen connected with publications of this cla.s.s I have derived both pleasure and profit. But the name of these is Few, and of the others Legion; and the influence of the good is powerless to counteract the mortal poison of the bad.

"Among the gentry of America, among the well-informed and moderate, in the learned professions, at the bar and on the bench, there is, as there can be, but one opinion in reference to the vicious character of these infamous journals. It is sometimes contended--I will not say strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for such a disgrace--that their influence is not so great as a visitor would suppose. I must be pardoned for saying that there is no warrant for this plea, and that every fact and circ.u.mstance tends directly to the opposite conclusion.

"When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or character, can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America, without first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before this monster of depravity; when any private excellence is safe from its attacks, and when any social confidence is left unbroken by it, or any tie of social decency and honor is held in the least regard; when any man in that free country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to think for himself, and speak for himself, without humble reference to a censors.h.i.+p which, for its rampant ignorance and base dishonesty, he utterly loathes and despises in his heart; when those who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the nation, and who most denounce it to each other, dare to set their heels upon and crush it openly, in the sight of all men,--then I will believe that its influence is lessening, and men are returning to their manly senses. But while that Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment in the state, from a President to a postman,--while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous cla.s.s, who must find their reading in a newspaper, or they will not read at all,--so long must its odium be upon the country's head, and so long must the evil it works be plainly visible in the Republic.

"To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, or to the respectable journals of the Continent of Europe, to those who are accustomed to anything else in print and paper, it would be impossible, without an amount of extract for which I have neither s.p.a.ce nor inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this frightful engine in America. But if any man desire confirmation of my statement on this head, let him repair to any place in this city of London where scattered numbers of these publications are to be found, and there let him form his own opinion."

From a note appended to this pa.s.sage, we infer that the newspaper which weighed upon the author's mind when he wrote it was the New York Herald. The direct cause, however, of the general license of the press at that time, was not the Herald's bad example, but Andrew Jackson's debauching influence. The same man who found the government pure, and left it corrupt, made the press the organ of his own malignant pa.s.sions by bestowing high office upon the editors who lied most recklessly about his opponents. In 1843 the press had scarcely begun to recover from this hateful influence, and was still the merest tool of politicians. The Herald, in fact, by demonstrating that a newspaper can flourish in the United States without any aid from politicians, has brought us nearer the time when no newspaper of any importance will be subject to party, which has been the princ.i.p.al cause of the indecencies of the press.

The future is bright before the journalists of America. The close of the war, by increasing their income and reducing their expenses, has renewed the youth of several of our leading journals, and given them a better opportunity than they have ever had before. The great error of the publishers of profitable journals. .h.i.therto has been the wretched compensation paid to writers and reporters. To this hour there is but one individual connected with the daily press of New York, not a proprietor, who receives a salary sufficient to keep a tolerable house and bring up a family respectably and comfortably; and if any one would find that individual, he must look for him, alas! in the office of the Herald. To be plainer: decent average housekeeping in the city of New York now costs a hundred dollars a week; and there is but one salary of that amount paid in New York to a journalist who owns no property in his journal. The consequence is, that there is scarcely an individual connected with a daily paper who is not compelled or tempted to eke out his ridiculous salary by other writing, to the injury of his health and the constant deterioration of his work. Every morning the public comes fresh and eager to the newspaper: fresh and eager minds should alone minister to it. No work done on this earth consumes vitality so fast as carefully executed composition, and consequently one of the main conditions of a man's writing his best is that he should write little and rest often. A good writer, moreover, is one of Nature's peculiar and very rare products. There is a mystery about the art of composition. Who shall explain to us why Charles d.i.c.kens can write about a three-legged stool in such a manner that the whole civilized world reads with pleasure; while another man of a hundred times his knowledge and five times his quant.i.ty of mind cannot write on any subject so as to interest anybody? The laws of supply and demand do not apply to this rarity; for one man's writing cannot be compared with another's, there being no medium between valuable and worthless. How many over-worked, under-paid men have we known in New York, really gifted with this inexplicable knack at writing, who, well commanded and justly compensated, lifted high and dry out of the slough of poor-devilism in which their powers were obscured and impaired, could almost have made the fortune of a newspaper! Some of these Reporters of Genius are mere children in all the arts by which men prosper. A Journalist of Genius would know their value, understand their case, take care of their interest, secure their devotion, restrain their ardor, and turn their talent to rich account. We are ashamed to say, that for example of this kind of policy we should have to repair to the office named a moment since.

This subject, however, is beginning to be understood, and of late there has been some advance in the salaries of members of the press.

Just as fast as the daily press advances in real independence and efficiency, the compensation of journalists will increase, until a great reporter will receive a reward in some slight degree proportioned to the rarity of the species and to the greatness of the services of which he is the medium. By reporters, we mean, of course, the entire corps of news-givers, from the youth who relates the burning of a stable, to the philosopher who chronicles the last vagary of a German metaphysician. These laborious men will be appreciated in due time. By them all the great hits of journalism have been made, and the whole future of journalism is theirs.

So difficult is the reporter's art, that we can call to mind only two series of triumphant efforts in this department,--Mr. Russell's letters from the Crimea to the London Times, and N.P. Willis's "Pencillings by the Way," addressed to the New York Mirror. Each of these masters chanced to have a subject perfectly adapted to his taste and talents, and each of them made the most of his opportunity.

Charles d.i.c.kens has produced a few exquisite reports. Many ignorant and dull men employed on the New York Herald have written good reports _because_ they were dull and ignorant. In fact, there are two kinds of good reporters,--those who know too little, and those who know too much, to wander from the point and evolve a report from the depths of their own consciousness. The worst possible reporter is one who has a little talent, and depends upon that to make up for the meagreness of his information. The best reporter is he whose sole object is to relate his event exactly as it occurred, and describe his scene just as it appeared; and this kind of excellence is attainable by an honest plodder, and by a man of great and well-controlled talent. If we were forming a corps of twenty-five reporters, we should desire to have five of them men of great and highly trained ability, and the rest indefatigable, unimaginative, exact short-hand chroniclers, caring for nothing but to get their fact and relate it in the plainest English.

There is one custom, a relic of the past, still in vogue in the offices of daily papers, which is of an absurdity truly exquisite. It is the practice of paying by the column, or, in other words, paying a premium for verbosity, and imposing a fine upon conciseness. It will often happen that information which cost three days to procure can be well related in a paragraph, and which, if related in a paragraph, would be of very great value to the newspaper printing it. But if the reporter should compress his facts into that s.p.a.ce, he would receive for his three days' labor about what he expended in omnibus fare. Like a wise man, therefore, he spreads them out into three columns, and thus receives a compensation upon which life can be supported. If matter must be paid for by the column, we would respectfully suggest the following rates: For half a column, or less, twenty dollars; for one column, ten dollars; for two columns, five dollars; for three columns, nothing; for any amount beyond three columns, no insertion.

To conclude with a brief recapitulation:--

The commodity in which the publishers of daily newspapers deal is news, i.e. information respecting recent events in which the public take an interest, or in which an interest can be excited.

Newspapers, therefore, rank according to their excellence as _newspapers_; and no other kind of excellence can make up for any deficiency in the one thing for which they exist.

Consequently, the art of editors.h.i.+p consists in forming, handling, and inspiring a corps of reporters; for inevitably that newspaper becomes the chief and favorite journal which has the best corps of reporters, and uses them best.

Editorial articles have their importance. They can be a powerful means of advancing the civilization of a country, and of hastening the triumph of good measures and good men; and upon the use an editor makes of his opportunity of addressing the public in this way depends his t.i.tle to our esteem as a man and fellow-citizen. But, in a mere business point of view, they are of inferior importance. The best editorials cannot make, nor the worst editorials mar, the fortune of a paper. Burke and Macaulay would not add a tenth part as many subscribers to a daily paper as the addition to its corps of two well-trained, ably-commanded reporters.

It is not law which ever renders the press free and independent.

Nothing is free or independent in this world which is not powerful.

Therefore, the editor who would conquer the opportunity of speaking his mind freely, must do it by making his paper so excellent as a vehicle of news that the public will buy it though it is a daily disgust to them.

The Herald has thriven beyond all its compet.i.tors, because its proprietor comprehended these simple but fundamental truths of his vocation, and, upon the whole, has surpa.s.sed his rivals both in the getting and in the display of intelligence. We must p.r.o.nounce him the best journalist and the worst editorialist this continent has ever known; and accordingly his paper is generally read and its proprietor universally disapproved.

And finally, this bad, good paper cannot be reduced to secondary rank except by being outdone in pure journalism. The interests of civilization and the honor of the United States require that this should be done. There are three papers now existing--the Times, the Tribune; and the World--which ought to do it; but if the conductors of neither of these able and spirited papers choose to devote themselves absolutely to this task, then we trust that soon another compet.i.tor may enter the field, conducted by a journalist proud enough of his profession to be satisfied with its honors. There were days last winter on which it seemed as if the whole force of journalism in the city of New York was expended in tingeing and perverting intelligence on the greatest of all the topics of the time. We have read numbers of the World (which has talent and youthful energy enough for a splendid career) of which almost the entire contents--correspondence, telegrams, and editorials--were spoiled for all useful purposes by the determination of the whole corps of writers to make the news tell in favor of a political party. We can truly aver, that journalism, pure and simple,--journalism for its own sake,--journalism, the dispa.s.sionate and single-eyed servant of the whole public,--does not exist in New York during a session of Congress. It ought to exist.

[Footnote 1: We copy the following from Mr. Gowan's narrative:

"Dr. Benjamin Brandreth, of well and wide-spread reputation, and who has made more happy and comfortable, for a longer or shorter time, as the case may be, by his prescriptions than any other son of Aesculapius, hailed me one day as I jumped from a railroad car pa.s.sing up and along the sh.o.r.es of the Hudson River, and immediately commenced the following narrative. He held in his hand a copy of the New York Herald. 'Do you know,' said he, holding up the paper to my face, 'that it was by and through your agency that this paper ever became successful?' I replied in the negative.

'Then,' continued he, 'I will unfold the secret to you of how you became instrumental in this matter. Shortly after my arrival in America, I began looking about me how I was to dispose of my pills by agents and other means. Among others, I called upon you, then a bookseller in Chatham Street.

After some conversation on the subject of my errand, a contract was soon entered into between us,--you to sell and I to furnish the said pills; but,' continued he, 'these pills will be of no use to me or any one else unless they can be made known to the public, or rather the great herd of the people; and that can only be done by advertising through some paper which goes into the hands of the many. Can you point out to me any such paper, published in the city?'

After a short pause I in substance said that there had lately started a small penny paper, which had been making a great noise during its existence; and I had reason to believe it had obtained a very considerable circulation among that cla.s.s of people which he desired to reach by advertising, and so concluded that it would be the best paper in the city for his purpose, provided he could make terms with the owner, who, I had no doubt, would be well disposed, as in all probability he stood in need of patronage of this kind. 'I immediately,' continued the doctor, 'adopted your advice, went directly to Mr. Bennett, made terms with him for advertising, and for a long time paid him a very considerable sum weekly for the use of his columns, which tended greatly to add to both his and my own treasury. The editor of the Herald afterwards acknowledged to me that but for his advertising patronage he would have been compelled to collapse. Hence,' said he, 'had I never called on you, in all probability I should not have had my attention turned to the New York Herald; and, as a consequence, that sheet would never have had my advertising; and that paper would have been a thing of the past, and perhaps entirely forgotten.'"]

CHARLES GOODYEAR.

The copy before us, of Mr. Goodyear's work upon "Gum-Elastic and its Varieties," presents at least something unique in the art of book-making. It is self-ill.u.s.trating; inasmuch as, treating of India-rubber, it is made of India-rubber. An un.o.bservant reader, however, would scarcely suspect the fact before reading the Preface, for the India-rubber covers resemble highly polished ebony, and the leaves have the appearance of ancient paper worn soft, thin, and dingy by numberless perusals. The volume contains six hundred and twenty pages; but it is not as thick as copies of the same work printed on paper, though it is a little heavier. It is evident that the substance of which this book is composed cannot be India-rubber in its natural state. Those leaves, thinner than paper, can be stretched only by a strong pull, and resume their shape perfectly when they are let go.

There is no smell of India-rubber about them. We first saw this book in a cold room in January, but the leaves were then as flexible as old paper; and when, since, we have handled it in warm weather, they had grown no softer.

Some of our readers may have heard Daniel Webster relate the story of the India-rubber cloak and hat which one of his New York friends sent him at Marshfield in the infancy of the manufacture. He took the cloak to the piazza one cold morning, when it instantly became as rigid as sheet-iron. Finding that it stood alone, he placed the hat upon it, and left the articles standing near the front door. Several of his neighbors who pa.s.sed, seeing a dark and portly figure there, took it for the lord of the mansion, and gave it respectful salutation. The same articles were liable to an objection still more serious. In the sun, even in cool weather, they became sticky, while on a hot day they would melt entirely away to the consistency of mola.s.ses. Every one remembers the thick and ill-shaped India-rubber shoes of twenty years ago, which had to be thawed out under the stove before they could be put on, and which, if left under the stove too long, would dissolve into gum that no household art could ever harden again. Some decorous gentlemen among us can also remember that, in the nocturnal combats of their college days, a flinty India-rubber shoe, in cold weather, was a missive weapon of a highly effective character.

This curious volume, therefore, cannot be made of the unmanageable stuff which Daniel Webster set up at his front door. So much is evident at a glance. But the book itself tells us that it can be subjected, without injury, to tests more severe than summer's sun and winter's cold. It can be soaked six months in a pail of water, and still be as good a book as ever. It can be boiled; it can be baked in an oven hot enough to cook a turkey; it can be soaked in brine, lye, camphene, turpentine, or oil; it can be dipped into oil of vitriol, and still no harm done. To crown its merits, no rat, mouse, worm, or moth has ever shown the slightest inclination to make acquaintance with it. The office of a Review is not usually provided with the means of subjecting literature to such critical tests as lye, vitriol, boilers, and hot ovens. But we have seen enough elsewhere of the ordeals to which India-rubber is now subjected to believe Mr.

Goodyear's statements. Remote posterity will enjoy the fruit of his labors, unless some one takes particular pains to destroy this book; for it seems that time itself produces no effect upon the India-rubber which bears the familiar stamp, "GOODYEAR'S PATENT." In the dampest corner of the dampest cellar, no mould gathers upon it, no decay penetrates it. In the hottest garret, it never warps or cracks.

The princ.i.p.al object of the work is to relate how this remarkable change was effected in the nature of the substance of which it treats.

It cost more than two millions of dollars to do it. It cost Charles Goodyear eleven most laborious and painful years. His book is written without art or skill, but also without guile.

He was evidently a laborious, conscientious, modest man, neither learned nor highly gifted, but making no pretence to learning or gifts, doing the work which fell to him with all his might, and with a perseverance never surpa.s.sed in all the history of invention and discovery. Who would have thought to find a romance in the history of India-rubber? We are familiar with the stories of poor and friendless men, possessed with an idea and pursuing their object, amid obloquy, neglect, and suffering, to the final triumph; of which final triumph other men reaped the substantial reward, leaving to the discoverer the barren glory of his achievement,--and that glory obscured by detraction. Columbus is the representative man of that ill.u.s.trious order. We trust to be able to show that Charles Goodyear is ent.i.tled to a place in it. Whether we consider the prodigious and unforeseen importance of his discovery, or his scarcely paralleled devotion to his object, in the face of the most disheartening obstacles, we feel it to be due to his memory, to his descendants, and to the public, that his story should be told. Few persons will ever see his book, of which only a small number of copies were printed for private circulation. Still fewer will be at the pains to pick out the material facts from the confused ma.s.s of matter in which they are hidden.

Happily for our purpose, no one now has an interest to call his merits in question. He rests from his labors, and the patent, which was the glory and misery of his life, has expired.

Our great-grandfathers knew India-rubber only as a curiosity, and our grandfathers only as a means of erasing pencil-marks. The first specimens were brought to Europe in 1730; and as late as 1770 it was still so scarce an article, that in London it was only to be found in one shop, where a piece containing half a cubic inch was sold for three s.h.i.+llings. Dr. Priestley, in his work on perspective, published in 1770, speaks of it as a new article, and recommends its use to draughtsmen. This substance, however, being one of those of which nature has provided an inexhaustible supply, greater quant.i.ties found their way into the commerce of the world; until, in 1820, it was a drug in all markets, and was frequently brought as ballast merely.

About this time it began to be subjected to experiments with a view to rendering it available in the arts. It was found useful as an ingredient of blacking and varnish. Its elasticity was turned to account in France in the manufacture of suspenders and garters,--threads of India-rubber being inserted in the web. In England, Mackintosh invented his still celebrated water-proof coats, which are made of two thin cloths with a paste of India-rubber between them. In chemistry, the substance was used to some extent, and its singular properties were much considered. In England and France, the India-rubber manufacture had attained considerable importance before the material had attracted the attention of American experimenters.

The Europeans succeeded in rendering it useful because they did not attempt too much. The French cut the imported sheets of gum into shreds, without ever attempting to produce the sheets themselves.

Mackintosh exposed no surface of India-rubber to the air, and brought no surfaces of India-rubber into contact. No one had discovered any process by which India-rubber once dissolved could be restored to its original consistency. Some of our readers may have attempted, twenty years ago, to fill up the holes in the sole of an India-rubber shoe.

Nothing was easier than to melt a piece of India-rubber for the purpose; but, when applied to the shoe, it would not harden. There was the grand difficulty, the complete removal of which cost so much money and so many years.

The ruinous failure of the first American manufacturers arose from the fact that they began their costly operations in ignorance of the existence of this difficulty. They were too fast. They proceeded in the manner of the inventor of the caloric engine, who began by placing one in a s.h.i.+p of great magnitude, involving an expenditure which ruined the owners.

It was in the year 1820 that a pair of India-rubber shoes was seen for the first time in the United States. They were covered with gilding, and resembled in shape the shoes of a Chinaman. They were handed about in Boston only as a curiosity. Two or three years after, a s.h.i.+p from South America brought to Boston five hundred pairs of shoes, thick, heavy, and ill-shaped, which sold so readily as to invite further importations. The business increased until the annual importation reached half a million pairs, and India-rubber shoes had become an article of general use. The manner in which these shoes were made by the natives of South America was frequently described in the newspapers, and seemed to present no difficulty. They were made much as farmers' wives, made candles. The sap being collected from the trees, clay lasts were dipped into the liquid twenty or thirty times, each layer being smoked a little. The shoes were then hung up to harden for a few days; after which the clay was removed, and the shoes were stored for some months to harden them still more. Nothing was more natural than to suppose that Yankees could do this as well as Indians, if not far better. The raw India-rubber could then be bought in Boston for five cents a pound, and a pair of shoes made of it brought from three to five dollars. Surely here was a promising basis for a new branch of manufacture in New England. It happened too, in 1830, that vast quant.i.ties of the raw gum reached the United States.

It came covered with hides, in ma.s.ses, of which no use could be made in America; and it remained unsold, or was sent to Europe.

Patent-leather suggested the first American attempt to turn India-rubber to account. Mr. E.M. Chaffee, foreman of a Boston patent-leather factory conceived the idea, in 1830, of spreading India-rubber upon cloth, hoping to produce an article which should possess the good qualities of patent-leather, with the additional one of being water-proof. In the deepest secrecy he experimented for several months. By dissolving a pound of India rubber in three quarts of spirits of turpentine, and adding lampblack enough to give it the desired color, he produced a composition which he supposed would perfectly answer the purpose. He invented a machine for spreading it, and made some specimens of cloth, which had every appearance of being a very useful article. The surface, after being dried in the sun, was firm and smooth; and Mr. Chaffee supposed, and his friends agreed with him, that he had made an invention of the utmost value. At this point he invited a few of the solid men of Roxbury to look at his specimens and listen to his statements. He convinced them. The result of the conference was the Roxbury India-rubber Company, incorporated in February, 1833, with a capital of thirty thousand dollars.

The progress of this Company was amazing. Within a year its capital was increased to two hundred and forty thousand dollars. Before another year had expired, this was increased to three hundred thousand; and in the year following, to four hundred thousand. The Company manufactured the cloth invented by Mr. Chaffee, and many articles made of that cloth, such as coats, caps, wagon-curtains and coverings. Shoes, made without fibre, were soon introduced. Nothing could be better than the appearance of these articles when they were new. They were in the highest favor, and were sold more rapidly than the Company could manufacture them. The astonis.h.i.+ng prosperity of the Roxbury Company had its natural effect in calling into existence similar establishments in other towns. Manufactories were started at Boston, Framingham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and Staten Island, with capitals ranging from one hundred thousand dollars to half a million; and all of them appeared to prosper. There was an India-rubber mania in those years similar to that of petroleum in 1864. Not to invest in India-rubber stock was regarded by some shrewd men as indicative of inferior business talents and general dulness of comprehension. The exterior facts were certainly well calculated to lure even the most wary. Here was a material worth only a few cents a pound, out of which shoes were quickly made, which brought two dollars a pair! It was a plain case. Besides, there were the India-rubber Companies, all working to their extreme capacity, and selling all they could make.

It was when the business had reached this flouris.h.i.+ng stage that Charles Goodyear, a bankrupt hardware merchant of Philadelphia, first had his attention directed to the material upon which it was founded.

In 1834, being in New York on business, he chanced to observe the sign of the Roxbury Company, which then had a depot in that city. He had been reading in the newspapers, not long before, descriptions of the new life-preservers made of India-rubber, an application of the gum that was much extolled. Curiosity induced him to enter the store to examine the life-preservers. He bought one and took it home with him.