Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1891-04-04
Written for The Evening Star.

4
Of inventors-to celebrate the hundredth ami
versary Of the American patent system. The
most distinguished American inventors will be
here. President Harrison will preside and
Edison is down for Q speech. This assembly
will be the apotheosis Of ingenuity. A plausi-
BILE claim will be made to prove that civiliza-
ton is nothing more than the total aggregate
Of inventions, and that claim will be backed up
by specifications. Civilization is Christianity,
said Whately; civilization is science, said OAR
win; civilization is invention. says Edison.
| Some surprising things will be insisted on at
this congress.
1t will be shown that the United States has
greater variety of machinery than all the rest
Of the world put together.
| 1t will be shown that the machines at work on
our soil are equal to the hand work of 200 OOo,-
600 men-twelve times our entire laboring
| population.
| 1t will be shown that nine-tenths Of our work
| is performed by machines, and therefore by
capital, and that only 1.-THE is done by wage
earners.
LABOR sUPERINTENDs CAPITAL.
| 1t will be shown that whereas it was formerly
the function Of capital to superintend labor. it
has now become the province of labor to SUPER
intend capital; that no real labor Tin the old
| sense) is performed on . train Of cars, for in
| stance, or in a knitting factory, but that the
employees are paid chiefly for knowing how
1t will be shown that machinery is especially
| and pre-eminently the friend of the poor man.
1t will be shown that during the last forty
years wages have doubled in this country, while
| the prices Of average commodities have been
reduced one-half, SO that a day laborer's work
nets him four times as much as it did in 1880
| suppose the congress will name again with
honor the martyrs of invention: Gutenberg
and Coster, driven through Germany as sor.
cerers and wrenching the art of printing from
the direst poverty and misery; Palissy, the
pauper potter, who piled his household furni-
| ture upon the waning fire and tore from de-
spair the secret Of enameling: Lee, the penni-
less lover, who invented the stocking knitter to
save the delicate fingers of his young wife;
Arkwrlght who from penny barber became
a knight. rich and one Of the most famous men
IN England; Hargreaves, hunted and harried
| by laboring men because he had blessed labor
| ers by lnventing the spinning jenny; Cart
wright, Whitney, Watt, Stephenson, Humphrey
Davy. Elias Howe, all owing their great achieve
| ments to ambition begotten Of poverty.
| Two or three OF the great inventors of our
time have come under my own observation.
| and their struggles were very pathetic.
GooDYEAR's TRAGIC LIFE.
Charles Goodyear's life was one unbroken
| tragedy. No inventors sufferings were ever
keener or more bitter or his obstacles greater.
| Hardly man in this century has done more
| for the comfort Of mankind than the inventor
| OF vulcanized rubber, but his health WAS always
miserable; He was frail dyspeptic; he lived
only half his allotted years, and about q quarter
OF them he spent in Jail for debt. He was in
| extreme perjury for twenty years and his wife
and children were always on the verge of star
walton. Generally his house had neither food
| nor fuel in it. At last he succeeded. He had
invented substance capable Of being adapted
to ive hundred uses and Of being made as plia-
| BILE as kid, as tough as OK hide, as elastic as
whalebone or as rigid as flint and he had given
birth to an industry soon to employ hundreds
| tens OF millions of dollars. He had not &C.
quired wealth, but he turned his face to the
| wall and said: Il die happy-othsrs can get
rich"
SIMPSONS HARD STRUGGLE.
About forty years ago a man named Simpson,
! in Missouri discovered that gutta percha was
a non-conductor Of electricity, and have heard
how he borrowed money of Amos Kendall to
make his application for a patent. 1t was re-
| lected over and over, rich telegraph companies
fighting his claim. But he had sand He
| never weakened 1t was just after the war that
| he made his last fight. He had no money-not
q dOllar-but he started from ST. Louis to
Washington afoot He would not beg, but he
made his way onward by saving wood, hoeng
corn or doing such wayside jobs as tramps do
when they can't help it. Sometimes he made
no more than twenty miles a week, but he
pressed on. His shoes gave out. He worked
| as a truck driver in Pittsburg till he earned
enough to get them soled. To his intimate
| friends he sometimes told the story of robbing
| a scarecrow in Ohio ard exchanging hat and
pantaloons. All this time he believed stub
bornly in himself. and he says: when came
| rising, and knelt down and thanked God for
my life and asked Him to let me get my patent
| He promised me on the spot, and never hac a
moments doubt after thatr'
| Arriving in Washington he got living by
| working as q day labOrer on the stone founda-
ton Of the patent Office, and from that vantage
| ground he fought his claim through the office
| and the courts and got his patent. The West
ern Union Telegraph Company gave him $780,
O0O down for the privilege of using it.
ooRDoN's GRAIN BINDER.
| Even more extraordinary was the career of J..
F. Gordon, born about 1S45. Even as a boy he
was always fussing over inventions and though
his father, farmer near Rochester, N. Y, was
| a rigid Scotch Presbyterian. hating everything
new, he worked on the farm all day and on
models" all night, his object being an auto
matte grain binder. 'Jim" worked Us a team
ster.worked at any job that turned up that
| left him time for experiments He went into
blacksmiths shop and then machinist's. and
worked for nothing to acquire facility in the
| use Of tools. Thus be became a mechanic.
Year after year he built his machines but
none OF them would work. Year after year
/ PoonOu ohu hc ebuCh u his urHL mOQel
was constructed Of pewter. He trundled a
| blacksmiths bellows across the country and
fixed 1t under the trees back Of his fathers
house, where he fashioned the different parts
Of his strange machine. Everybody jeered him
and laughed at him and called him a fool
everybody but one. The neighbor's daughter,
whom he was to marry. believed in him. She
came and stood over his bellows under the
trees and even helped him. She brought her
sewing and knitting and watched his progress
in the crude room which he made his work
shop. There they worked and talked and
planned all the winter Of 1S67-6S and in the
spring he turned out finished machine. ready
for the standing grain. In time it was set in
the wheat, but it had not been there twenty
minutes before he saw that it was fatally de-
fective The years work was gone.
| Again and again and again he tackled the
difficulties and finally, after heart-sick years. in
1874 he had solved the problem which the old
est mechanic had declared to be chimerical and
impossible. The machine did the work SPLEEN
didly.
| WITS FIDELITY.
Then began his fight with others who had
| laughed 1T him and who now claimed the inven-
| ton as theirs. There had been hundreds of
failures The whole cereal shore was strewn
| xvir cEa n