Show MAKING AMENDS Fifty years ago last July Charles Goodyear discoverer of the process for vulcanizing rubber died in the City of New York Al Although Although Although though he bequeathed to the world one of the greatest secrets of the age to which it is indebted today for one of its most profitable indus industries industries industries tries so far as personal emoluments are concerned con he left it poorer than the tho day he entered it Of all aU that contemporaneous group which included Professor Samuel F B Morse inventor of the tele telegraph telegraph I graph Elias Howo Howe inventor of the sewing machine lachine and Cyrus Mc McCormick McCormick Cormick inventor of the reaper his was a singularly arly adverse career oven even to the end While Whilo potentates vied with one another to do him honor unlike the others notably Elias Howe whose income for a time was estimated at a day Goodyear derived comparatively no material benefit from his great discovery and died heavily in debt Robbed of the benefits of his discovery by manufacturing pirates who refused to pay him a royalty for the use of his process which most of the governments of tho the earth encouraged by declining to afford him protection and defrauded by business associates who took tok ad advantage advantage advantage vantage of his confiding nature his lot was a peculiarly unfortunate one There is a strong indictment of the past ingratitude of his fellow countrymen in the announcement just made in New NewYork NewYork NewYork York that after half a century contrary of silence e it is now proposed in recognition recognition recognition of his service to humanity to perpetuate his memory by the erection of a memorial commensurate with the importance of his achievement as a tribute from the generations he has No more pathetic narrative can be found in the history of mod modern modern modem ern em n inventors than the life story of af Goodyear Thrust into jail time and again for debt often with nothing to eat his sickly wife and five little children threatened with eviction a dead child on his hand and no money to pay for its burial the butt and ridicule of his fellows and with every human face averted from him his steadfast devotion to the problem ho he had set out to solve in the face of the most insuperable insuperable insuperable obstacles was Nothing discouraged him In the solitude of his bis prison cell in Philadelphia into which he had been I thrown as a bankrupt he worked on undaunted with the enthusiasm that only a genius can bring to his support in trouble with a determination determination determination nation that would never recognize recognise defeat His position in these times Is tritely described by one of his friends who said of him If you see a man with an coat on shoes and In cap and in his pocket an purse with not a cent in it that is Goodyear |