Already he had had some experience both of the difficulty of
introducing an improved implement, and of the profit to be derived
from its introduction. His father, the head of the firm of A. Goodyear
and Sons, of which he was a member, was the first to manufacture
hay-forks of spring steel, instead of the heavy, wrought-iron forks
made by the village blacksmith; and Charles Goodyear could remember
the time when his father reckoned it a happy day on which he had
persuaded a farmer to accept a few of the new forks as a gift, on the
condition of giving them a trial. But it was also very fresh in his
recollection that those same forks had made their way to almost
universal use, had yielded large profits to his firm, and were still a
leading article of its trade, when, in 1830, the failure of Southern
houses had compelled it to suspend. He was aware, too, that, if
anything could extricate the house of A. Goodyear and Sons from
embarrassment, it was their possession of superior methods of
manufacturing and their sale of articles improved by their own
ingenuity.
Upon examining his life-preserver, an improvement in the inflating
apparatus occurred to him.
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