When he was next in New York he explained
his improvement to the agent of the Roxbury Company, and offered to
sell it. The agent, struck with the ingenuity displayed in the new
contrivance, took the inventor into his confidence, partly by way of
explaining why the Company could not then buy the improved tube, but
principally with a view to enlist the aid of an ingenious mind in
overcoming a difficulty that threatened the Company with ruin. He told
him that the prosperity of the India-rubber Companies in the United
States was wholly fallacious. The Roxbury Company had manufactured
vast quantities of shoes and fabrics in the cool months of 1833 and
1834, which had been readily sold at high prices; but during the
following summer, the greater part of them had melted. Twenty thousand
dollars' worth had been returned, reduced to the consistency of common
gum, and emitting an odor so offensive that they had been obliged to
bury it. New ingredients had been employed, new machinery applied, but
still the articles would dissolve. In some cases, shoes had borne the
heat of one summer, and melted the next.
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