He had, too, the usual fate of inventors, in having
to contend with the infringers of his rights,--men who owed their all
to his ingenuity and perseverance. We may judge, however, of the
rapidity with which the business grew, by the fact that, six years
after the completion of his vulcanizing process, the holders of rights
to manufacture shoes by that process deemed it worth while to employ
Daniel Webster to plead their cause, and to stimulate his mind by a
fee of twenty-five thousand dollars. It is questionable if Charles
Goodyear ever derived that amount from his patents, if we deduct from
his receipts the money spent in further developing his discovery. His
ill-health obliged him to be abstemious, and he had no expensive
tastes. It was only in his laboratory that he was lavish, and there he
was lavish indeed. His friends still smiled at his zeal, or reproached
him for it. It has been only since the mighty growth of the business
in his products that they have acknowledged that he was right and that
they were wrong. They remember him, sick, meagre, and yellow, now
coming to them with a walking-stick of India-rubber, exulting in the
new application of his material, and predicting its general use, while
they objected that his stick had cost him fifty dollars; now running
about among the comb factories, trying to get reluctant men to try
their tools upon hard India-rubber, and producing at length a set of
combs that cost twenty times the price of ivory ones; now shutting
himself up for months, endeavoring to make a sail of India-rubber
fabric, impervious to water, that should never freeze, and to which no
sleet or ice should ever cling; now exhibiting a set of cutlery with
India-rubber handles, or a picture set in an India-rubber frame, or a
book with India-rubber covers, or a watch with an India-rubber case;
now experimenting with India-rubber tiles for floors, which he hoped
to make as brilliant in color as those of mineral, as agreeable to the
tread as carpet, and as durable as an ancient floor of oak.
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