great-grandfathers knew India-rubber only as a curiosity, and our
grandfathers only as a means of erasing pencil-marks. The first
specimens were brought to Europe in 1730; and as late as 1770 it was
still so scarce an article, that in London it was only to be found in
one shop, where a piece containing half a cubic inch was sold for
three shillings. Dr. Priestley, in his work on perspective, published
in 1770, speaks of it as a new article, and recommends its use to
draughtsmen. This substance, however, being one of those of which
nature has provided an inexhaustible supply, greater quantities found
their way into the commerce of the world; until, in 1820, it was a
drug in all markets, and was frequently brought as ballast merely.
About this time it began to be subjected to experiments with
a view to rendering it available in the arts. It was found useful
as an ingredient of blacking and varnish. Its elasticity was
turned to account in France in the manufacture of suspenders and
garters,--threads of India-rubber being inserted in the web. In
England, Mackintosh invented his still celebrated water-proof coats,
which are made of two thin cloths with a paste of India-rubber between
them. In chemistry, the substance was used to some extent, and its
singular properties were much considered. In England and France, the
India-rubber manufacture had attained considerable importance before
the material had attracted the attention of American experimenters.
The Europeans succeeded in rendering it useful because they did not
attempt too much. The French cut the imported sheets of gum into
shreds, without ever attempting to produce the sheets themselves.
Mackintosh exposed no surface of India-rubber to the air, and brought
no surfaces of India-rubber into contact. No one had discovered any
process by which India-rubber once dissolved could be restored to its
original consistency. Some of our readers may have attempted, twenty
years ago, to fill up the holes in the sole of an India-rubber shoe.
Nothing was easier than to melt a piece of India-rubber for the
purpose; but, when applied to the shoe, it would not harden. There was
the grand difficulty, the complete removal of which cost so much money
and so many years.

The ruinous failure of the first American manufacturers arose from the
fact that they began their costly operations in ignorance of the
existence of this difficulty. They were too fast. They proceeded in
the manner of t