zing a stock company to market his
invention; but his plans were frustrated through failing health and lack
of business experience, and shortly thereafter, at the age of 36, he
passed away.

He had done his work, however, under the keen eye of the shrewd Yankees,
and these were quick to see the immense commercial importance of the
step he had accomplished. One of these bought the patent and all of the
stock that he could find of the company organized by Matzeliger. This
fortunate purchase laid the foundation for the organization of the
United Shoe Machinery Company, the largest and richest corporation of
the kind in the world. (See, in _Munsey's Magazine_ of August, 1912, on
page 722, biographical sketch of Mr. Sidney Winslow, millionaire head
of the United Shoe Machinery Company.)

Some idea may be had of the magnitude of this giant industry, which is
thus shown to have grown directly out of the inventions of a young
colored man, by recalling the fact that the corporation represents the
consolidation of forty-one different smaller companies, that its
factories cover twenty-one acres of ground, that it gives employment
daily to 4,200 persons, that its working capital is quoted at
$20,860,000, and that it controls more than 300 patents representing
improvements in the machines it produces. From an article published in
the Lynn (Mass.) _News_, of October 3, 1889, it appears that the United
Shoe Machinery Company, above mentioned, established at Lynn a school,
the only one of its kind in the world, where boys are taught exclusively
to operate the Matzeliger type of machine; that a class of about 200
boys and young men are graduated from this school annually and sent out
to various parts of the world to instruct others in the art of handling
this machine.

Some years before his death Matzeliger became a member of a white church
in Lynn, called the North Congregational Society, and bequeathed to this
church some of the stock of the company he had organized. Years
afterward this church became heavily involved in debt, and remembering
the stock that had been left to it by this colored member, found, upon
inquiry, that it had become very valuable through the importance of the
patent under the management of the large company then controlling it.
The church sold the stock and realized from the sale more than enough to
pay off the entire debt of the church, amounting to $10,860. With the
canceled mortgage as one incentive, this