iness collapsed, the various
companies went into bankruptcy, and the very name of India-rubber came
to be detested by producers and consumers alike.

It was at this time that Charles Goodyear appeared upon the
scene--unfortunately enough for himself, but fortunately for
humanity--and determined to discover some method by which rubber could
be made to withstand the extremes of heat and cold. From that time until
the close of his life, he devoted himself wholly to this work, in the
face of such hardships and discouragements as few other men have ever
experienced. He began his experiments at once, and finally hit upon
magnesia as a substance which, mixed with rubber, seemed to give it
lasting properties; but a month later, the mixture began to ferment and
became as hard and brittle as glass.

His stock of money was soon exhausted, his own valuables, and even the
trinkets of his wife were pawned, but Goodyear never for an instant
thought of giving up the problem which he had set himself to solve.
Again he believed he had discovered the secret by boiling the solution
of rubber and magnesia in quicklime and water, when he found to his
dismay that a drop of the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple,
would reduce an apparently fine sheet of rubber to a sticky mass. The
first real step in the right direction was made by accident, for, in
removing some bronzing from a piece of rubber with aqua fortis, he found
that the chemical worked a remarkable change in the rubber, which would
now stand a degree of heat that would have melted it before. He called
this "curing" India-rubber, and after careful tests, patented the
process, secured a partner with capital, rented an old India-rubber
works on Staten Island, and set to work, full of hope. But commercial
disaster swept away his partner's fortune, and Goodyear could find no
one else who would risk his money in so doubtful an enterprise.

Indeed, in all America he seemed to be the only man who had the
slightest hope of accomplishing anything with India-rubber. His friends
regarded him as a lunatic, and especially when he made himself a suit of
clothes out of his India-rubber cloth, and wore it on all occasions. One
day a man looking for Goodyear asked one of the latter's friends how he
would recognize him if he met him.

"If you see a man with an India-rubber coat on," was the reply,
"India-rubber shoes, India-rubber hat, and in his pocket an India-rubber
purse with not a cen