ce only to vulcanization.
When he died in 1860 he had taken out sixty patents on rubber
manufactures. He had seen his invention applied to several hundred uses,
giving employment to sixty thousand persons, producing annually eight
million dollars' worth of merchandise--numbers which would form but a
fraction of the rubber statistics of today.

Everybody, the whole civilized world round, uses rubber in one form or
another. And rubber makes a belt around the world in its natural as well
as in its manufactured form. The rubber-bearing zone winds north and
south of the equator through both hemispheres. In South America rubber
is the latex of certain trees, in Africa of trees and vines. The best
"wild" rubber still comes from Para in Brazil. It is gathered and
prepared for shipment there today by the same methods the natives
used four hundred years ago. The natives in their canoes follow the
watercourses into the jungles. They cut V-shaped or spiral incisions in
the trunks of the trees that grow sheer to sixty feet before spreading
their shade. At the base of the incisions they affix small clay cups,
like swallows' nests. Over the route they return later with large gourds
in which they collect the fluid from the clay cups. The filled gourds
they carry to their village of grass huts and there they build their
smoky fires of oily palm nuts. Dipping paddles into the fluid gum
they turn and harden it, a coating at a time, in the smoke. The rubber
"biscuit" is cut from the paddle with a wet knife when the desired
thickness has been attained.

Goodyear lived for sixteen years after his discovery of the
vulcanization process. During the last six he was unable to walk without
crutches. He was indifferent to money. To make his discoveries of still
greater service to mankind was his whole aim. It was others who made
fortunes out of his inventions. Goodyear died a poor man.

In his book, a copy of which was printed on gumelastic sheets and bound
in hard rubber carved, he summed up his philosophy in this statement:
"The writer is not disposed to repine and say that he has planted and
others have gathered the fruits. The advantages of a career in life
should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and
cents, as it is too often done. Man has just cause for regret when he
sows and no one reaps."

CHAPTER VIII. PIONEERS OF THE MACHINE SHOP

There is a tinge of melancholy about the life of such a pioneer as
Oliver E