ore plunged into the
worst of poverty. It was generally agreed that the man who would
proceed further, in a cause of this sort, was fairly deserving of all
the distress brought on himself, and justly debarred the sympathy of
others. His suffering during the years that followed is simply
incredible. The prejudice against him was intense. Everybody
characterized him as a fool, and no one would help him. A witness
afterwards testified in a trial: "They had sickness in the family; I was
often in and found them very poor and destitute, for both food and fuel.
They had none, nor had they anything to buy any with. This was before
they boarded with us, and while they were keeping house. They told me
they had no money with which to buy bread from one day to another. They
did not know how they should get it. The children said they did not know
what they should do for food. They dug their potatoes before they were
half-grown, for the sake of having something to eat. Their son Charles,
eight years old, used to say that they ought to be thankful for the
potatoes, for they did not know what they should do without them. We
used to furnish them with milk, and they wished us to take furniture and
bed-clothes in payment, rather than not pay for it. At one time they had
nothing to eat, and a barrel of flour was unexpectedly sent them."

It is a record of destitution, imprisonment for debt, and suffering from
this time until 1841, when he began to see day-light. By accident he one
day allowed a piece of rubber to drop on the stove, when, lo! he had
found the secret, heat was the thing needed. Six years had he struggled
on through untold hardships, and now he seemed crowned with success. He
had found the desired solution of the problem, but he made a fatal
mistake here. Instead of settling down and manufacturing his discovery,
which would have brought him a fortune, he sold rights and kept on
experimenting. By certain legal informalities he secured no benefit
whatever from his patent in France and he was cheated entirely out of it
in England. Although he lived to see large factories for its
manufacture spring up in both America and Europe, employing 60,000
operatives, still he died in 1860 at the age of seventy-one, leaving his
family unprovided for. The cause was not lack of perseverance nor
energy, but the sole cause was lack of judgment in business matters.

The vulcanized rubber trade is one of the greatest industries of the
world to-d