Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
Some of his best ideas, he used to say, were saved to mankind by this precaution. It is not well for any man to be thus absorbed in his object. To Goodyear, whose infirm constitution peculiarly needed repose and recreation, it was disastrous, and at length fatal. It is well with no man who does riot play as well as work. Fortunately, we are all beginning to understand this.
He was not the inventor of synthetic rubber about which you hear nowadays, but he had improved the process so much that there is no doubt that synthetic rubber would soon have been on the market cheaper and better than the best natural rubber from Para. "Goodyear is not a large place, but it is famous for its rubber and uses a great deal of raw material.
To vulcanize India-rubber is about as difficult as to make perfect bread; but the art of bread-making was the growth of ages, and Charles Goodyear was only ten years and a half in perfecting his process. Thousands of ingenious men and women, aided by many happy accidents, must have contributed to the successive invention of bread; but he was only one man, poor and sick.
Not one of these men, perhaps, could have made a reasonable reply to the remonstrances of their friends. They only felt, as poor Goodyear felt, that the steep and thorny path which they were treading was the path they must pursue. A power of which they could give no satisfactory account urged them on.
Goodyear might have yielded to his friends on this occasion, for he was an affectionate man, devoted to his family, had not one of those trifling events occurred which inflamed his curiosity anew. During his late transient prosperity, he had employed a man, Nathaniel Hayward by name, who had been foreman of one of the extinct India-rubber companies.
Webster said, "You have cut a highway through this case, and if it is won, it will be because of the manner in which you have brought it before the court." The suit was won by Goodyear. "In connection with the India-rubber cases is a fact which testifies to his character.
He, Raleigh Goodyear, was passably rich; his wife was by birth of that old Southern set which dominated the society of San Francisco from its very beginning. Until their only daughter married into the army and, by her money and connections, advanced her husband to a staff position in Washington, Mrs.
He won additional honors in the famous India-rubber suits, which have been mentioned elsewhere in this volume, acting as one of the counsel of Charles Goodyear, and being associated with Daniel Webster.
Goodyear, always sick, had been for so many years the slave of his pursuit, he had been so spurred on by necessity, and lured by partial success, that, when at last he might have rested, he could not. It does not become us, however, who reap the harvest, to censure him who wore himself out in sowing the seed. The harvest is great, greater than any but he anticipated.
The capital of the Company was already so far exhausted, that, unless the true method were speedily discovered, it would be compelled to wind up its affairs. The agent urged Mr. Goodyear not to waste time upon minor improvements, but to direct all his efforts to finding out the secret of successfully working the material itself.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking