ELIAS HOWE, INVENTOR OF THE SEWING MACHINE
ELIAS HOWE
140. A Time-Saving Invention. Elias Howe was a poor boy who won great riches through his invention, but spent most of his years in a long, dreary struggle with poverty.
Elias was born in Massachusetts in 1819. His father was a poor man. He worked in his father's mill and then in the cotton mills of New England until he came to have a thorough knowledge of machinery. When he was twenty-four he began his great invention, the sewing machine.
Sewing machines using a chain stitch had already been invented in England and France, but a chain stitch ravels easily. Howe invented a lock stitch machine. Like earlier machines, it had a needle with an eye in its point to bring a loop of thread through the cloth. In chain stitching the needle at the next stitch passes through this loop. Howe instead passed a shuttle carrying a second thread through the loop. This made a firm lock stitch.
HOWE'S FIRST SEWING MACHINE
Howe tried to get tailors to buy his machine. He proved that it would sew seven times as fast as the best needleworkers. But they were afraid it would take work away from their men, and would have nothing to do with it.
After patenting his machine, Howe took it to England, but there he remained as poor and unknown as before.
Returning to New York he heard that unscrupulous men had stolen or "pirated" his ideas, and that the sale of sewing machines was now a thriving business. But Howe was determined to uphold his rights. In 1859, after a battle of many years in the law courts, he secured the full and complete title to his invention.
141. A Turn in Fortune. The man who had faced poverty and rebuffs all his days now came into great wealth. His income each year would be equal to-day to at least a million dollars.
Sewing machines have now become almost a necessity in all American homes. It is hard to realize the amount of close, slow, exacting work from which Howe's machine has released women everywhere. The work of the most skillful needlewomen is not to be compared in speed and evenness with machine stitching. Garments now can be produced in vastly greater quantities than by hand work, and machine stitching is much more durable.
When the Civil War came, Howe's sewing machine made tents, shoes, and uniforms for the great Union army which would not have had them in time otherwise. Howe himself enlisted as a private and served while his health lasted. He died in 1867 when only forty-eight years old.
SUGGESTIONS INTENDED TO HELP THE PUPIL
The Leading Facts. 1. Fulton's invention greatly increased commerce before the coming of railroads. 2. Congress granted Morse money to build a telegraph line, after many delays. 3. Bell and Gray invented the telephone. 4. Marconi invented wireless telegraphy. 5. Cyrus Field after many failures laid a permanent cable across the Atlantic in 1866. 6. McCormick's reaper hastened the settlement of the West. 7. Howe became rich through the invention of the sewing machine.
Study Questions. 1. Tell of early attempts to build steamboats. 2. Give the story of the Clermont. 3. Give an account of the steps by which Morse won success. 4. How many attempts did Field make before a permanent cable was laid? 5. What was the great importance of McCormick's reaper? 6. Describe Howe's first sewing machine.
Suggested Readings. Robert Fulton: Glascock, Stories of Columbia, 186-188; Wright, Children's Stories of American Progress, 104-120; Thurston, Robert Fulton.
Samuel F. B. Morse: Trowbridge, Samuel Finley Breeze Morse; Mowry, American Inventions and Inventors, 270-277; Holland, Historic Inventions, 168-188.
Bell and Gray: Holland, Historic Inventions, 215-232.
Cyrus West Field: Judson, Cyrus W. Field; Doubleday, Stories of Inventors, 3-16; Mowry, American Inventions and Inventors, 278-285.
Cyrus H. McCormick: Brooks, The Story of Corn, 218-220; Forman, Stories of Useful Inventions, 91-96; Sanford, The Story of Agriculture in the United States, 144-149.
Elias Howe: Hubert, Inventors, 99-110.