The needs of his times, and of the people among whom he lives, have often set the inventor’s mind working along the line of his achievement. It was so with Elias Howe, who built the first sewing-machine. A hard-working man, and not overstrong, he would return to his home from the machine-shop where he was employed, and throw himself on the bed night after night to rest. Each night he watched his young wife sewing to clothe their three children and add a little something to the family income. With a strong taste for mechanics it was natural that he should wonder if there were not some way of lightening the burden of so much needlework.

He had been brought up in surroundings that naturally impressed him with the value of looms and new appliances for spinning and weaving. He understood the various processes of handling wool and cotton, although his own work lay outside them. His father had been a miller in the small Massachusetts town of Spencer, where Elias was born in 1819. New England was already building her textile factories, and when he was only six the boy joined his brothers and sisters at the work of sticking wire teeth through the straps of leather that were then used for cotton-cards. What he learned from books he had to pick up during a few weeks each summer at the district school. His health was delicate, and he was lame, unfitted to be a farmer, and his best place seemed to be in his father’s mill. But he was ambitious, and when he was sixteen, a friend having brought him glowing tales of the great cotton-mills in the fast-growing city of Lowell, he decided to seek his fortune there. The panic of 1837 closed the mills, and Howe found his course deflected to work in a machine-shop in Cambridge. By the time he came of age he had married and was living in Boston, working as a mechanic to support his family. Of a speculative turn of mind, he was constantly suggesting improvements at the shop, and his watching his wife labor with needle and thread turned his thoughts in the direction of a machine for sewing.

The idea was not a new one, but the men who had studied it had decided that there were too many difficulties to overcome. Howe took up the matter as a pastime, giving his spare moments to it, and talking it over with his wife in the evenings when he was not too tired. Naturally enough what he tried to do was to imitate the action of the hand in sewing. His idea was to make a machine that would thrust a needle through the cloth and then push it back again, working up and down. Therefore his first needle was sharp at both ends, and had its eye in the middle. He decided that he could only use very coarse thread, as the constant motion would surely snap any fine thread. But a year’s experimenting convinced him that this simple up-and-down thrust was too primitive a motion, and that the needle must be made to form a different sort of stitch. He tried one method after another, and finally hit upon the idea of making use of two threads, and forming the stitch by means of a shuttle and a curved needle having the eye near the point. He made a model, in wood and wire, of this first sewing-machine, in October, 1844, and found that it would work.

An early account of Howe’s first sewing-machine says, “He used a needle and a shuttle of novel construction, and combined them with holding surfaces, feed mechanism, and other devices as they had never before been brought together in one machine.... One of the principal features of Mr. Howe’s invention is the combination of a grooved needle having an eye near its point, and vibrating in the direction of its length, with a side-pointed shuttle for effecting a locked stitch, and forming with the threads, one on each side of the cloth, a firm and lasting seam not easily ripped.”

Howe had now decided to give all his time to introducing his sewing-machine. He gave up his position in the machine-shop, and moved his family to his father’s house in Cambridge. There his father was employed in cutting palm-leaf for the manufacture of hats. The son had a lathe put in the garret, and began to make the various parts that were needed for his sewing-machine. He did any work he could find by the day to supply his family with food and clothing, but it proved a very hard battle. His father’s shop burned, and the whole family seemed on the brink of ruin. The young inventor was in a very difficult situation. He was confident that he had a machine that should, if properly handled, bring him in a fortune, but he must have some money to buy the iron and steel that were essential to its building, and he must devise a way of interesting some capitalist in it sufficiently to enable him to put it on the market. Meantime he must contrive to provide for his family, who were now practically without shelter.

Fortunately, at this point, a Cambridge dealer in coal and wood, by the name of Fisher, heard of Howe’s machine, and asked to see it. Howe jumped at the opportunity, explained its mechanism, and told how he was situated. Mr. Fisher thought the model had possibilities, and agreed to provide board for the inventor and his family, to give the young man a workshop in his own house, and to advance him the sum of $500, which Howe said was absolutely necessary to pay for the construction of such a machine as could be shown to the public. For his assistance Fisher was to receive a half-interest in a patent for the sewing-machine if Howe could obtain one. This arrangement proved Howe’s salvation, and in December, 1844, he moved into his new friend’s house.

He worked all that winter, meeting the many practical difficulties that arose as he progressed with his machine, and devising solutions for overcoming each. He worked all day, and many a time long into the night. His machine progressed so well that by April, 1845, he found that it would sew a seam four yards long. The machine was entirely completed by the latter part of May, and its work proved satisfactory to both partners. Howe sewed the seams of two woolen suits with it, one for himself, and one for Fisher, and it was declared that the mechanical sewing was so well done that it promised to outlast the cloth. There was no longer any doubt that Howe had invented a machine that would lighten labor to a very great degree.

He took out his first patent on the sewing-machine toward the end of 1845. But when he tried to introduce his invention he met the same difficulties that had faced all men who tried to supplant hand labor by any mechanical process. The tailors of Boston to whom he showed it were willing to admit its efficiency, but told him that he could never secure its general use, as such a proceeding would ruin their business. Every one admired the sewing-machine and praised Howe’s ingenuity, but no one would buy one. The opposition to the completed machine seemed insuperable, and Fisher, believing it to be so, at length withdrew from his partnership with Howe. The latter and his family had to move back again to his father’s house.

To make a living Howe took a position as a locomotive engineer, leaving his invention unused at home. This work proved too hard, his health broke down, and he was compelled to give up the position. In his enforced idleness he began to devise new ways of selling his machine, and finally decided to send his brother Amasa to England, and see if he could not interest some one there in the invention. His brother was willing to do this, and arrived in London, with a sewing-machine, in October, 1846. He showed it to a man named William Thomas, who became interested in it, offered $1,250 for it, and also offered to employ Elias Howe in his business of umbrella and corset maker.

Howe decided that this position was preferable to his idleness in Cambridge, and accepted it. He sailed for England, and entered the factory of William Thomas. But, although Thomas had taken a very lively interest in Howe’s sewing-machine, he did not treat the inventor well. For eight months Howe worked for him, and meantime he had sent for his wife and three children, and they had arrived in London. But eight months was the limit of his endurance of his new master’s tyranny, and at the end of that time he gave up his position. Matters seemed tending worse and worse with him, and the situation of the Howe family in London, almost penniless, grew daily more and more precarious.

His family at home sent Howe a little money before his earnings were entirely spent, and he used this to buy passage for his wife and children back to the United States. He himself stayed in London, believing there were better chances for the sale of his machine there than in America. But his pursuit of fortune in England proved but the search for the rainbow’s pot of gold. There was no market for his wares, and after months of actual destitution he pawned the model of his sewing-machine and even his patent papers in order to secure funds to pay his passage home. Tragedy dogged his footsteps. He reached New York with only a few small coins in his pocket, and received word that his wife was lying desperately ill in Cambridge. His own strength was spent, and he had to wait several days before he had the money to pay his railroad fare[Pg 211]
[Pg 212] to Boston. Soon after he reached home his wife died. Blow after blow had fallen on him until he was almost crushed.

Even his hard-won invention seemed now about to be snatched from him. Certain mechanics in New England, who had heard descriptions of his model, built machines on its lines, and sold them. The newspapers learned of these, and began to suggest their use in a number of industries. Howe looked about him, saw the sewing-machine growing in favor, heard it praised, and realized that it had been actually stolen from him. He bestirred himself, found patent attorneys who were willing to look into his patents, and when they pronounced them unassailable, found money enough to defend them. He began several suits to establish his claims in August, 1850, and at about the same time formed a partnership with a New Yorker named Bliss, who agreed to try to sell the machines if Howe would open a shop and build them in New York.

Howe’s claims to the invention of the sewing-machine were positively established by the courts in 1854. The machine was now well known, and its value as a moneymaker very apparent. But the workers in cheap clothing shops organized to prevent the introduction of the machines, claiming that they would destroy their livelihood. Labor leaders took up the slogan, and led the men and women workers in what were known as the Sewing-machine Riots. In the few shops where the machines were actually introduced they were injured or destroyed by the workmen. The pressure became so great that the larger establishments ceased their use, and only the small shops, that employed a few workers, were able to continue using the new machine. In spite of its recognized value it looked as if the sewing-machine could not prove a financial success, and when Howe’s partner Bliss died in 1855 the inventor was able to buy his share in the business from his heirs for a very small sum.

Opposition, even of the most strenuous order, has never been able to retard for long the use of an invention that simplifies industry. If a machine is made that will in an hour do the work that formerly required several days’ hand labor that machine is certain to displace that hand labor. The workers may protest, but industrial progress demands the more economic method. So it was with the sewing-machine. The riots died away, the labor leaders turned to other fields, and one by one the clothing factories installed the new machines. Howe had the patience to wait, and in one way and another obtained the sinews of war to sue the infringers of his patents. The waiting was worth while. He ultimately forced all other manufacturers of sewing-machines to pay him for their products. In six years his royalties increased from $300 a year to over $200,000 a year. His machine was shown at the Paris Exposition of 1867, and was awarded a gold medal, and Howe himself was given the ribbon of the French Legion of Honor.

The wheel of fortune has turned quickly for many inventors, but perhaps never more completely than it did for Elias Howe. The man who had pawned his goods in London, and had reached New York with less than a dollar in his pocket, had an income of $200,000 a year. He who had been rebuffed by the tailors of Boston was recognized as one of the great men of his generation, and one who, instead of taking the bread from the mouths of poor working men and women, had lightened their labor a thousandfold. The women, like his own wife, who had sewed by day and night, were saved their strength and vision, and the slavery of the clothing factories, notorious in those days, was inestimably lightened. But it had been a hard fight to make the world take what it sorely needed.

Howe’s struggle had been so hard that his health was badly broken when he did succeed. He had several years to enjoy his profits and honors. He died October 3, 1867, at his home in Brooklyn.

Many inventors have barely escaped with their lives from the fury of mobs who thought the inventor would take their living from them. Papin, and Hargreaves, and Arkwright all learned what such resistance meant. But as one invention has succeeded another people have grown wiser, and realized that each has conferred a benefit rather than taken away a right. Howe was one of the last to find the people he hoped to benefit aligned against him. The world has moved, since Galileo’s day, and the inventor is now known as the great benefactor. But Howe’s life was a fight, and his triumph that of one of the great martyrs of invention.