hman manufactured
suspenders by cutting a native bottle into fine threads and running
them through a narrow cloth web. And Macintosh, a chemist of Glasgow,
inserted rubber treated with naphtha between thin pieces of cloth and
evolved the garment that still bears his name.

At first the new business in rubber yielded profits. The cost of the
raw material was infinitesimal; and there was a demand for the finished
articles. In Roxbury, Massachusetts, a firm manufacturing patent leather
treated raw rubber with turpentine and lampblack and spread it on cloth,
in an effort to produce a waterproof leather. The process appeared to
be a complete success, and a large capital was employed to make handsome
shoes and clothing out of the new product and in opening shops in the
large cities for their sale. Merchants throughout the country placed
orders for these goods, which, as it happened, were made and shipped in
winter.

But, when summer came, the huge profits of the manufacturers literally
melted away, for the beautiful garments decomposed in the heat; and
loads of them, melting and running together, were being returned to the
factory. And they filled Roxbury with such noisome odors that they had
to be taken out at dead of night and buried deep in the earth.

And not only did these rubber garments melt in the heat. It presently
transpired that severe frost stiffened them to the rigidity of granite.
Daniel Webster had had some experience in this matter himself. "A friend
in New York," he said, "sent me a very fine cloak of India Rubber, and a
hat of the same material. I did not succeed very well with them. I took
the cloak one day and set it out in the cold. It stood very well by
itself. I surmounted it with the hat, and many persons passing by
supposed they saw, standing by the porch, the Farmer of Marshfield."

It was in the year 1834, shortly after the Roxbury manufacturers had
come to realize that their process was worthless and that their great
fortune was only a mirage, and just before these facts became generally
known, that Charles Goodyear made his entrance on the scene. He appeared
first as a customer in the company's store in New York and bought a
rubber life-preserver. When he returned some weeks later with a plan
for improving the tube, the manager confided to him the sad tragedy of
rubber, pointing out that no improvement in the manufactured articles
would meet the difficulty, but that fame and fortune awaited the