The Colored Inventor
A RECORD OF FIFTY YEARS
By HENRY E. BAKER, Assistant Examiner United States Patent Office
PRICE 15 CENTS
Tke Colored Inventor
A RECORD OF FIFTY YEARS
By HENRY E. BAKER, Assistant Examiner United States Patent Office
HE year 1913 marks the close
of the first fifty years since
Abraham Lincoln issued
that famous edict known as
the emancipation proclama¬
tion, by which physical
freedom was vouchsafed to
the slaves and the descendants of slaves in
this country. And it would seem entirely fit
and proper that those who were either
directly or indirectly benefited by that proc¬
lamation should pause long enough at this
period in their national life to review the
past, recount the progress made, and see, if
possible, what of the future is disclosed in
the past.
That the colored people in the United
States have made substantial progress in the
general spread of intelligence among them,
and in elevating the tone of their moral life;
in the acquisition of property; in the
development and support of business enter¬
prises, and in the professional -activities, is
a matter of quite common assent by those
who have been at all observant on the sub¬
ject. This fact is amply shown to be true
by the many universities, colleges and schools
organized, supported and manned by the
race, by their attractive homes and cultured
home life, found now in all parts of our
country; by the increasing numbers of those
of the race who are successfully engaging
in professional life, and by the gradual ad¬
vance the race is making toward business
efficiency in many varied lines of business
activity.
It is not so apparent, however, to the
general public that along the line of inven¬
tions also the colored race has made surpris¬
ing and substantial progress; and that it has
followed, even if "afar off," the footsteps
of the more favored race. And it is highly
important, therefore, that we should make
note of what the race has achieved along this
line to the end that proper credit may be
accorded it as having made some contribu¬
tion to our national progress.
Standing foremost in the list of things that
have actually done most to promote our
national progress in all material ways is the
item of inventions. Without inventions we
should have had no agricultural implements
with which to till the fertile fields of our
vast continent; no mining machinery for
recovering the rich treasure that for cen¬
turies lay hidden beneath our surface; no
steamcar or steamboat for transporting the
products of field and mine; no machinery for
converting those products into other forms of
commercial needs; no telegraph or telephone
for the speedy transmission of messages,
no means for discovering and controlling the
various utilitarian applications of electricity;
no one of those delicate instruments which
enable the skilful surgeon of to-day to
transform and renew the human body, and
often to make life itself stand erect, as it
were, in . the very presence of death. With¬
out inventions we could have none of those
numerous instruments which to-day in the
hands of the scientist enable him accurately
to forecast the weather, to anticipate and
provide against storms on land and at sea,
to detect seismic disturbances and warn
against the dangers incident to their repeti¬
tion; and no wireless telegraphy with its
manifold blessings to humanity.
All these great achievements have come to
us from the hand of the inventor! He it is
who has enabled us to inhabit the air above
us, to tunnel the earth beneath, explore the
mysteries of the sea, and in a thousand ways,
unknown to our forefathers, multiply human
comforts and minimize human misery. In-
2
THE COLORED INVENTOR
HENRY E. BAKER.
THE COLORED INVENTOR
3
deed, it is difficult to recall a single feature
of our national progress along material lines
that has not been vitalized by the touch of
the inventor's genius.
Into this vast yet specific field of scientific
industry the colored man has, contrary to
the belief of many, made his entry, and has
brought to his work in it that same degree
of patient inquisitiveness, plodding industry
and painstaking experiment that has so
richly rewarded others in the same line of
endeavor, namely, the endeavor both to
create new things and to effect such new
combinations of old things as will adapt
them to new uses. We know that the colored
man has accomplished something—indeed, a
very great deal—in- the field of invention,
but it would be of the first importance to us
now to know exactly what he has done, and
the commercial value of his productions.
Unfortunately for us, however, this can never
be known in all its completeness.
A very recent experiment in the matter
of collecting information on this subject has
disclosed some remarkably striking facts, not
the least interesting of which is the very
widespread belief among those who ought to
know better that the colored man has done
absolutely nothing of value in the line of
invention. This is but a reflex of the
opinions variously expressed by others at
different times on the subject of the capacity
of the colored man for mental work of a
high order. Thomas Jefferson's remark that
no colored man could probably be found who
was capable of taking in and comprehending
Euclid, and that none had made any con¬
tribution to the civilization of the world
through his art, would perhaps appear some¬
what excusable when viewed in the light of
the prevailing conditions in his day, and on
which, of course, his judgment was based;
but even at that time Jefferson knew some¬
thing of the superior quality of Benjamin
Banneker's mental equipment, for it is on
record that they exchanged letters on that
subject.
Coming down to a later day, when our
race as a whole had shared, to some extent
at least, in the progress of learning, so well
informed an exponent of popular thought
as Henry Ward Beecher is said to have
declared that the whole African race in its
native land could be obliterated from the face
of the earth without loss to civilization, and
yet Beecher knew, or should have known, of
the scholarly Dr. Blyden, of Liberia, who
was at one time president of the college of
Liberia at Monrovia, and minister from his
country to the Court of St. James,,and whose
contributions to the leading magazines of
Europe and America were eagerly accepted
and widely read on both continents.
Less than ten years ago, in a hotly con¬
tested campaign in the State of Maryland, a
popular candidate for Congress remarked,
in one of his speeches, that the colored race
should be denied the right to vote because
"none of them had ever evinced sufficient
capacity to justify such a privilege," and
that "no one of the race had ever yet reached
the dignity of an inventor." Yet, at that
very moment, there was in the Library of
Congress in Washington a book of nearly
500 pages containing a list of nearly 400
patents representing the inventiohs of
colored people.
Only a few years later a leading news¬
paper in the city of Richmond, Va., made
the bold statement that of the many thou¬
sands of patents annually granted by our
government to the inventors of our country,
"not a single patent had ever been granted
to a colored man." Of course this statement
was untrue, but what of that? It told its
tale, and made its impression—far and wide;
and it is incumbent upon our race now to out¬
run that story, to correct that impression,
and to let the world know the truth.
In a recent correspondence that, has
reached nearly two-thirds of the more than
12,000 registered patent attorneys in this
country, who are licensed to prosecute appli¬
cations for patents before the Patent Office
at Washington, it is astonishing to have
nearly 2,500 of them reply that they never
heard of a colored inventor, and not a few
of them add that they never expect to hear
of one. One practising attorney, writing
from a small town in Tennessee, said that
he not only has never heard of a colored
man inventing anything, but that he and the
other lawyers to whom he passed the inquiry
in that locality were "inclined to regard the
whole subject as a joke." And this, re¬
member, comes from practising lawyers,
presumably men of affairs, and of judgment,
and who keep somewhat ahead of the average
citizen in their close observation of the
trend of things.
Now there ought not to be anything
strange or unbelievable in the fact that in
any given group of more than 10,000,000
human beings, of whatever race, living in our
4
THE COLORED INVENTOR
age, in our country, and developing under
our laws, one can find multiplied examples
of every mental bent, of every stage of
mental development, and of every evidence
of mental perception that could be found in
any other similar group of human beings of
any other race; and yet, so set has become
the traditional attitude of one class in our
country toward the other class that the one
class continually holds up before its eyes
an imaginary boundary line in all things
mental, beyond which it seems unwilling to
admit that it is possible for the other class
to go.
Under this condition of the general class
thought in our country it has become the fixed
conviction that no colored man has any well-
defined power of initiative, that the "colored
man has no originality of thought, that in
his mental operations he is everlastingly con¬
tent to pursue the beaten paths of imitation,
that therefore he has made no contribution
to the inventive genius of our country, and
so has gained no place for himself in the
ranks of those who have made this nation
the foremost nation of the world in the num¬
ber and character of its inventions.
That this conclusion with reference to the
colored man's inventive faculty is wholly
untrue I will endeavor now to show.
In the world of invention the colored man
has pursued the same line of activity that
other men have followed; he has been spurred
by the same necessity that has confronted
other men, namely, the need for some device
by which to minimize the exactions of his
daily toil, to save his time, conserve his
strength and multiply the results of his labor.
Like other men, the colored man sought first
to invent, the thing that was related to his
earlier occupations, and as his industrial
pursuits became more varied his inventive
genius widened correspondingly. Thus we
find that the first recorded instances of patents
having been granted to a colored man—and
the only ones specifically so designated—are
the two patents on corn harvesters which
were granted in 1834 and 1836 to one Henry
Blair, of Maryland, presumably a "free
person of color," as the law was so con¬
strued at that time as to bar the issuance of
a patent to a slave.
With the exception of these two instances
the public records of the Patent Office give
absolutely no hint as to whether any one of
the more than 1,000,000 patents granted by
this government to meritorious inventors from
all parts of the world has been granted to a
colored inventor. The records make clear
enough distinctions as to nationality, but
absolutely none as to race. This policy of
having' the public records distinguish between
inventors of different nationalities only is a
distinct disadvantage to the colored race in
this country.
If the inventors of England or France or
Germany or Italy, or any other country, de¬
sire to ascertain the number and character
of the inventions patented to the citizens of
their respective countries, it would require
but a few hours of work to get exact statis¬
tics on the subject, but not so. with the
colored inventor. Here, as elsewhere, he has
a hard road to travel.
In fact, it seems absolutely impossible to
get even an approximately correct answer to
that question for our race. Whatever of
statistics one is able to get on this subject
must be obtained almost wholly in a hap¬
hazard sort of way from persons not
employed in the Patent Office, and avIio must,
in the great majority of cases, rely on their
memory to some extent for the facts they
give. Under such circumstances as these it
is easy to see the large amount of labor
involved in getting up such statistics as may
be relied upon as being true.
There have been two systematic efforts
made by the Patent Office itself to get this
information, one of them being in operation
at the present time. The effort is made
through a circular letter addressed to the
thousands of patent attorneys throughout the
country, who come in contact often with
inventors as their clients, to popular and
influential newspapers, to conspicuous citi¬
zens of both races, and to the owners of
large manufacturing industries where skilled
mechanics of both races are employed, all
of whom are asked to report what they
happen to know on the subject under inquiry.
The answers to this inquiry cover a wide
range of guesswork, many mere rumors and
a large number of definite facts. These are
all put through the test of comparison with
the official records of the Patent Office, and
this sifting process has evolved such facts as
form the basis of the showing presented here.
There is just one other source of informa¬
tion which, though its yield of facts is small,
yet makes up in reliability what it lacks in
numerousness; and that is where the in¬
ventor himself comes to the Patent Office to
look after his invention. This does not often
THE COLORED INVENTOR
ELIJAH McCOY.
6
THE COLORED INVENTOR
happen, but it rarely leaves anything- to the
imagination when it does happen.
Sometimes it has been difficult to get this
information by correspondence even from
colored inventors themselves. Many of them
refuse to acknowledge that their inventions
are in any way identified with the colored
race, on the ground, presumably, that the
publication of that fact might adversely
affect the commercial value of their inven¬
tion; and in view of the prevailing senti¬
ment in many sections of our country, it
cannot be denied that much reason lies at the
bottom of such conclusion.
Notwithstanding the difficulties above men¬
tioned as standing in the way of getting at
the whole truth, something over 1,200
instances have been gathered as representing
patents granted to colored inventors, but so
far only about 800 of these have been
verified as definitely belonging to that class.
These 800 patents tell a wonderful story
of the progress of the race in the mastery of
the science of mechanics. They cover inven¬
tions of more or less importance in all the
branches of mechanics, in chemical com¬
pounds, in surgical instruments, in electrical
utilities, and in the fine arts as well.
From the numerous statements made by
various attorneys to the effect that they have
had several colored clients whose names they
could not recall, and whose inventions they
could not identify on their books, it is prac¬
tically certain that the nearly 800 verified
patents do not represent more than one-half
of those that have been actually granted to
colored inventors, and that the credit for
these must perhaps forever lie hidden in the
unbreakable silence of official records.
But before directing attention specifically
■ to some of the very interesting details dis¬
closed by this latest investigation into the
subject, let us consider for a brief moment
a few of the inventions which colored men
have made, but for which no patents appear
to be of record.
I should place foremost among these that
wonderful clock constructed by our first
astronomer, Benjamin Banneker, of Mary¬
land. Banneker's span of earthly existence
covered the 75 years from 1731 to 1806.
His parentage was of African and English
origin, and his mental equipment was far
above the average of his day and locality in
either race. Aside from his agricultural
pursuits, on which he relied for a livelihood,
he devoted his time mainly to scientific and
mechanical studies, producing two things by
which he will be long' retnembered: An
almanac and a clock. The latter he con¬
structed with crude tools, and with no knowl¬
edge of any other timepiece except a watch
and a sundial; yet the clock he made was so
perfect in every detail of its mechanical
construction, so accurate in the mathematical
calculations involved, that it struck the hours
with faultless precision for twenty years,
and was the mechanical wonder of his day
and locality.
Another instance is that of Mr. James
Forten, of Philadelphia, who is credited with
the invention of an apparatus for managing
sails. He lived from 1766 to 1812, and his
biographer says he amassed a competence
from his invention and lived in leisurely
comfort as a consequence.
Still another instance is that of Robert
Benjamin Lewis, who was born in Gardiner,
Me., in 1802. He invented a machine for
picking oakum, which machine is said to be
in use to-day in all the essential particulars
of its original form by the shipbuilding
interests of Maine, especially at Bath.
It is of common knoAvledge that in the
South, prior to the War of the Rebellion, the
burden of her industries, mechanical as well
as agricultural, fell upon the colored popula¬
tion. They formed the great majority of her
mechanics and skilled artisans as well as of
her ordinary laborers, and from this class
of workmen came a great variety of the
ordinary mechanical appliances the inven¬
tion of which grew directly out of the prob¬
lems presented by their daily employment.
There has been a' somewhat persistent
rumor that a slave either invented the cotton-
gin or gave to Eli Whitney, who obtained a
patent for it, valuable suggestions to aid in
the completion of that invention. I have not
been able to find any substantial proof to
sustain that rumor. Mr. Daniel Murray, of
the Library of Congress, contributed a very
informing article on that subject to the
Voice of the Negro, in 1905, but Mr.
Murray did not reach conclusions favorable
to the contention on behalf of the colored
man.
It is said that the zigzag fence, so com¬
monly used by farmers and others, was
originally introduced into this country by
African slaves.
We come now to consider the list of more
modern inventions, those inventions from
which the element of uncertainty is wholly
THE COLORED INVENTOR
7
eliminated, and which are represented in the
patent records of our government.
In this verified list of nearly 800 patents
granted by our government to the inventors
of our race we find that they have applied
their inventive talent to the whole range of
inventive subjects; that in agricultural
implements, in wood and metal-working
machines, in land conveyances on road and
track, in seagoing vessels, in chemical com¬
pounds, in electricity through all its wide
range of uses, in aeronautics, in new designs
of house furniture and bric-a-brac, in
mechanical toys and amusement devices, the
colored inventor has achieved such success
as should present to the race a distinctly
hope-inspiring spectacle.
Of course it is not possible, in this • par¬
ticular presentation of the subject, to dwell
much at length upon the merits of any con¬
siderable number of individual cases. This
feature will be brought out more fully in
the larger publication on this subject which
the writer now has in course of preparation.
But there are several conspicuous examples
of success in this line of endeavor that should
be fully emphasized in any treatment of this
subject. I like to tell of what has been done
by Granville T. Woods and his brother
Lyates, of New York; by Elijah McCoy, of
Detroit; by Joseph Hunter Dickinson, of
New Jersey; by William B. Purvis, of Phila¬
delphia; Ferrell and Creamer, of New York;
by Douglass, of Ohio; Murray, of South
Carolina; Matzeliger, of Lynn; Beard, of
Alabama; Richey, of the District of Colum¬
bia; and a host of others that I could
mention.
Foremost among these men in the number
and variety of his inventions, as well as in
the commercial value involved, stands the
name of Granville T. Woods. Six years ago
Mr. Woods sent me a list of his inventions
patented up to that time, and there were then
about thirty of them, since which time he
has added nearly as many more, including
those which he perfected jointly with his
brother Lyates. His inventions relate princi¬
pally to electrical, subjects, such as tele¬
graphic and telephonic instruments, electric
railways and general systems of electrical
control, and include several patents on means
for transmitting telegraphic messages be¬
tween moving trains.-
The records of the Patent Office show that
for valuable consideration several of Mr.
Woods' patents have been assigned to the
foremost electrical corporations of the world,
such as the General Electric Company, of
New York, and-the American Bell Telephone
Company, of Boston. These records also
show that he followed other lines of thought
in the exercise of his inventive faculty, one
of his other inventions being an incubator,
another a complicated and ingenious amuse¬
ment device, another a steam-boiler furnace,
and also a mechanical brake.
Mr. Woods is, perhaps, the best known of
all the inventors whose achievements redound
to the credit of our race; and in his passing
away he has left us the rich legacy of a life
successfully devoted to the cause of progress.
In the prolific yield of his inventive
genius, Elijah McCoy, of Detroit, stands
next to Granville T. Woods.
So far as is ascertainable from the office
records Mr. McCoy obtained his first patent
in July, 1872, and the last patent was
granted to him in July, 1912. During the
intervening forty years he continued to
invent one thing after another, completing a
record of nearly forty patents on as many
separate and distinct inventions. His inven¬
tions, like those of Woods', cover a wide
range of subjects, but relate particularly to
the scheme of lubricating machinery. He is
regarded as the pioneer in the art of steadily
supplying oil to machinery in intermittent
drops from a cup so as to avoid the necessity
for stopping the machine to oil it. His lubri¬
cating cup was in use for years on stationary
and locomotive machinery in the West,
including the great railway locomotives, the
boiler engines of the steamers on the Great
Lakes, on transatlantic steamships, and in
many- of our leading factories. McCoy's
lubricating cups were famous thirty years
ago as a necessary equipment in all up-to-
date machinery, and it would be rather
interesting to know how many of the thou¬
sands of machinists who used them daily had
any idea then that they were the invention of
a colored man.
Another inventor whose patents occupy a
conspicuous place in the records of the Patent
Office, and whose achievements in that line
stand recorded as a credit to the colored man,
is Mr. William B. Purvis, of Philadelphia.
His inventions also cover a variety of sub¬
jects, but are directed mainly along a single
line of experiment and improvement. He
began, in 1882, the invention of machines
for making paper bags, and his improve¬
ments in this line of machinery are covered
THE COLORED INVENTOR
ROBERT A. PELHAM.
THE COLORED INVENTOR
9
by a dozen patents; and a half dozen other
patents granted Mr. Purvis include three
patents on electric railways, one on a
fountain pen, another on a magnetic car-
balancing device, and still another for a
cutter for roll holders.
Another very interesting instance of an
inventor whose genius for creating new things
is constantly active, producing results that
express themselves in terms of dollars for
himself and others, is that of Mr. Joseph
Hunter Dickinson, of New Jersey. Mr.
Dickinson's specialty is in the line of musical
instruments, particularly the piano. He
began more than fifteen years ago to invent
devices for automatically playing the piano,
and is at present in the employ of a large
piano factory, where his various inventions
in piano-player mechanism are eagerly
adopted in the construction of some of the
finest player pianos on the market. He has
more than a dozen patents to his credit
already, and is still devoting his energies to
that line of invention.
The company with which he is identified is
one of the very largest corporations of its
kind in the world, and it is no little distinc¬
tion to have one of our race occupy so
significant a relation to it, and to hold it by
the sheer force of a trained and active
intellect.
Mr. Frank J. Ferrell, of New York, has
obtained about a dozen patents for his inven¬
tions, the larger portion of them being for
improvements in valves for steam engines.
Mr. Benjamin F. Jackson, of Massachu¬
setts, is the inventor of a dozen different
improvements in heating and lighting devices,
including a controller for a trolley wheel.
Mr. Charles V. Richey, of Washington,
has obtained about a dozen patents on his
inventions, the last of which was a most
ingenious device for registering the calls on a
telephone and detecting the unauthorized use
of that instrument. This particular patent
was only recently taken out by Mr. Richey,
and he has organized a company for placing
the invention 011 the market, with fine pros¬
pects of success.
Hon. George TV. Murray, of South
Carolina, former member of Congress from
that State, has received eight patents for
his inventions in agricultural implements,
including mostly such different attachments
as readily adapt a single implement to a
variety of uses.
Henry Creamer, of New York, has made
seven different inventions in steam traps,
covered by as many patents, and Andrew J.
Beard, of Alabama, has about the same
number to his credit for inventions in car-
coupling devices.
Mr. William Douglass, of Kansas, was
granted about a half dozen patents for
various inventions in harvesting machines.
One of his patents, that one numbered
789,010, and dated May 2, 1905, for a self-
binding harvester, is conspicuous in the
records of the Patent Office for the compli¬
cated and intricate character of the machine,
for the extensive drawings required to
illustrate it and the lengthy specifications
required to explain it—there being thirty-
seven large sheets of mechanical drawings
and thirty-two printed pages of descriptive
matter, including the 166 claims drawn to
cover the novel points presented. This par¬
ticular patent is, in these respects, quite
unique in the class here considered.
Mr. James Doyle, of Pittsburgh, has
obtained several patents for his inventions,
one of them being for an automatic serving
system. This latter device is a scheme for
dispensing with the use of waiters in dining
rooms, restaurants and at railroad lunch
counters. It was recently exhibited with the
Pennsylvania Exposition Society's exhibits
at Pittsburgh, where it attracted widespread
attention from the press and the public. The
model used on that occasion is said to have
cost nearly $2,000.
In the civil service at Washington there
are several colored men who have made
inventions of more or less importance which
were suggested by the mechanical problems
arising in their daily occupations.
Mr. Shelby J. Davidson, of Kentucky, a
clerk in the office of the Auditor for the
Post Office Department, operated a machine
for tabulating and totalizing the quarterly
accounts which were regularly submitted by
the postmasters of the country. Mr. David¬
son's attention was first directed to the loss
in time through the necessity for periodically
stopping to manually dispose of the paper
coming from the machine. He invented a
rewind device which served as an attach¬
ment for automatically taking up the paper
as it issued from the machine, and adapted it
for use again on the reverse side, thus effect¬
ing a very considerable economy of time and
material. His main invention, however, was
a novel attachment for adding machines
10
THE COLORED INVENTOR
which was designed to automatically include
the government fee, as well as the amount
sent, when totalizing the money orders in the
reports submitted by postmasters. This was
a distinct improvement in the efficiency and
value of the machine he was operating and
the government granted him patents on both
inventions. His talents were recognized not
only by the office in which he was employed
by promotion in rank and pay, but also in a
very significant way by the large factory
which turned out the adding machines the
government was using. Mr. Davidson has
since resigned his position and is now
engaged in the practice of the law in Wash¬
ington, D. C.
Mr. Robert Pelham, of Detroit, is similarly
employed in the Census Bureau, where his
duties include the compilation of groups of
statistics on sheets from data sent into the
office from the thousands of manufacturers
of the country. Unlike most of the other men
in the departmental service, Mr. Pelham
seemed anxious to get through with his job
quickly, for he devised a machine used as an
adjunct in tabulating the statistics from the
manufacturers' schedules in a way that dis¬
placed a dozen men in a given quantity of
work, doing the work economically, speedily
and with faultless precision, when operated
under Mr. Pelham's skilful direction. Mr.
Pelham has also been granted a patent for
his invention, and the proved efficiency of
his devices induced the United States govern¬
ment to lease them from him, paying him a
royalty for their use, in addition to his
salary for operating them.
Mr. Pelham's mechanical genius is evi¬
dently "running in the family," for his
oldest son, now a high-school youth, has
distinguished himself by his experiments in
wireless telegraphy, and is one of the very
few colored boys in Washington holding a
regular license for operating the wireless.
Mr. W. A. Lavalette, of the Government
Printing Office, the largest printing establish¬
ment in the world, began his career as a
printer there years before the development
of that art called into use the wonderful
machines employed in it to-day; and one of
his first efforts was to devise a printing
machine superior to the pioneer type used at
that time. This was in 1879, and he suc¬
ceeded that year in inventing and patenting
a printing machine that was a notable novelty
in its day, though it has, of course, long ago
been superseded by others.
I have reserved for the last the name and
work of Jan Matzeliger, of Massachusetts.
Although there are barely half a dozen
patents standing in his name on the records
of the office, and his name is little known to
the general public, there are, I think, some
points in his career that easily make him
conspicuous above all the rest, and I have
found the story really inspiring.
As a very young man Matzeliger worked
in a shoe shop in Lynn, Mass., serv¬
ing his apprenticeship at that trade.
Seeking, in the true spirit of the inventor,
to make two blades of grass grow where only
one grew before, he devised the first com¬
plete machine ever invented for performing
automatically all the operations involved in
attaching soles to shoes. Other machines
had previously been made for performing a
part of these operations, but Matzeliger's
machine was the only one then known to the
mechanical world that could simultaneously
hold the last in place to receive the leather,
move it forward step by step so that other
co-acting parts might draw the leather over
the heel, properly punch and grip the upper
and draw it down over the last, plait the
leather properly at the heel and toe, feed
the nails to the driving point, hold them in
position while being driven, and then dis¬
charge the completely soled shoe from the
machine, everything being done automatically,
and requiring less than a minute to com¬
plete a single shoe.
This wonderful achievement marked the
beginning of a distinct revolution in the art
of making shoes by machinery. Matzeliger
realized this, and attempted to capitalize it
by organizing a stock company to market his
invention; but his plans were frustrated
through failing health and lack of business
experience, and shortly thereafter, at the
age of 36, he passed away.
He had done his work, however, under the
keen eye of the shrewd Yankees, and these
were quick to see the immense commercial
importance of the step he had accomplished.
One of these bought the patent and all of
the stock that he could find of the company
organized by Matzeliger. This fortunate
purchase laid the foundation for the
organization of the United Shoe Machinery
Company, the largest and richest corporation
of the kind in the world. (See, in Munsey's
Magazine of August, 1912, on page 722,
biographical sketch of Mr. Sidney Winslow,
THE COLORED INVENTOR
11
millionaire head of the United Shoe
Machinery Company.)
Some idea may be had of the magnitude
of this giant industry, which is thus shown
to have grown directly out of the inventions
of a young colored man, by recalling the
fact that the corporation represents the con¬
solidation of forty-one different smaller
companies, that its factories cover twenty-
one acres of ground, that it gives employ¬
ment daily to 4,200 persons, that its working
capital is quoted at $20,860,000, and that it
controls more than 300 patents representing
improvements in the machines it produces.
From an article published in the Lynn
(Mass.) News, of October 3, 1889, it appears
that the United Shoe Machinery Company,
above mentioned, established at Lynn a school,
the only one of its kind in the world, where
boys are taught exclusively to operate the
Matzeliger type of machine; that a class of
about 200 boys and young men are graduated
from this school annually and sent out to
various parts of the world to instruct others
in the art of handling this machine.
Some years before his death Matzeliger
became a member of a white church in Lynn,
called the North Congregational Society, and
bequeathed to this church some of the stock
of the company he had organized. Years
afterward this church became heavily
involved in debt, and remembering the stock
that had been left to it by this colored
member, found, upon inquiry, that it had
become very valuable through the importance
of the patent under the management of the
large company then controlling it. The
church sold the stock and realized from the
sale more than enough to pay off the entire
debt of the church, amounting to $10,860.
With the canceled mortgage as one incentive,
this church held a special service of thanks
one Sunday morning, on which occasion a
life-sized portrait of their benefactor looked
down from the platform on the immense
congregation below, while a young white
lady, a member of the church, read an
interesting eulogy of the deceased and the
pastor, Rev. A. J. Covell, preached' an
eloquent sermon on the text found in Romans
13:8—"Owe no man anything but to love
one another." Let us cherish the hope that
the spirit and the significance of that occa¬
sion sank deep in the hearts of those present.
There are those who have tried to deny
to our race the share that is ours in the
glory of Matzeliger's achievements. These
declare that he had no Negro blood in his
veins; but the proof against this assertion is
irrefutable. Through correspondence with the
mayor of Lynn, a certified copy of the death
certificate issued on the occasion of
Matzeliger's death has been obtained, and
this document designates him a "mulatto."
Others have • tried the same thing, with
reference to Granville T. Woods, a too kind
biographer, writing of him in the Cosmo¬
politan in April, 1895, stating that he had
no Negro blood in him. But those who knew
Mr. Woods personally will rea'dily acquit him
of the charge of any such ethnological
errancy.
Another effort to detract from Matzeliger's
fame comes up in the criticism that his
machine was not perfect, requiring subse¬
quent improvements to complete it and make
it commercially valuable. Matzeliger was as
truly a pioneer, blazing the way for a great
industrial triumph, as was Whitney, or
Howe, or Watt, or Fulton, or any other one
of the scores of pioneers in the field of
vmechanical genius. The cotton gin of to-day
is, of course, not the cotton gin first given
to the world by Whitney, but the essential
principles of its construction are found clearly
outlined in Whitney's machine. The com¬
plex and intricate sewing machine of to-day,
with its various attachments to meet the needs
of the modern seamstress, is not the crude
machine that came from the brain of Elias
Howe; the giant locomotives that now
speedily cover the transcontinental distance
between New York and San Francisco bear
but slight resemblance to the engine that
Stephenson first gave us. In fact, the first
productions of all these pioneers, while they
disclosed the principles and laid the founda¬
tions upon which to build, resemble the later
developments only "as mists resemble rain;"
but these pioneers make up the army of
capable men whose toil and trial, whose
brawn and brain, whose infinite patience and
indomitable courage have placed this nation
of ours in the very front rank of the world's
inventors; and, standing there among them,
with his name indelible, is our dark-skinned
brother, the patient, resourceful Matzeliger.
In the credit here accorded our race for
its achievements in the field of invention our
women as well as our men are entitled to
share. With an industrial field necessarily
more circumscribed than that occupied by
our men, and therefore with fewer oppor¬
tunities and fewer reasons, as well, for
12
THE COLORED INVENTOR
exercising the inventive faculty, they have,
nevertheless, made a remarkably creditable
showing. The record shows that more than
twenty colored women have been granted
patents for their inventions, and that these
inventions cover also a wide range of sub¬
jects—artistic, utilitarian, fanciful.
The foregoing facts are here presented as
a part only of the record made by the race
in the field of invention for the first half
century of our national life. We can never
know the whole story. But we know enough
to feel sure that if others knew the story
even as we ourselves know it, it would present
us in a somewhat different light to the judg¬
ment of our fellow men, and, perhaps, make
for us a position of new importance in the
industrial activities of our country. This
great consummation, devoutly to be wished,
may form the story of the next fifty years
of our progress along these specific lines, so
that some one in the distant future, looking
down the rugged pathway of the years,
may see this race of ours coming up, step by
step, into the fullest possession of our
industrial, economic and intellectual eman¬
cipation.
NOTE
The writer has in preparation, for early
publication, a book which will deal more in
detail with the subject of this pamphlet, pre¬
senting the names of all inventors, so far
as ascertained, with the titles of their inven¬
tions and the dates and numbers of their
patents, together with brief biographical
sketches of many of the more active
inventors.
Published by THE CRISIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
Copyrighted, 1913, by Henry E. Baker