Hero Tales from History — Elias Howe and His Sewing Machine

So the McCormick boy, who did not mind being laughed at and was never content with doing less than his very best, became not only one of the wealthiest men in America, but added many hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealth of his country, and gave an immense benefit to the world.

ELIAS HOWE AND HIS SEWING MACHINE

Elias Howe was the son of a poor miller.

He had to go to work when he was six years old.

He was a lame, sickly boy and could never do heavy work.

When he was old enough he went away to work in the mills.

But as he grew up, his health was still so poor that he had to go back and live with his father.

Elias married when he was twenty-one and, within a few years, he had a wife and three children to support.

Once when he was ill, his wife took in sewing to support their little family.

As the young father lay on the bed watching his wife slowly plying her needle, he thought what a blessing it would be if a machine could be invented to sew much faster and better than by hand.

The idea seemed to fill his mind, for he was an ingenious man.

He said to himself, “I can’t do heavy work, but perhaps I can invent that machine.

” At first he said nothing about it to his wife, but he watched her taking stitch after stitch for hours at a stretch.

[Illustration: ELIAS HOWE.

] When he was out of bed he made a model of the machine which he had been planning.

In this rude affair he first had the needle with an eye in the middle.

This needle was pointed at both ends, and worked sideways through the cloth, which was held upright.

The stitches on this first machine were made like a chain, and the thread raveled out too easily.

Howe kept patiently at work until he hit upon the idea of laying the cloth to be sewed on a small table, and making the needle go up and down through it.

He thought of a way to have the cloth pulled along as it was sewn.

But the trouble was to get a stitch that would not rip or pull out.

At last he tried a shuttle, which looped another thread with that in the needle so that the two made a lock-stitch.

When he had done this, he had invented the sewing machine.

Like most inventors, Elias Howe was poor.

He found a coal dealer named Fisher, who agreed to keep Howe and his family, and furnish five hundred dollars to pay for the first machines and have them patented.

For this Fisher was to receive a half interest in the patents, and the sewing machine business afterward.

At first no one would buy the machine.

Tailors thought it would throw too many men out of work.

Mr. Fisher grew tired of his bargain and the Howes had to leave his house.

There seemed to be a better chance to sell sewing machines in England; so the family went across the sea to London.

But the inventor was again disappointed.

He was glad to come back to his father’s house in America with his sick wife and his small children.

[Illustration: HOWE’S FIRST SEWING MACHINE.

_Photo.

Brown Bros.

, N.

Y.

_] The wife died soon after their return and the inventor had to do something to support his motherless children.

He hired out to help an engineer on one of the first railroads in the United States.

While he was working at that, a friend offered to see what he could do in selling sewing-machines in New York City.

They found that others were making and selling machines very much like Howe’s. Money was furnished to sue those dealers.

Howe’s rights to his patents were confirmed by the courts in 1846, and all other makers of sewing machines were made to pay him a certain amount, called a royalty, on every machine they sold.

In this way Elias Howe soon became a very wealthy man.

After the Civil War broke out, Howe enlisted as a private, and when the government was slow in paying the soldiers’ wages, he lent the money himself for the men in his company.

He died before he was fifty years old with medals and honors from many countries.

He had brought a great blessing to the women of the world, just as he had wished to do when he lay on his bed watching his tired wife sewing, hour after hour, to support him and their three little children.