Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/102

 268 WORKMEN AND HEROES If the wonderful improvements of the present and the past age could be placed in comparison with the attempts, the struggles, to accomplish what has now been achieved, the list of failures would far outnumber that of successes. Many of those who have rendered priceless blessings to their own and after gen- erations by the production of wonderful machines or methods from the fine fibre of their brains, were plundered and buffeted, even in the midst of their grand successes, to such a degree that it requires a lofty comprehension to determine whether their lives were triumphs or defeats. Sometimes the failure of one gen- eration becomes the success of the next. Born the same year that gave Robert Fulton to the world was Eli Whitney, who really made " cotton king," so that the great staple of the South yielded millions upon millions of dollars to the planters ; but he might have died a beggar, so far as his marvellous invention affected his fortunes. Before he had fully completed his machine for separating the seeds from the cotton, which only two persons had been permitted to see, his workshop was broken open, and it was stolen. His idea was incorporated in other machines before he had obtained his patent, though it was only his own that transmuted cotton into gold. False reports, the repudiation of contracts for royalties fairly made, the refusal of Congress, through Southern influence, to renew his patent, constant litigation to protect his rights, harassed his life, and robbed him of the pecuniary results of his success. Defeated, he gave up the battle, devoted his attention to the manu- facture of firearms, and finally made a fortune in this business. Fulton's experi- ence was not very different. On the other hand, important discoveries in methods and mechanical appli- ances have been made by accident, as it were, and fortunes accrued from very little labor or study ; but these are the exceptions rather than the rule. It would be difficult to estimate the influence upon the prosperity of the United States of steam-navigation. It came but a few years after the organiza- tion of the Federal Government, when the greater portion of the territorial extent of the. country was a wilderness, and preceded the general use of railroads by a quarter of a century. Transportation on the inland waters of the nation was slow, difficult, and expensive, and the introduction of the steamboat upon its great lakes and rivers, notably upon the latter, was a new era in its history. On the great streams of the West flatboats floated for weeks, laden with the produc- tions of the States, on their way to a market, where days or hours are sufficient at the present time. Between the metropolis of the nation and the capital of New York, the sloops, which were the only means of communication by water, required an average of four days to make the trip of about OJe hundred and fifty miles, while to-day it is accomplishd in half a day or less. Now all the navigable rivers of the country are alive with steamboats, and the growth and development of the States have been mainly indebted to the intro- duction of steam navigation. On the great lakes, though more available for transportation by means of sailing vessels, the same powerful agency has achieved wonders, and all pf them are now covered by lines of steamers, by which, either