Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/927

884 of seamless pillow-cases and received a premium at the fair held in Pawtucket in October of that year." Those pillow-cases are supposed to have been the first seamless bags ever made, but ignorant of the value of her invention Miss Johnson took no steps to secure a patent, and while her mode of weaving has since been engrafted on the power loom and patented, yielding a fortune to the patentees, Miss Johnson spent the closing years of her life dependent upon friends and the charity of her native town.

The self-fastening button is a woman's invention, the machine for making satchel-buttoned paper bags was a woman's invention and a very important one, having been long tried for by men without success. Most of the designs for carpets, oil-cloths, calico and wall papers were women's work from the beginning, as were also designs for the embossing of paper, monograms, etc., but for this work little was credited to them, for the reason that women had not come into their own in the industrial world. However, after women became heads of establishments and came to own manufactories as well as to have designed the work done in them, and, above all, when woman had come to win recognition for her mental equality with man, inventions patented in women's names multiplied with astonishing rapidity.

From a report from the clerk of the Patent Office curious details in regard to women's inventions may be gleaned. Though the second patent issued to a woman named Mary Brush in 1815 was for a corset, the patents to women have come to embrace all articles from dress improvers to submarine telescopes, and although to a certain extent it might still be said of women's work along this line, as has been remarked of the male inventor, "the road to wealth is paved with the inventor's bones," still a few women have realized large fortunes from their inventions. A California woman invented a baby carriage