Charles, a studious, serious boy, was the close
companion of his father. His deeply religious nature manifested
itself early, and he joined the Congregational Church when he was
sixteen. It was at first his intention to enter the ministry,
which seemed to him to offer the most useful career of service,
but, changing his mind, he went to Philadelphia to learn the
hardware business and on coming of age was admitted to
partnership in a firm established there by his father. The firm
prospered for a time, but an injudicious extension of credit led
to its suspension. So it happened that Goodyear in 1834, when he
became interested in rubber, was an insolvent debtor, liable,
under the laws of the time, to imprisonment. Soon afterward,
indeed, he was lodged in the Debtor's Prison in Philadelphia.
It would seem an inauspicious hour to begin a search which might
lead him on in poverty for years and end nowhere. But, having
seen the need for perfect rubber, the thought had come to him,
with the force of a religious conviction, that "an object so
desirable and so important, and so necessary to man's comfort, as
the making of gum-elastic available to his use, was most
certainly placed within his reach." Thereafter he never doubted
that God had called him to this task and that his efforts would
be crowned with success.
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