Finding a partner with capital, he leased an
abandoned rubber factory on Staten Island. But his partner's
fortune was swept away in the panic of 1837, leaving Goodyear
again an insolvent debtor. Later he found another partner and
went to manufacturing in the deserted plant at Roxbury, with an
order from the Government for a large number of mail bags. This
order was given wide publicity and it aroused the interest of
manufacturers throughout the country. But by the time the goods
were ready for delivery the first bags made had rotted from their
handles. Only the surface of the rubber had been "cured."
This failure was the last straw, as far as Goodyear's friends
were concerned. Only his patient and devoted wife stood by him;
she had labored, known want, seen her children go hungry to
school, but she seems never to have reproached her husband nor to
have doubted his ultimate success. The gentleness and tenderness
of his deportment in the home made his family cling to him with
deep affection and bear willingly any sacrifice for his sake;
though his successive failures generally meant a return of the
inventor to the debtor's prison and the casting of his family
upon charity.
The nitric acid process had not solved the problem but it had
been a real step forward. It was in the year 1839, by an
accident, that he discovered the true process of vulcanization
which cured not the surface alone but the whole mass.
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