In his own country, Mr. Goodyear was scarcely less unfortunate.  His patents were infringed and violated by others, even after the decision of the courts seemed to place his rights beyond question.  He was too thoroughly the inventor and too little the man of business to protect himself from the robberies of the wretches who plundered him of the profits of his invention.  It is said that his inability to manage sharp transactions made him the victim of many who held nominally fair business relations with him.  The United States Commissioner of Patents, in 1858, thus spoke of his losses: 

“No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as ‘pirates.’  The spoliation of their incessant guerrilla warfare upon his defenseless rights have, unquestionably, amounted to millions.”

Failing to accomplish any thing in Europe, Mr. Goodyear returned to this country, and continued his labors.  His health, never strong, gave way under the continued strain, and he died in New York in July, 1860, in the sixtieth year of his age, completely worn out.  Notwithstanding his great invention—­an invention which has made millions for those engaged in its manufacture—­he died insolvent, and left his family heavily in debt.  A few years after his death an effort was made to procure from Congress a further seven years’ extension of his patent for vulcanization, for the benefit of his family and his creditors.  The men who had trampled his rights under foot while living were resolved, however, that he should not have justice done him in death; and, through their influence, that august body, in strange contrast with its usual lavish generosity in the matter of land grants and the like, coldly declined to do any thing for the family of the man to whom civilization owes so much, and the effort proved abortive.

But, though unfortunate in a pecuniary sense, though he died without freeing himself from the embarrassments which haunted him through life, there can be no question that Charles Goodyear richly merits the place which we have given him in this gallery of “Our Self-made Men;” not only on account of the great merit and usefulness of his discovery or invention, but because that invention has been the source of many a “great fortune” to others, as it might, indeed, have been to him, had his rights been respected, or properly protected when infringed.  It is sad to reflect that he died poor who has given wealth to so many, and accomplished results so beneficent to mankind.  Yet he did not fail entirely of his reward in life; he lived to see his invention give rise to large factories in the United States, and in England, France, and Germany, which employ sixty thousand operatives, and produce over five hundred different kinds of articles, to the amount of eight millions of dollars annually.  He lived to see