%409.  Mechanical Improvements.%—­No American need be told that his fellow-countrymen are the most ingenious people the world has ever known.  But we do not always remember that it was during this period (1840-1860) that the marvelous inventive genius of the people of the United States began to show itself.  Between the day when the patent office was established, in 1790, and 1840, the number of patents issued was 11,908; but after 1840 the stream poured forth increased in volume nearly every year.  In 1855 there were 2012 issued and reissued; in 1856, 2506; in 1857, 2896; in 1858, 3695; and in 1860, 4778, raising the total number to 43,431.  An examination of these inventions shows that they related to cotton gins and cotton presses; to reapers and mowers; to steam engines; to railroads; to looms; to cooking stoves; to sewing machines, printing presses, boot and shoe machines, rubber goods, floor cloths, and a hundred other things.  Very many of them helped to increase the comfort of man and raise the standard of living.  Three of them, however, have revolutionized the industrial and business world and been of inestimable good to mankind.  They are the sewing machine, the reaper and the electric telegraph.

[Illustration:  The first Howe sewing machine]

%410.  The Sewing Machine.%—­As far back as the year 1834, Walter Hunt made and sold a few sewing machines in New York.  But the man to whose genius, perseverance, and unflinching zeal the world owes the sewing machine, is Elias Howe.  His patent was obtained in 1846, and he then spent four years in poverty and distress trying to convince the world of the utility of his machine.  By 1850 he succeeded not only in interesting the public, but in so arousing the mechanical world that seven rivals (Wheeler and Wilson, Grover and Baker, Wilcox and Gibbs, and Singer) entered the field.  To the combined efforts of them all, we owe one of the most useful inventions of the century.  It has lessened the cost of every kind of clothing; of shoes and boots; of harness; of everything, in short, that can be sewed.  It has given employment to millions of people, and has greatly added to the comfort of every household in the civilized world.

[Illustration:  The Wilson sewing machine of 1850]

%411.  The Harvester.%—­Much the same can be said of the McCormick reaper.  It was invented and patented as early as 1831; but it was hard work to persuade the farmer to use it.  Not a machine was sold till 1841.  During 1841, 1842, 1843, such as were made in the little blacksmith shop near Steel’s Tavern, Virginia, were disposed of with difficulty.  Every effort to induce manufacturers to make the machine was a failure.  Not till McCormick had gone on horseback among the farmers of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and secured written orders for his reapers, did he persuade a firm in Cincinnati to make them.  In 1845, five hundred were manufactured; in 1850, three thousand.  In 1851 McCormick placed one on exhibition at the World’s Fair in London, and astonished the world with its performance.  To-day two hundred thousand are turned out annually, and without them the great grain fields of the middle West and the far West would be impossible.  The harvester has cheapened the cost of bread, and benefited the whole human race.