The Colored Inventor | Page 7

law in
Washington, D.C.
[Illustration: ROBERT A. PELHAM.]
Mr. Robert Pelham, of Detroit, is similarly employed in the Census
Bureau, where his duties include the compilation of groups of statistics
on sheets from data sent into the office from the thousands of
manufacturers of the country. Unlike most of the other men in the
departmental service, Mr. Pelham seemed anxious to get through with
his job quickly, for he devised a machine used as an adjunct in
tabulating the statistics from the manufacturers' schedules in a way that

displaced a dozen men in a given quantity of work, doing the work
economically, speedily and with faultless precision, when operated
under Mr. Pelham's skilful direction. Mr. Pelham has also been granted
a patent for his invention, and the proved efficiency of his devices
induced the United States government to lease them from him, paying
him a royalty for their use, in addition to his salary for operating them.
Mr. Pelham's mechanical genius is evidently "running in the family,"
for his oldest son, now a high-school youth, has distinguished himself
by his experiments in wireless telegraphy, and is one of the very few
colored boys in Washington holding a regular license for operating the
wireless.
Mr. W. A. Lavalette, of the Government Printing Office, the largest
printing establishment in the world, began his career as a printer there
years before the development of that art called into use the wonderful
machines employed in it to-day; and one of his first efforts was to
devise a printing machine superior to the pioneer type used at that time.
This was in 1879, and he succeeded that year in inventing and
patenting a printing machine that was a notable novelty in its day,
though it has, of course, long ago been superseded by others.
I have reserved for the last the name and work of Jan Matzeliger, of
Massachusetts. Although there are barely half a dozen patents standing
in his name on the records of the office, and his name is little known to
the general public, there are, I think, some points in his career that
easily make him conspicuous above all the rest, and I have found the
story really inspiring.
As a very young man Matzeliger worked in a shoe shop in Lynn, Mass.,
serving his apprenticeship at that trade. Seeking, in the true spirit of the
inventor, to make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before,
he devised the first complete machine ever invented for performing
automatically all the operations involved in attaching soles to shoes.
Other machines had previously been made for performing a part of
these operations, but Matzeliger's machine was the only one then
known to the mechanical world that could simultaneously hold the last
in place to receive the leather, move it forward step by step so that

other co-acting parts might draw the leather over the heel, properly
punch and grip the upper and draw it down over the last, plait the
leather properly at the heel and toe, feed the nails to the driving point,
hold them in position while being driven, and then discharge the
completely soled shoe from the machine, everything being done
automatically, and requiring less than a minute to complete a single
shoe.
This wonderful achievement marked the beginning of a distinct
revolution in the art of making shoes by machinery. Matzeliger realized
this, and attempted to capitalize it by organizing a stock company to
market his invention; but his plans were frustrated through failing
health and lack of business experience, and shortly thereafter, at the age
of 36, he passed away.
He had done his work, however, under the keen eye of the shrewd
Yankees, and these were quick to see the immense commercial
importance of the step he had accomplished. One of these bought the
patent and all of the stock that he could find of the company organized
by Matzeliger. This fortunate purchase laid the foundation for the
organization of the United Shoe Machinery Company, the largest and
richest corporation of the kind in the world. (See, in Munsey's
Magazine of August, 1912, on page 722, biographical sketch of Mr.
Sidney Winslow, millionaire head of the United Shoe Machinery
Company.)
Some idea may be had of the magnitude of this giant industry, which is
thus shown to have grown directly out of the inventions of a young
colored man, by recalling the fact that the corporation represents the
consolidation of forty-one different smaller companies, that its factories
cover twenty-one acres of ground, that it gives employment daily to
4,200 persons, that its working capital is quoted at $20,860,000, and
that it controls more than 300 patents representing improvements in the
machines it produces. From an article published in the Lynn (Mass.)
News, of October 3, 1889, it