The Colored Inventor | Page 8

appears that the United Shoe Machinery
Company, above mentioned, established at Lynn a school, the only one
of its kind in the world, where boys are taught exclusively to operate

the Matzeliger type of machine; that a class of about 200 boys and
young men are graduated from this school annually and sent out to
various parts of the world to instruct others in the art of handling this
machine.
Some years before his death Matzeliger became a member of a white
church in Lynn, called the North Congregational Society, and
bequeathed to this church some of the stock of the company he had
organized. Years afterward this church became heavily involved in debt,
and remembering the stock that had been left to it by this colored
member, found, upon inquiry, that it had become very valuable through
the importance of the patent under the management of the large
company then controlling it. The church sold the stock and realized
from the sale more than enough to pay off the entire debt of the church,
amounting to $10,860. With the canceled mortgage as one incentive,
this church held a special service of thanks one Sunday morning, on
which occasion a life-sized portrait of their benefactor looked down
from the platform on the immense congregation below, while a young
white lady, a member of the church, read an interesting eulogy of the
deceased and the pastor, Rev. A. J. Covell, preached an eloquent
sermon on the text found in Romans 13:8--"Owe no man anything but
to love one another." Let us cherish the hope that the spirit and the
significance of that occasion sank deep in the hearts of those present.
There are those who have tried to deny to our race the share that is ours
in the glory of Matzeliger's achievements. These declare that he had no
Negro blood in his veins; but the proof against this assertion is
irrefutable. Through correspondence with the mayor of Lynn, a
certified copy of the death certificate issued on the occasion of
Matzeliger's death has been obtained, and this document designates him
a "mulatto."
Others have tried the same thing with reference to Granville T. Woods,
a too kind biographer, writing of him in the Cosmopolitan in April,
1895, stating that he had no Negro blood in him. But those who knew
Mr. Woods personally will readily acquit him of the charge of any such
ethnological errancy.

Another effort to detract from Matzeliger's fame comes up in the
criticism that his machine was not perfect, requiring subsequent
improvements to complete it and make it commercially valuable.
Matzeliger was as truly a pioneer, blazing the way for a great industrial
triumph, as was Whitney, or Howe, or Watt, or Fulton, or any other one
of the scores of pioneers in the field of mechanical genius. The cotton
gin of to-day is, of course, not the cotton gin first given to the world by
Whitney, but the essential principles of its construction are found
clearly outlined in Whitney's machine. The complex and intricate
sewing machine of to-day, with its various attachments to meet the
needs of the modern seamstress, is not the crude machine that came
from the brain of Elias Howe; the giant locomotives that now speedily
cover the transcontinental distance between New York and San
Francisco bear but slight resemblance to the engine that Stephenson
first gave us. In fact, the first productions of all these pioneers, while
they disclosed the principles and laid the foundations upon which to
build, resemble the later developments only "as mists resemble rain;"
but these pioneers make up the army of capable men whose toil and
trial, whose brawn and brain, whose infinite patience and indomitable
courage have placed this nation of ours in the very front rank of the
world's inventors; and, standing there among them, with his name
indelible, is our dark-skinned brother, the patient, resourceful
Matzeliger.
In the credit here accorded our race for its achievements in the field of
invention our women as well as our men are entitled to share. With an
industrial field necessarily more circumscribed than that occupied by
our men, and therefore with fewer opportunities and fewer reasons, as
well, for exercising the inventive faculty, they have, nevertheless, made
a remarkably creditable showing. The record shows that more than
twenty colored women have been granted patents for their inventions,
and that these inventions cover also a wide range of subjects--artistic,
utilitarian, fanciful.
The foregoing facts are here presented as a part only of the record made
by the race in the field of invention for the first half century of our
national life. We can never know the whole story. But we know enough

to feel sure that if others knew the story even as we ourselves know it,
it would