demand.

Soon some Americans began to import raw rubber and to manufacture
rubber goods of their own, and in the old world a Scotchman named
Macintosh found a way of waterproofing cloth by spreading on it a
thin coating of rubber dissolved in coal naphtha. Many people
still refer to raincoats as mackintoshes. Rubber clothing shared
favor with rubber shoes, but its popularity was short-lived for it
did not wear well and was almost as sensitive to temperature as
molasses and butter. The rubber shoes and coats get hard and stiff
in winter and soft and sticky in summer. A man wearing a pair of
rubber overalls who sat down too near a warm stove soon found that
his overalls, his chair and himself were stuck fast together. The
first rubber coats became so stiff in cold weather that when you
took one off you could stand it up in the middle of the floor and
leave it, for it would stand like a tent until the rubber thawed
out, and when thawed it was almost as uncomfortable as is fly-
paper to the fly.

One day Charles Goodyear, a Connecticut hardware merchant of an
inventive turn of mind, went to a store to buy a life preserver.
He could find only imperfect ones, but they drew his attention to
the study of rubber, and presently he was thinking of it by day
and dreaming of it by night. Rubber became a passion with him. He
felt sure some way could be found to make it firm yet flexible
regardless of temperature, and for ten years he experimented with
different mixtures and processes, hoping to find the right one. So
intent was he on his search that he found time for nothing else.
Due to neglect his business went to pieces and he became very
poor.