DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



55* 



representatives of Christian faiths to 

 put them, by implication or assertion, in 

 the position of giving support to tend- 

 encies which they have an equal inter- 

 est with the expounders of science in 

 opposing. I shall content myself with 

 one quotation from an authoritative 

 source — Bishop Fallows, of Chicago — 

 which places this dubious attempt to 

 mingle religion with unscientific medi- 

 cal dogmas in the only light in which 

 right-minded persons of whatever train- 

 ing can complacently look upon it. 



"If my good friends," says the 

 Bishop, "are going to start, or believe in 

 a professed religious system because 

 they have been healed through the in- 

 fluence of a mental law as universal as 

 gravitation, the people who have been 

 cured by patent nostrums have just as 

 much reason to establish a religious cult 

 of Christian liver pillists, Christian 

 Sarsaparillists, Christian Celery Com- 

 poundists, or Christian Cholera Mix- 

 turists, as had Mother Eddy to found a 

 church of Christian Scientists. 'By 

 their fruits ye shall know them.' I do 

 know some of the best Christians living 

 who believe with unshaken faith that 

 they were cured by these patent nos- 

 trums. But they have had the good 

 sense to remain in the church and not 

 claim a special dispensation for the dis- 

 coveries of their favorite patent medi- 

 cines." 



Joseph Jastrow. 



University of Wisconsin. 



THE INVENTOR OF THE SEWING 

 MACHINE. 



To the Editor: In the November 

 Popular Science Monthly the mu- 

 nificent gift of Miss Helen Gould for a 



Hall of Fame is noticed, and thirty 

 names are designated as the choice of 

 certain prominent men (not named) for 

 place therein as the most eminent 

 Americans. 



In the list given the name of Elias 

 Howe appears, which must produce as- 

 tonishment in the minds of every one 

 who lias a knowledge of him or of the 

 history of the sewing machine, upon 

 which alone his claim to notoriety rests. 

 To all who are acquainted with the ad- 

 vent of that machine, Howe occupies a 

 very minor place. Patents were granted 

 for such machines long before Howe en- 

 tered the field, and he never succeeded 

 in producing a practical machine, until 

 more than one device invented by others 

 was added to it. 



Several inventors were striving to 

 make a practical sewing machine, which 

 was finally accomplished on different 

 lines by some of them. The fact that 

 Howe received royalties from these men. 

 who procured the extension of his pat- 

 ent, was a matter of policy that we 

 pass as irrelevant to the question of 

 the introduction of this great public ac- 

 quisition, in which he took no active 

 part. 



Howe was not a first-class mechanic, 

 and the devices he patented w r ere all 

 elaborated before him by others, and 

 not until other important devices were 

 added did the sewing machine come into 

 use. To place his name on the roll of 

 fame above a host of his superiors on 

 the records of the Patent Office would 

 be doing American genius a grave injus- 

 tice that would render the Hall of Fame 

 absurd. I trust no such radical mistake 

 will be perpetrated. 



Vindicator. 



