94 GOODYEAR ON GUM-ELASTIC. 



of hardware, except by the country blacksmith, was scarcely 

 thought of. The manufacture of hardware was engaged in by 

 Mr. Amasa Goodyear, during the writer's boyhood ; and when 

 not at school, he was more or less occupied with the various 

 branches of his father's business, such as making military and 

 other kinds of metal buttons, spoons, scythes, and particularly 

 the spring steel hay and manure forks, universally considered in 

 the United States one of the greatest improvements ever made 

 in farming implements. He was also made familiar with farm- 

 ing operations, which were always attended to by his father, in 

 connection with his other business. 



To all of these occupations, as well as his subsequent hard- 

 ware apprenticeship, he applied himself with intense ardor and 

 delight. From the age of seventeen to twenty-one, he served 

 an apprenticeship at the hardware business, with the firm of 

 Rogers & Brothers, Philadelphia, at that time one of the most 

 extensive wholesale importing houses in the United States. 



By close application and hard labor in this business, his 

 health became much impaired, so that at the expiration of his 

 apprenticeship, he was greatly disappointed by being obliged to 

 abandon the idea of establishing himself in the business he had 

 designed to pursue. 



During the next five or six years he was engaged with his 

 father, under the firm of A. Goodyear & Son, in the manufac- 

 ture of the hardware spoken of, and also of clocks. The most 

 important article manufactured by them at that time, was the 

 spring steel hay and manure forks, introduced into use by the 

 senior partner in 1810, which business has continued to increase 

 to the present time, to the great benefit of the farming interest, 

 throughout the United States. 



The reputation of these and other farming implements of their 

 manufacture, subsequently gave to the inventor many advan- 

 tages for establishing himself in the domestic hardware business; 

 and it was the observation of the good done in the community, 

 together with the advantages derived from the manufacture of 

 these improvements, that gave a bias to his whole future course 



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