New England manufacturers bid against one another along the wharves for the gum which had been used as ballast and began to make rubber shoes.
European vessels had also carried rubber home; and experiments were being made with it in France and Britain.

A Frenchman manufactured suspenders by cutting a native bottle into fine threads and running them through a narrow cloth web.

And Macintosh, a chemist of Glasgow, inserted rubber treated with naphtha between thin pieces of cloth and evolved the garment that still bears his name.
At first the new business in rubber yielded profits.

The cost of the raw material was infinitesimal; and there was a demand for the finished articles.

In Roxbury, Massachusetts, a firm manufacturing patent leather treated raw rubber with turpentine and lampblack and spread it on cloth, in an effort to produce a waterproof leather.