use again on the reverse side, thus effecting a very considerable economy of time and material. His main invention, however, was a novel attachment for adding machines which was designed to automatically include the government fee, as well as the amount sent, when totalizing the money orders in the reports submitted by postmasters. This was a distinct improvement in the efficiency and value of the machine he was operating and the government granted him patents on both inventions. His talents were recognized not only by the office in which he was employed by promotion in rank and pay, but also in a very significant way by the large factory which turned out the adding machines the government was using. Mr. Davidson has since resigned his position and is now engaged in the practice of the law in Washington, D. C.

Mr. Robert Pelham, of Detroit, is similarly employed in the Census Bureau, where his duties include the compilation of groups of statistics on sheets from data sent into the office from the thousands of manufacturers of the country. Unlike most of the other men in the departmental service, Mr. Pelham seemed anxious to get through with his job quickly, for he devised a machine used as an adjunct in tabulating the statistics from the manufacturers' schedules in a way that displaced a dozen men in a given quantity of work, doing the work economically, speedily and with faultless precision, when operated under Mr. Pelham's skilful direction. Mr. Pelham has also been granted a patent for his invention, and the proved efficiency of his devices induced the United States government to lease them from him, paying him a royalty for their use, in addition to his salary for operating them.

Mr. Pelham's mechanical genius is evidently "running in the family," for his oldest son, now a high-school youth, has distinguished himself by his experiments in wireless telegraphy, and is one of the very few colored boys in Washington holding a regular license for operating the wireless.

Mr. W. A. Lavalette, of the Government Printing Office, the largest printing establishment in the world, began his career as a printer there years before the development of that art called into use the wonderful machines employed in it to-day; and one of his first efforts was to devise a printing machine superior to the pioneer type used at that time. This was in 1879, and he succeeded that year in inventing and patenting a printing machine that was a notable novelty in its day, though it has, of course, long ago been superseded by others.

I have reserved for the last the name and work of Jan Matzeliger, of Massachusetts. Although there are barely half a dozen patents standing in his name on the records of the office, and his name is little known to the general public, there are, I think, some points in his career that easily make him conspicuous above all the rest, and I have found the story really inspiring.

As a very young man Matzeliger worked in a shoe shop in Lynn, Mass., serving his apprenticeship at that trade. Seeking, in the true spirit of the inventor, to make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, he devised the first complete machine ever invented for performing automatically all the operations involved in attaching soles to shoes. Other machines had previously been made for performing a part of these operations, but Matzeliger's machine was the only one then known to the mechanical world that could simultaneously hold the last in place to receive the leather, move it forward step by step so that other co-acting parts might draw the leather over the heel, properly punch and grip the upper and draw it down over the last, plait the leather properly at the heel and toe, feed the nails to the driving point, hold them in position while being driven, and then discharge the completely soled shoe from the machine, everything being done automatically, and requiring less than a minute to complete a single shoe.

This wonderful achievement