Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1894 — BAKES TELL AT THEM [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BAKES TELL AT THEM

SOME RIDICULOUS INVENTIONS FOR THEIR COMFORT. taMHi Gndb and Walker That VmM with a Spring— A Gandy Jumper DadgMd to Imitate Trotting oa Moth, er-e tun "‘■'■"r'r Creeper. ■may Hare Been Patented. From the baby’s poi nt of view the toveotor is a mighty mean man and anything but a benefactor to the huau race. The numerous double, lack-action, spring-lock contrivances filed up in the dingy corners of the Patent Office, every one of which It was intended should be palmed off

apoo the infant as a substitute for a mother's arms, has prejudiced him against the man with an idea to exchange for an annuity, and he wants none of him or his. A baby wants ao patent nurse, even if It may have aoft pillows, flimsy canopy and musicbox attachment For him the good, old-fashioned way is best, and when one of the crazy combinations is tried on him it is no wonder he kicks the air with a pair of chubby little feet and yells the roof off the house. Jumpers, walkers, tenders, creepers, cradles, and several too complicated to belong to any special class are Just a few of those things which have

combined to make the baby’s life a sore trial. The first American production, really the genesis of the cradle, was never patented, though It was used extensively in some portions of the country. This was the sugar trough, made and used at a time when the sturdy father was literally hewing a home out of the forest A length of the maple tree, split in the center, stripped of its bark and hollowed out —that was all there was to it, but, crude as it was, it served the purpose and allowed the mother to attend to other duties In this busy time of home-making. In spare moments, the father constructed a more elaborate affair, box-shaped and fitted with roughly fashioned rockers, and then the trough was relegated to its former service of holding the sweet' sap from the sugar tree. At this stage the inventor got a firm bold on the idea, and it was no time at all until there were enough articles In this line to make two generations of babies miserable. J. of New York, got an •arty start with his combined cradle

and walker. He abandoned the oldfashioned rocker and made his little machine work with a spring so it would go up and down with the motion, and noise too, perhaps, of a damp cart It was only necessary to furnish it with wheels to make a walker out of it, not as good a one or nearly so handy as the ordinary chair, but it gave the inventor the chance to claim a dual virtue for his patent something essential in addition to an

•arty start Mr. Brown never tried tt again, and if he ever had any more Ideas along this same line he trained them into another channel before . they reached the patent stage. Caldwell, of somewhere in j With his jumper. He had an idea

wasn’t Although fitted out like a modern hobby and painted in gorgeous colors It couldn’t sing a lullaby or recite Mother Goose, and where 19 the pleasure of being bounced up and down if these are to be left out? Baby Just looked at it and then cried, and this was the commencement of a boycott which made Caldwell’s venture unprofitable. P. EL Hurd, out of the two or three hundred who were at that time regu-

larly producing something that was of no account, got clear off the track when he patented his whirligig, which was supposed to teach the baby to creep, and later to walk. There was never any litigation In regard to infringement of this patent; its life was as short as that of a sand-fly, and it didn't take the inventor much longer than that to find out that the million dollars or so which loomed up on the horizon the day he made application had taken wings. J. S. Brown, of Michigan, who, by the way, Is no relative of the Brown of walker and cradle fame, had a similar experience with his baby tender. It was a thrashing-machine looking affair that worked with a treadle and might have been constructed from the remains of a dilapidated feed-cutter, for all the beauty and symmetry it combined, but he got a patent on It Any selfrespecting infant would raise the whole neighborhood if such a thing were wheeled into his presence, says the Chicago Tribune, and the irate father would probably hunt for the Inventor with a large double-barreled gun, so It is Just as well, or better, for Brown Na 2 that the demand for his tender was exceedingly limited. Along about this time the paragon

of the whole lot was born, but like Its predecessors It vanished before any great number of people had an opportunity to test It and say swear words at the originator. It was all thought out In the Maine woods. In that country babies and dairies are unmistakable signs of thrift and E. Whitman couldn’t understand why the cradle and churn should not be more closely affiliated, so he combined the two. It might have worked all right and the hand that rocked the cradle In addition to ruling the world could, at the same time, have carried on the more vulgar occupation of making nice prints of yellow butter for the huckster, only the cream was never ready to churn v.hen the baby cried, and when the dasher was fitted In and everything ready In the manufacturing department the baby was invariably asleep or on its good behavior. This is the little point that E Whitman failed to con*

elder, so he burled his regrets and went back to the plow, leaving a c lear field. As a usual thing when inventors find a clear field they tax their twen-ty-candle power ideas to covering the entire ground, so as to leave nothing for the man in their wake but lawsuits. J. Erickson was one of these. He Invented a baby-walker with a barrel-stave crib combination warranted to take all care and worry from a mother’s mind—that is, providing the ullttle monarch of the household would put up with It. But, like E. Whitman, he overlooked one important feature. The walker should have been adjustable for the use of the father until the baby was large enough to push it around and break all the bric-a-brac in the house.

WINDS UP LIKE A CLOCK.

AN 1876 COMBINATION.

BABY TENDER.

WALKER AND CRADLE.

J. H. CALDWELL’S IDEA.

AN OLD FASHIONED CRADLE.

P. H. HURD’S PROPELLER.