306 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNISTany machine could be equipped with an attachment for em
broidering, and sewing and embroidering could be done on the
same machine.
With his inventions, as with his astronomy, Weitling encoun
tered the usual handicap of lack of funds. Before long he was in
volved in controversies about infringements on his patent rights
and felt that he was being victimized by powerful exploiters. His
notebook contains the names and addresses of men to whom he
did or might appeal for aid. Among them were Wilhelm Farr,
whom he had known in Lausanne; Eduard Degener, a Forty-
eighter who had gone to Texas; Ezra Cornell; Horace Greeley;
Commodore Vanderbilt; Charles A. Dana; and "Mr. John Jay,
petits fils, de l'un des signataires du traite de Paris." Dana, then
with the Chicago Republican, replied that all his friends who
would be willing to invest in such a project had no money, and
that "those who are rich take little interest in scientific inventions."
Weitling also approached some of his more prosperous German
friends in New York and was ready to join forces with several
other inventors of devices similar to his.
By 1862, Weitling suspected that others were trying to cheat
him of the fruits of his inventive genius. In 1864, utterly without
cause, he accused a clerk in the patent office of trying to deprive
him of one of his patents and he made a trip to Washington on
$100 of borrowed money only to learn that his claims were being
processed in the regular way. He inspected every machine on dis
play in New York which was in any way related to the sewing
machine, including a "chain stitching" device for sewing threads
of several colors, and occasionally he took his wife along on these
tours of inspection as an expert witness.
By 1867, Weitling was sure that the American Buttonhole
Company and the Singer and Aetna Companies were infringing on
his embroidery attachment. A friend reported having seen Singer
machines all over Germany equipped with his buttonhole device.
At once Weitling calculated that at five dollars' royalty per ma
chine, the Singer Company and the American Buttonhole Com-