NEW FRONTIERS 307(^6) Quoted in Die Zukunft (1878), I, 585.
(^7) Quoted in Cleveland Wächter am Erie, April 8, 1863.
(^8) A. G. Osborne to writer, June 25,1946.
pany now owed him $280,000. He consulted an attorney about
filing a criminal suit, received some encouragement, and in
structed him to see the lawyers of the "sewing machine combina
tion" about a possible amicable settlement. In 1869, however, he
wrote his old friend Schilling, who was living in straitened circum
stances in Leipzig among a faithful group of socialists: "I am still
being cheated out of my patents. Whoever is without funds in this
country has no chance against those that have. Heaven save
humanity from such republics of the money bags."^6
Needless to say, the inventor never realized a penny from his
five patents. A story made the rounds of the German-language
press in 1863 to the effect that Weitling had sold his buttonhole
machine patent to Singer for $30,000 plus a royalty for each
machine, and the St. Louis Westliche Post rejoiced over the good
fortune of the man who for years had worked so "unselfishly and
under the greatest handicaps and sacrifices" in the cause of labor,
but the tale was utterly without foundation.^7 There is a family
legend to the effect that just before his death, the Singer Company
offered Weitling $500 in settlement of his claim that the company
had infringed his embroidery and buttonhole patents. The in
ventor refused to take less than ten times that amount and pledged
his wife never to accept less than $5,000. A letter from the Singer
Manufacturing Company reports no evidence in its files pertain
ing to any patent controversy between Weitling and Singer.^8
In 1907, when the Singer estate was involved in litigation, the
socialist New Yorker Volkszeitung recounted the story of Weitling's invention and alleged that both Howe and Singer, accom
panied by expert mechanics, had called on the old communist to
copy and steal his patent and then had marketed his improvements
as part of their own machines. The story referred to the inventor's
demand for $5,000 and recounted that because of the lack of funds
his widow had been unable to press her suit and therefore had re-