During all this time Howe was extremely poor. He and his wife and children had gone to England, but on account of poverty he was compelled to send his family back to America. His fourth machine, which he had constructed in England, he was obliged to sell for 5 pounds (about $25), although it was worth ten times as much, in order to procure money enough to pay his return passage to America. He also pawned his first-made machine and his patent on the invention. In April, 1849, he landed at New York with only an English half-crown in his pocket. Procuring employment in a machine-shop, the inventor took up his abode in one of the cheapest emigrant boarding-houses. At this time his wife lay dying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his father had to send him ten dollars to enable him to go to her. Finally the sewing machine began to succeed commercially. The inventor's long night of discouragement was breaking on a day of assured prosperity. In 1850 Howe was in New York superintending the manufacture of fourteen sewing machines. His office was equipped with a five-dollar desk and two fifty-cent chairs. A few years later he was rich. Isaac Merritt Singer became acquainted with his machine, and submitted to him the sketch of an improved one. It was Singer who first forced the sewing machine upon the attention of the United States. Howe charged that Singer was infringing his patent rights. Litigation ensued. Judge Sprague of Massachusetts decided in favor of Howe. In his opinion he stated that "there is no evidence in this case that leaves a shadow of doubt that, for all the benefit conferred upon the public by the introduction of a sewing machine the public are indebted to Mr. Howe." From this time Howe began to reap the financial reward of his labors. His revenues from the sewing machine amounted ultimately to more than $200,000 a year. He spent vast sums, however, in defending his patent rights, and many others of the "sewing machine kings" were wealthier than he. Howe died at Brooklyn, New York, October 3, 1867. The sewing machine is used not only for sewing cloth into all kinds of garments, but for making leather into boots, shoes, harness, and other necessary articles of daily life. Great improvements have been made in the sewing machine since its invention, but its essential principles to-day are for the most part those that the inventor discovered and brought into successful operation in his first machine. It is agreed by disinterested and competent persons that "Howe carried the invention of the sewing machine further toward its complete and final utility than any other inventor before him had ever brought a first-rate invention at the first trial." THE REAPER