No sooner had the practicability of manufacturing boots and shoes from India rubber been demonstrated, than the attention of capitalists, and inventors, was turned to this new field of enterprise. Without stopping to test the _nature_ of the gum which was to be moulded in golden ingots, viz., the manufacture of boots, shoes, etc., and the effect of the seasons upon the manufactured articles, the anxious speculator, and the enthusiastic manufacturer plunged boldly into the sea of trade. All classes became interested in its success, stock companies were formed, the shares of which were eagerly snatched up, and visions of untold profits were divided _in anticipation_. But the “bubble” soon burst, goods manufactured and solarized in April, became a sticky mass of useless rubbish in July. The warm weather literally melted the hopes and expectations of the incautious adventurer. A panic was the consequence, mills were abandoned, thousands of artizans were suddenly thrown out of employment, and this vast field of enterprise so promising but a few months before, was swept as by a hurricane. Hundreds of thousands of tons of India-rubber, both raw and prepared were either given away, or sold at ruinous sacrifices. Hilltops blazed with its ignited masses, and the illuminations of the fourth of July succeeding the failure, were made unusually brilliant by the aid of the India-rubber panic. As before intimated, the _cause_ of this great loss of money and material, originated in the “indecent haste” of the manufacturer. In the first place, solarization, that is heating in the sun the cloth, or other substance upon which the gum or compound of rubber, and some foreign substances was spread, was an imperfect process, as the heat of the sun was not sufficiently powerful to evaporate the solvent, and form a chemical union between the sulphur and the rubber, which union constitutes perfect vulcanization.