Among those prominently interested in the machine in its early days were Orlando B. Potter and the law firm of Jordan & Clarke. The latter were attorneys representing some of the prominent inventors in litigation, and in this way Mr. Edward Clarke became interested in the business, and it was he who in 1856 instituted the system of selling on the instalment plan. For some years before his death Mr. Clarke was the president of the Singer Company. Recent statistics in relation to the sewing machine industry are difficult to obtain, partly by reason of the great extent and ramifications of the business, and partly by reason of the unwillingness of the larger companies to give out data for publication. At the Patent Centennial in Washington, in 1891, Ex-Commissioner of Patents Butterworth made the statement that “Cæsar conquered Gaul with a force numerically less than was employed in inventing and perfecting the parts of the sewing machine.” The great Singer Company, with headquarters at New York, operates not only a factory at Elizabethport, N. J., employing 5,000 men, but also other factories in Europe and Canada, the one at Kilbowie, Scotland, employing 6,000 men. Of the total of 13,500,000 machines made by this company from 1853 to the end of 1896, nearly 6,000,000 have been made in factories located abroad, but directly controlled and managed by the New York office. It is stated that the present output of the American factory of the Singer Company amounts to over 11,000 weekly, or more than half a million annually. Although so many sewing machines are made abroad, the exports from the United States for 1899 amounted to $3,264,344. In the early days of the Howe sewing machine it was denounced as a menace to the occupations of the thousands of men and women who worked in the clothing shops, and the struggles of the inventor against this opposition and discouragement form an interesting page of history. But it had come to stay and to grow. Some 7,000 United States patents attest the interest and ingenuity in this field, in the neighborhood of 100,000 persons make a living from the manufacture and sale of the machine, millions find profitable employment in its use, and from 700,000 to 800,000 machines are annually manufactured in the United States. The output of all countries is estimated to be from 1,200,000 to 1,300,000 annually.