The feminist movement has had its leaders, many and prominent ones, but it is sometimes the one with no thought or consciousness of leadership who renders the greatest service. In the choice of some historic figure to symbolize this movement, who has a better claim than the man whose life and work created the great opportunity through which sex emancipation was achieved? It is pleasing to know that the inventor of the typewriter lived to see the beginnings of this great movement and the knowledge of it gladdened his later years. Sholes died in Milwaukee on February 17, 1890, and for some years before his death he never rose from his bed. But though more dead than alive in body, his mind remained clear, unclouded and active to the very end. Mr. C. E. Weller tells of a private letter which relates the following incident which occurred shortly before his death, when a daughter-in-law remarked to him, "Father Sholes, what a wonderful thing you have done for the world." He replied, "I don't know about the world, but I do feel that I have done something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will enable them more easily to earn a living." In one of the last letters he ever wrote, Sholes says, "Whatever I may have felt in the early days of the value of the typewriter, it is obviously a blessing to mankind, and especially to womankind. I am glad I had something to do with it. I builded wiser than I knew, and the world has the benefit of it." These farewell words of Sholes form a suitable close to this story. He rendered the world of womankind a great service, he lived long enough to know it, and he died contented and happy in that knowledge. His closing words show that he thought more of this achievement than of any other service rendered by his invention. In this anniversary year of the writing machine it is fitting that our thoughts should turn to the simple, gentle, kindly, modest, lovable man, who in his lifetime neither sought nor obtained rewards or honors, and whose very name is little known today in the great world of business which he transformed with his invention, or to the millions of women who owe so much to his efforts. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of the Typewriter, by Herkimer County Historical Society