The Matter of Patent #332319
Chalker leverages his title with the Wide Awakes to hang his own business shingle. In his late 20s, with the pressures of an infant daughter at home, Chalker had already failed once trying to start his own business as an importer of high end fabric. Chalker proposes a partnership with a failing shop owner named Leonard Pitkin whose general store sold fabrics, tinware, and clocks. Thanks to an unsanctioned deal, Pitkin soon filed a patent #332319 for the young Wide Awake inventor’s “improved frame for swing lamps and torches.” Pitkin was the last wastrel heir to a dying manufacturing dynasty and tried to use the nascent Republican Party to stay afloat.