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IHE PATENT FRANCHISE 
 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 By G. H. knight, 
 
 Temple Court, New Vork 
 
 •• No one can deny, however, that it is the psychical endowment of a tribe o 
 people which decides fatally its lucl< in the fight of the world." 
 
 , Brinton: Races and />«//«, j/; 
 
SENATOR JOHN RUGGLES 
 
THE PATENT FRANCHISE 
 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 By G. H. knight, 
 
 Templt Court. N*w York. 
 
 Tn' 
 
 " No one can deny, however, that it is the psychical endowment of a tribe c 
 people which decides fatally its luck in the fight of the world." 
 
 (Brinton: Races and PeafUs, 5') 
 
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THE SITUATION AND ITS LESSONS. 
 
 A witness of the intellectual and ihdustrial activity now so 
 conspicuous in portions of our country, and among kindred 
 populations of North- Western Europe, finds it hard to realize 
 that but three consecutive life-spans of four score years and ten 
 take us back to a time when the whole of what is now the United 
 States was in the possession of hordes of wandering savages still 
 in the Stone Age. He will find it yet harder to realize that the 
 Britain of that date, so far from being a manufacturing country, 
 was, for the most part, in that pastoral stage of culture which, 
 in the march of civilization, has customarily intervened between 
 the feral and the agricultural, and had, for her most important 
 export, raw wool, a part of which came back from the continent 
 in the forms of worsted and woven fabrics. 
 
 And, by-the-way, wool seems to have been as perplexing an 
 element with the legislators of mediaeval England as, in one form 
 or other, with their descendants on this side of the ocean. How 
 this excellent staple survived our forefathers' tinkerings, cosset- 
 ings and regulatings, is a wonder. Now, a tax was levied on wool 
 of foreign growth ; next, its importation was a penal offence ; 
 again, lest it should benefit Flemish weavers, exportation of 
 British wool was taxed and subsequently altogether forbidden 
 and made penal. To bury your grandmother without a shroud 
 of British woolsey subjected you to a heavy mulct. Then, in 
 
an excess of patronage, it was, so to speak, sanctified by an 
 ordinance which required the very seat and throne of English 
 jurisprudence to be cushioned by a British woolsack, as it is 
 to this day. It is fearful to contemplate the possible effect 
 on the British Constitution should some irreverent Yankee sur- 
 reptitiously substitute for the historic cushion one stuffed with 
 shucks or excelsior. 
 
 From the care taken to foster the wool industry, one would 
 have sworn that Westminster Close was a sheep pasture, with 
 lords and commoners for shepherds. 
 
 Of late years, British legislation has, as all know, let this 
 unlucky staple severely alone, and yet the industry survives ! 
 
 In agreeable contrast to the wool-regulating folly of earlier 
 times was the great and wise " Statute of Monopolies" of which 
 we have now to speak. 
 
 THE FIRST PATENT LAW. 
 
 At the time spoken of, an inspired statesman prepared, and 
 A. D. 1623 got enacted, the statute destined to be the instru- 
 ment of revolutionizing modern industry, and of converting a 
 land mainly devoted to sheep husbandry into a busy hive of 
 farms, orchards and factories. 
 
 At the date of this peaceful revolution the surviving settlers 
 of Plymouth Rock had just entered the third year of their heroic 
 struggle with wild nature and wilder men ; continental Europe 
 was in the midnight of its dreary Thirty Years' War ; one 
 Oliver Cromwell, an obscure country squire, in his twenty-fifth, 
 and one John Milton, a law student, in his sixteenth year, were 
 alike unconscious of coming greatness ; William Shakespeare 
 (equally oblivious of fame) had, seven years before, been laid 
 to rest in the little parish church of Stratford ; George Fox 
 
was, if possible, even more oblivious, as he was not born until 
 the following year. In the journal of the latter worthy, a quarter 
 of a century later, we find a suggestion of the then refinement 
 of woven garments in the nickname " Leather Breeches," given 
 by the folk of the country-side to the primitively attired founder 
 of the Society of Friends. 
 
 In a surprisingly short time after the enactment referred to, 
 the scene became changed as though by a magician's wand. 
 Our mother land soon reached and long held the most advanced 
 rank with respect to the twin arts of Agriculture and Manufac- 
 tures and their hand-maiden Commerce. 
 
 More recently our own country, which has for three genera- 
 tions enjoyed a patent code of exceptional liberality, or, if you 
 prefer the phrase, of exceptional justice, to inventors, is now 
 confessedly in the van in not a few world-renowned and lucra- 
 tive departments of manufacturing industry, all of them directly 
 traceable to our patent polity, and especially to the Act of July, 
 1836, which gave birth to the system of technical examination. 
 
 Following in the trail of these achievements, our age has 
 witnessed a material, intellectual and social revolution for which 
 history affords no precedent. 
 
 ASSAULTS ON THE PATENT SYSTEM. 
 
 Yet, in the face of these acknowledged facts, we find, even 
 among its beneficiaries, those who begrudge invention the privi- 
 lege of gathering its own first fruits. Some, for sake of a tempo- 
 rary advantage, would even enact the role of ^sop's peasant and 
 kill the bird that laid the golden eggs. These thrifty objectors 
 sometimes, however, deign to render a reason, as, for example, 
 they say, and say truly, that, in the majority of instances, the pat- 
 entee is only a little the swiftest in a race, failing in which, others 
 
would shortly have come forward and achieved the desired result. 
 But they overlook the fact that had there been no goal there would 
 have been neither race nor racers. " They who run a race run all, 
 yet but one receiveth the prize." Inventors' full knowledge of this 
 rule of the modern Olympia is well known to be one of the most 
 effective incentives to activity.* Another equally illogical objec- 
 tion sometimes urged is that patentees take advantage of their brief 
 monopoly to charge extravagant prices for their planters, reapers, 
 threshers, and other labor-saving miracles. These worthy farm- 
 ers overlook the fact that the creator of a successful art is enti- 
 tled to something for his rz's^sf in the lottery of industrial specula- 
 tion, whose prizes are far outnumbered by its blanks; nor does it 
 occur to them that there was no compulsion of purchase, and that 
 their very act of adoption and continued and increasing use belies 
 their declarations. 
 
 The situation cannot, however, be viewed with indifference 
 which permitted a recent representative convention of "Grang- 
 ers " — sustained by even more extreme views of a Congress of 
 "Labor-Unionists" — to adopt a resolution "that the term for 
 which patents for inventions are hereafter granted be restricted 
 to ten years." It does not appear to have occurred to our worthy 
 bucolic (or bucholoric) friends to extend such restrictions to pat- 
 ents for /and. Yet what is good sauce for the gander is said to 
 go equally well with the goose, and who knows but these patriotic 
 citizens (and citizenesses, for ladies, God bless 'em, take part in 
 the deliberations) might consent to extend their platform by this 
 one additional plank ! 
 
 The Grangers' attitude towards intellectual property will, 
 
 * The industrial stagnation seen in non-patenting countries falsifies the complacent 
 assurances of certain shallow socialists that invention would flourish although denied the hope 
 of recompense. 
 
 f " Of patents granted, probably not more than five per c( 
 Ex-Com'r Butterworth, \o Ap., 1891. 
 
perhaps, be better understood by approaching the question from 
 
 the opposite direction. 
 
 Among feral tribes there can be no property in an animal 
 until the creature is wounded or slain, and then it belongs to the 
 slayer. With the hunter a cow is only a kind of buffalo, and he 
 spears or shoots it without the slightest hesitation. This sum- 
 mary appropriation of his most treasured property the keeper of 
 herds strenuously resents ; while, on the other hand, the hunter 
 has at last found himself confronted with a totally alien code and 
 mode of life, and conflict is inevitable. 
 
 Precisely the same kind of incompatibility of creed, code, and 
 custom occurs at a later stage of civilization when the ranchman, 
 whose flocks and herds had, from time immemorial, roamed with 
 absolute freedom, finds himself fenced out of the settler's corn- 
 field. To him, the proposition that ownership can exist in the 
 earth's surface seems as preposterous as that in a living cow did 
 to his Indian antagonist. 
 
 To carry the simile one step farther, the farmer, who has been 
 taught to regard ownership in land as the one " real property," 
 cannot understand how there can be ownership in an idea. All 
 property heretofore known to him has been at least tangible. He 
 has never consciously himself originated an idea which he believed 
 to possess market value, — a belief in which he had probably been 
 entirely correct, — and the same man, who would be outraged by a 
 proposition to confiscate broad acres held by him and his heirs in 
 perpetuity, feels no compunction in proposing to lop seven years 
 from the short-lived tenure of a patent franchise ! It never enters 
 his head that this principle of confiscation may prove "a kicking 
 gun" at a not distant future.* 
 
 * That the body of citizens composing the Farmer's Alliance feel able to enforce whatever 
 they shall determine upon, is shown by their attitude in a late national convention, where it was 
 resolved "to demand that Agricultural Interests shall be represented by a Cabinet officer." 
 — They got him ! 
 
The human law, however just or beneficent, has never yet 
 been framed that was not liable to abuse, and, were our rural 
 friends cornered on the question, even they would have to admit 
 that ownership of land is not an exception. 
 
 It must, however, be confessed that the objectors have had 
 their provocations. The tiger, who fears no other inhabitant 
 of the jungle, may be driven stark mad by a swarm of mos- 
 quitoes. Possibly nothing has raised more bad blood and down- 
 right hostility to patents than the small and persistently prose- 
 cuted claims by the holders of certain patents (since invalidated 
 by the Supreme Court) for driven-well processes. The surprised 
 victim at first demurred, but the claimants well knew they had 
 their trout safe on the line, and that Hodge, rather than leave his 
 crops for a lawsuit at the distant city, to which " the President of 
 the United States — witness the Honorable Salmon P. Chase" — 
 had summoned him, would cut the knot of the dilemma by going 
 to the old stocking and abstracting therefrom the hundred dollars 
 demanded for a " license." When, a few years subsequent to this 
 trageo-comedy, he learned that some more obstinate or more 
 opulent defendant had beaten the patents and patentees in the 
 court of last resort, the wrath of the victim, wounded both in 
 pride and pocket-book, knew no bounds. The immediate offend- 
 ers having long since " skipped," the very system fell, with these 
 honest farmers, into a disrepute from which it has not yet 
 recovered. 
 
 The hopelessness of movements for any marked legislative 
 progress in the present »«2.f-information, even in high places, may 
 be gathered from a communication in the North American 
 Review of November last, from a distinguished member of Con- 
 gress. The cap-sheaf of his charges of extravagance against his 
 political adversaries is thus stated : " In the Patent Office, 
 
thirty of the highest salaried officials participate in the general 
 raid upon the public treasury." Verily ! — a few "Tracts for the 
 Times " might do some good in even the enlightened vicinage 
 of Floyd County, Georgia.* 
 
 THE PROPOSED DIGEST. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States manifestly contem- 
 plates a governmental organization whose powers extend to other 
 fields of action than the repression of crime — -/lotably the institu- 
 tion and maintenance of conditions favorable to genius and in- 
 dustry, and the execution of public works beyond the scope or 
 ability of private enterprise. Now, each annual report of the 
 Commissioner of Patents has, for a long time past, urged upon 
 the attention of Congress, the absolute necessity, for the effective 
 exercise of the duties of the Examining Corps, of a carefully in- 
 dexed digest or abridgement of the drawings and specifications 
 of patented devices. The total issue of the labor of our Federal 
 Legislature on this pregnant subject was the appropriation, some 
 fifteen years ago, of over $10,000. 
 
 The adequacy of this sum may be appreciated by a state- 
 ment of the experience of a private publisher of a greatly more 
 restricted work in the same direction. To prepare and place on 
 the market the American Dictionary of Mechanics required an 
 expenditure of over $100,000. 
 
 In proof that the general public, although the chief benefici- 
 ary, would not be put to a penny of expense, I am in receipt of 
 the written assurance of the Honorable E. R. True, Acting As- 
 sistant Treasurer of the United States, that at this very moment 
 the Patent Office stands credited with $3,872,745.24. The excess 
 
 * Even such distinguished feudal proprietors as Prince Bismarck and the late Lord Derby 
 have professed inability to perceive any inherent or inalienable right of the inventor in that 
 which he has created. 
 
of each succeeding year's receipts of the bureau over its expendi- 
 tures being a steadily growing one, the aggregate credit, by the 
 time the present Congress could act, may be expected to approxi- 
 mate $4,250,000. Hence, an appropriation of $500,000, needed 
 to initiate a digest, would leave untouched something like 
 S3. 750,000. Although it is believed that it would prove of high 
 utility outside the Patent Office, the primary use and object of 
 the publication would be in the Examining Department of the 
 office itself. The work, if ever undertaken, must be a national 
 one, and it is difficult to conceive of a more appropriate application 
 of some part of this fund taken from the pockets of applicants 
 
 Once established, the work might be expected to find its 
 staunchest advocates among such as, abandoning the hope, (or 
 perhaps the wish) to see the patent system abolished, yet object 
 to the issue of patents that fail to survive the ordeal of judicial 
 investigation. 
 
 The number of applications would probably not be greatly 
 afifected, the easing of the path of inquiry to one class of inventors 
 being balanced by the deterrent effect on such as should find 
 themselves engaged in "threshing old straw." TIlG legal statUS 
 
 of American patents would be greatly raised. As an aid 
 
 to exhaustive technical examination, the effect would be wholly 
 critical, sifting and discriminative. Acquiescence in patents 
 would be the rule instead of, as it is now, the exception.''' 
 
 PROPOSED ADDITIONAL TAX ON INVENTION. 
 
 There is one point which I approach with reluctance. It is 
 a delicate matter, a family secret, in fact, and must go no further. 
 Like other domestic controversies, it grows out of differences in 
 
 * To reach its highest possibilities of usefulness, it should be a judicious digest of 
 devices rather than of patents, as such. 
 
the individual members. First ; we have that rare creation, the 
 many-sided all-round inventor, who combines fertility in expe- 
 dients of a true genius with the unflagging executive force of a 
 one thousand horse-power steam-engine. We all know of a few 
 such. He is generally one who don't need a " guardeen." He 
 can take care of " Number 1 " pretty well. Second ; there is 
 the studious man, having the initiative faculty, and who, aided 
 perhaps by his solicitor, puts on record such a description of his 
 invention that one skilled in the art could embody it in an oper- 
 ative machine or process. From one of a variety of causes, such 
 as poverty, sickness, diffidence, total lack of the business faculty, 
 or simple bad luck, the inventor may himself never have so em- 
 bodied it, yet, if no applicant appears for a patent for the same 
 invention during the pendency of his application, his patent 
 stands good against all men, be they one-sided, two-side^, or 
 many-sided. Third, there is a numerous and very useful class of 
 inventors, well in touch with the public, whose genius takes the 
 more humble but greatly more profitable direction of putting 
 Number 2's creations in commercial shape. Numbers 1 and 3 
 have not always to Number 2 (whom they call a "paper inven- 
 tor") those fraternal sentiments that Dr. Isaac Watts assures 
 us "birds in their little nests" display. This worthy divine had, 
 it may be feared, never studied the habits of the Cicctihts 
 canorus. 
 
 Some thirteen years ago, when a bill like the now defunct 
 House Bill 10,639 of the 51st Congress for increasing the official 
 charges- to patentees, was before Congress, I wrote to a gentle- 
 man whose already large contributions to the patent-fund as an 
 applicant would, I thought, give his word weight with the com- 
 mittee, and was answered that in his opinion " a considerable 
 increase in Government charges, either in application or subse- 
 
quently, would be additional misery to inventors, who have now 
 a hard enough time to pay for patents at the present rate, and 
 that such additional tax would operate as a check on inventive 
 progress." Such were the views of this already famous, but as 
 yet struggling, inventor in the year of grace 1878. Wishing to 
 know whether the millionaire of Anno Domini 1890 bearing the 
 same name still held to the opinion above expressed, I again 
 wrote to him, and, although the busiest of men, he again promptly 
 replied. This second reply, however, showed that a change had 
 come o'er the spirit of his dream, for it assured me that he now 
 favored the additional tax for the very reasons given by its advo- 
 cates, namely, that it would tend to vacate unworked patents. 
 Notwithstanding this reversal of the decision of "Philip" sobered 
 by adversity, by "Philip" intoxicated with success, I believe a ma- 
 jority of authorities still hold to the views of "the court below." 
 
 Among objections that may be cited to the imposition of 
 additional, and especially deferred, patent fees (merely to add to 
 the " unearned increment " in the public treasury) are : 
 
 1. It would do violence alike to the spirit and to the letter 
 of the Constitution — Article I., Section 8 — whose expressed 
 object was "to promote the progress of science and the useful 
 arts," not to levy " a tax " upon such progress. 
 
 2. It would be both vexatious and repressive, in that the 
 deferred payments would fall due when such franchises in this 
 country often become distributed among more or less numerous 
 and distant holders, personally strangers to one another, and who 
 would be under no obligation to recoup one of their number who 
 should have the forethought and generosity to pay the mulct out 
 of his own pocket. 
 
 3. It aims, through a special and impolitic exaction, to 
 cure by a remedy worse than the disease, and largely preventable 
 
by a more perfectly equipped and better salaried examining 
 bureau. 
 
 4. In view of the large yearly excess of the Patent Office 
 receipts over its expenditures, both justice and good policy would 
 dictate a reduction rather than an increase of the existing charges. 
 
 5. Finall)- ; it is un-American, in that it assumes to burden 
 such grants with conditions, as if they were a royal favor instead 
 of the legalization of a right. 
 
 OPINIONS OF PUBLICISTS. 
 
 Of many weighty testimonies to these views that might be 
 cited a few may be quoted. 
 
 In the famous " India-Rubber case " of Goodyear vs. Day, 
 Daniel Webster, "the expounder of the Constitution," said : 
 
 " The American Constitution does not attempt to give an 
 inventor a right to his invention, or an author a right to his com- 
 position ; it recognizes an original, pre-existing, inherent right of 
 property in such invention or composition, and authorizes Con- 
 gress to secure to the inventor or author the enjoyment of that 
 right, but the right exists before the Constitution and above the 
 Constitution, and is, as a natural right, more than that which a 
 man can assert in almost any other kind of property." 
 
 The presidential message of General Ulysses S. Grant to 
 43d Congress, ist Sess., Ex. Doc. 27, proclaims the inherent 
 right of inventors in the products of their genius in language as 
 follows : 
 
 " The patent system of the United States is, in many 
 respects, radically different from that of any other country. 
 Inferentially, at least, the purpose of the Constitution appears to 
 have been to recognize property in a new invention as a right 
 belonging to the inventor, not a favor conferred by Government. 
 This is their language : ' The Congress shall have power to pro- 
 
mote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing, for 
 limited times, to authors and inventors the exclusive right to 
 their respective writings and discoveries.' " 
 
 A great constitutional lawyer, Senator William E. Seward, 
 in an argument before Justices Nelson and Conklin, forty-seven 
 years ago, said : 
 
 " The productions of my mind are, confessedly, as really 
 property or the subject of property as the fabrics of my hands. 
 Indeed, they are far more exclusively my own. The patent is a 
 contract by which I convey my invention to the Commonwealth 
 forever, in consideration of the exclusive enjoyment of it by 
 myself during a limited period." 
 
 Professor Nat. Shaler (the brilliant Kentuckian who occupies 
 the chair of Agassiz), in his treatise on " The Nature of Intellec- 
 tual Property,'' says : 
 
 " The title to intellectual property rests upon an even higher 
 level of right than can be assigned to any mere material pos- 
 session. Indeed, the arguments for the rights of inventors may 
 go further than this ; for it may reasonably be urged that, owing 
 to the custom of limiting such property to a brief term of years, 
 there should be a special exemption of it from burdens which 
 may fairly be borne by possessions held in perpetuity. But half 
 of a generation — scarce one-fourth of the reasonable expectation 
 of human life — is possession given to the creator of property, 
 which is the only absolute contribution to the store of human 
 goods. Surely this should be an argument against making it 
 bear the burden of special disabilities such as our thoughtless 
 marplots of society would put upon it." 
 
 Professor Sedgwick : 
 
 " The discoveries of physical science are a part of the nation's 
 strength and glory. The inventions of mechanical skill are, or 
 ought to be, the poor man's honor and blessing." 
 
Charles Dickens' " Poor Man's Tale of a Patent :" 
 " But I put this : Is it reasonable to make a man feel as if, in 
 inventing an improvement meant to do good, he had done some- 
 thing wrong ?" 
 
 In the very infancy of patent jurisprudence, Lord Chief Jus- 
 tice Parker (I nsts., i8i), adjudicating under the Statute of 1623, 
 held : 
 
 " As a new invented art, nobody can be said to have a 
 right to that which was not in being befo/e ; and therefore it 
 (the patent) is a reasonable reward to ingenuity and uncommon 
 industry." 
 
 Sir Edward Coke (Insts., 184) held : 
 
 " The reason wherefore such a privilege is good in law is be- 
 cause the inventor bringeth to and for the Commonwealth a new 
 manufacture by his invention, costs and charges, and therefore it 
 is reason that he should have a privilege for his reward and the 
 encouragement of others in the like, for a reasonable time." 
 
 W. M. Hindmarch (Hindmarch on Patents, 2), says: 
 " The whole community is benefited by the promotion of the 
 useful arts, and therefore it is for the public good to hold out the 
 promise of rewards to inventors of new and useful arts and manu- 
 factures who may first put the public in possession of them. In 
 some cases, where meritorious inventors could not be otherwise 
 adequately rewarded, sums of money have been granted to them 
 out of the public purse ; but such a mode of recompense, it is 
 clear, could not be generally adopted. 
 
 " It is true that, by such a grant, every other person is re- 
 strained, during the continuance of the monopoly, from using the 
 patented invention, even if he makes a similar discovery himself. 
 But, at the time the grant is made, it is by no means certain that 
 the invention will be given to the public, or even made by any 
 other person, and, by the temporary suspension of their right, the 
 
people acquire the certainty of being able to use the invention at 
 the expiration of the monopoly. The reward which the inventor 
 thus obtains will, in general, be in proportion to the benefit which 
 he confers upon the public." 
 
 McCulloch (Com. Diet., vol. ii., 274) said: 
 
 " The expediency of granting patents has been disputed — 
 though, as it would seem, without sufficient reason. Were they 
 refused, the inducement to make discoveries would, in many cases, 
 be very much weakened ; at the same time it would plainly be for 
 the interest of every one who made a discovery to endeavor, if 
 possible, to conceal it ; and, notwithstanding the difficulties in the 
 way of concealment, they are not insuperable, and it is believed 
 that various important inventions have been lost from the secret 
 dying with their authors." 
 
 Senator Ruggles, the organizer of the Patent Office, said : 
 " There appears to be no better way of measuring out appro- 
 priate rewards for useful inventions than, by a general law, to 
 secure to all descriptions of persons, without discrimination, the 
 exclusive use and sale, for a given period, of the thing invented. 
 In this way they will generally derive a just and appropriate en- 
 couragement proportioned to the value of their respective inven- 
 tions. It is not, at this day, to be doubted that the evil of tem- 
 porary monopoly is greatly overbalanced by the good the com- 
 munity ultimately derives from its toleration." (Report of Senator 
 Ruggles introducing the draft of the organic act of July, 1836.) 
 
 The Chevalier Bally, the Swiss Commissioner to the United 
 States Centennial Commission, said : 
 
 " We (the Swiss) must introduce the patent system. All 
 our production is, more or less, a simple copy. The inventor has 
 no profit to expect from his invention, no matter how useful it 
 may be. ''' ''' The want of protection is a disadvantage to 
 
 us. The State ought not to hesitate to add to its resources this 
 
new resource ; but, at the same time, we must remember that an 
 invention is vahiable in proportion to the facility with which it 
 can be made available ; and so it is essential that the grant of 
 patents be accessible to inventors of the most moderate fortunes." 
 
 Mr. Badeau, U. S. Consul-General at London, writing in 
 1876, said : 
 
 " I beg to call attention to the portion of the Times article 
 referring to the United States, in which it is distinctly admitted 
 that American manufactures of tools, locohiotive engines, and 
 many other kinds of hardware, are now obtained, in Canada and 
 Australia, almost exclusively from the United States ; while it is 
 also stated that that country not only produces at home all the 
 manufactured goods she at one time brought from England, but 
 that she has been able to exclude British goods from foreign 
 markets," 
 
 Said Henry Ward Beecher : 
 
 " It is the reaper that has made it possible for a thin popula- 
 tion to deal with such an enormous acreage of grain. Step by 
 step the reaper has been improved, until now it cuts the grain, 
 binds it in sheaves with wire or string, and casts it aside ready for 
 the cart, and all with the help of but a single man to drive, doing 
 the work of four men on the old machines. The reapers that bind 
 with wire are justly criticised by millers for leaving scraps of iron 
 wire in the grain, which, when it passes through the stones, 
 damages both the flour and the mill. A new reaper, binding with 
 strips or strings of vegetable make, has proved successful this 
 summer, and will probably supersede all others. It is possible to 
 manage farms of hundreds and thousands of acres of wheat only 
 by improved machines. With a sparse population, and only the 
 cradle, and, still less, the sickle, there could be no possibility of 
 securing the grain of these vast grain-fields before it perished. But 
 now the forehanded farmer has a plow rigged with a regular seat, 
 and rides as if in a chariot ; then comes the seed-drill, with its 
 
cushioned seat ; and at length the reaper clears the field, with the 
 farmer riding on it, like a gentleman that he is. Fifty years ago 
 there was more backache in handling one acre of wheat than 
 to-day there is in fifty acres." 
 
 Said the writer Bushnell : 
 
 " It is not in great cities nor in the confined shops of trade, 
 but principally in agriculture, that the best stock or staple of men 
 is grown. It is in the open air, that in communion with the sky, 
 the earth, and all living things, the largest inspiration is drank in, 
 and the vital energies of a real man conserved. The modern 
 improvements in machinery have facilitated production to such a 
 degree that when they become diffused through the world only a 
 few hands, comparatively, will be requisite in the mechanic arts ; 
 and those engaged in agriculture, being proportionately more 
 numerous, will be more in a condition of ease. Here opens a 
 new and sublime hope. If a State can maintain the practice of a 
 pure morality, and can unite with agriculture a taste for learning 
 and science and the generous exercises I have named, a race of 
 men will ultimately be raised up having a physical volume, a na- 
 tive majesty and force of mind such as no age has yet produced." 
 
 Said Professor Wolowski : 
 
 " A patent gave the inventor the right of working individu- 
 ally, in derogation of the chartered monopoly of the guild. 
 Patents are even now granted in Austria admittedly for the same 
 object. Thus the dawn of the right of inventors has been actually 
 coeval with the destruction of monopolies odious to the common 
 justice of men ; and the common sense of mankind has marked 
 a distinction between such monopolies and the exclusive rights 
 conceded to inventors. Their rights, under patents, are called 
 "monopolies" only from the poverty of language, which has failed 
 to express in words a distinction which no less clearly exists." 
 
 Said Professor Bowen : 
 
 " Invention is the only power on earth that can be said to 
 
create. It enters as an essential element into the process of the 
 increase of national wealth, because that process is a creation and 
 not (like that of individual or corporate wealth) a mere acquisition. 
 It does not necessarily enter into the process of the increase of 
 individual wealth, because that may be simply an acquisition, not 
 a creation. Hence, the most frequent cause of the increase of 
 national wealth is the increase of the skill, dexterity and judg- 
 ment of the mechanical contrivances with which national labor is 
 applied." 
 
 These, words of Professor Bowen impel the inquiry : In this 
 view, how can the exclusive right in an invention be compared 
 with a monopoly of a trade ? How can the exclusive privilege to 
 sell salt in Elizabeth's time, which added not one bushel to the 
 production, but which enriched the monopolist and robbed the 
 community (as was the fact, by raising the price from sixteen 
 pence a bushel to fifteen shillings), and the exclusive right of 
 Whitney to his invention of the cotton gin, which has added hun- 
 dreds of millions to the products and exports of the country, be 
 both branded, with equal justice, with the odious name of mo- 
 nopoly "? 
 
 Said Dr. Richardson : 
 
 " For the present, the status of intellectual property is so ■ 
 insecure that great concessions have to be made by the owners of 
 such property to popular barbarism. 
 
 " The gross injustice done to inventors, as in Whitney's case, 
 is to be charged to an undeveloped moral sense on the part of 
 the community, and not to any radical defect in the patent sys- 
 tem. Even material property is not yet entirely secure against 
 invasion amongst us." 
 
 Even Mr. John Stuart Mill, although a strong opponent of 
 monopoly, frankly admits the reasonableness of granting patent 
 rights : 
 
 19 
 
" The condemnation of monopolies (says Mill) ought not to 
 extend to patents, by which the originator of a new process is 
 permitted to enjoy, for a limited period, the exclusive privilege of 
 using his own improvement. This is not making the commodity 
 dearer for his benefit, but merely postponing a part of the 
 increased cheapness (or excellence) which the public owe to the 
 inventor, in order to compensate and reward him for the service. 
 That he ought to be both compensated and rewarded for it will 
 not be denied ; and also, that if all were at once allowed to avail 
 themselves of his ingenuity, without having shared the labors or 
 the expenses which he had to incur in bringing his idea into a 
 practical shape, either such expenses would be undergone by 
 nobody, except by very opulent and very public spirited persons, 
 or the State must put a value on the service rendered by the 
 inventor and make him a public grant. This has been done in 
 some instances (as when Parliament offered a reward of ;^20,ooo 
 for a method of finding a ship's longitude at sea), and may be 
 done without inconvenience in cases of very conspicuous public 
 benefit ; but, in general, an exclusive privilege, of temporary 
 duration, is preferable, because it leaves nothing to any one's dis- 
 cretion ; because the reward conferred by it depends upon the 
 invention being found useful, and the greater the usefulness the 
 greater the reward ; and because it is paid by the very persons to 
 whom the service is rendered, the consumers of the commodity.'' 
 
 Dr. Lardner, writing of the steam-engine, said : 
 
 " To enumerate its present effects would be to count almost 
 every comfort and every luxury of life. It has increased the sum 
 of human happiness, not only by calling new pleasures into exist- 
 ence, but by so cheapening former enjoyments as to render them 
 attainable by those who before could never have hoped to share 
 them. The surface of the land and the face of the waters are 
 traversed with equal facility by its power ; and by thus stimulat- 
 ing and facilitating the intercourse of nation with nation, and the 
 commerce of people with people, it has knit together remote 
 
countries by bonds of amity not likely to be broken. Streams of 
 knowledge and information are kept flowing between distant cen- 
 tres of population, those more advanced diffusing civilization and 
 improvement among those that are more backward. The press 
 itself, to which mankind owes, in so large a degree, the rapidity 
 of its improvement in modern times, has had its power and 
 influence increased in a manifold ratio by its union with the 
 steam-engine. It is thus that literature is cheapened, and, by 
 being cheapened, diffused ; it is thus that reason has taken the 
 place of force and the pen has superseded the sword ; it is thus 
 that war has almost ceased upon the earth, and that the differ 
 ences which inevitably arise between people and people are for 
 the most part adjusted by peaceful negotiation." 
 
 The lamented and witty Locke, editor of the Toledo Blade, 
 said : 
 
 " We don't like to be irreverent, but would like to ask, what 
 did our forefathers know ? What, for instance did George Wash- 
 ington know ? He never saw a steamboat ; he never saw a fast 
 mail-train ; he never held his ear to a telephone ; he never sat for 
 his picture in a photograph gallery ; he never received a tele- 
 graphic dispatch ; he never sighted a Krupp gun ; he never 
 listened to the 'fizz' of an electric pen ; he never saw a pretty 
 girl run a sewing-machine ; he never saw a self-propelling engine 
 go down the street to a fire ; he never heard of " evolutioU " ; 
 he never took laughing gas ; he never had a set of store-teeth ; he 
 never attended an international exposition ; he never owned a bo- 
 nanza mine ; he never knew ' Old Pl'Ol).' He — but why go on ? 
 No ; when he took an excursion it was on a flat-boat. When he 
 went off on a train it was a mule-train. When he wanted to talk 
 to a man in Milwaukee he had to — -go there. When he wanted 
 his picture taken it was done in profile with a piece of black 
 paper and a pair of shears. When he got the returns from the 
 back counties they had to be brought in by a man with an ox- 
 cart. When he took aim at the enemy he had to trust to a 
 
crooked barreled old flint-lock. When he wrote it was with a 
 goose-quill. When he had anything to mend, his grandmother 
 did it with a darning-needle. When he went to a fire he stood 
 in a line and passed buckets. When he looked at a claill he 
 never dreamed that it was any relation of his! When he went to 
 a concert he heard a cracked fiddle and an insane clarionet. 
 When he had a tooth pulled he sat down and never stopped yell- 
 ing. When he got out of teeth he mummed his victuals." * * * 
 
 Herbert Spencer, speaking of England in the year 1891, says : 
 " There has been a conspicuous progress from the fifteenth 
 century, when even an ordinary gentleman's house was commonly 
 without wainscot or plaster on its walls, down to the present cen- 
 tury, when every cottage has more rooms than one and the arti- 
 sans' usually have several, while all have fire-places, chimneys, 
 and glazed windows accompanied mostly by paper hangings and 
 painted doors. This progress has been still more marked within 
 our own time. Any one who can look back sixty years, when the 
 amount of pauperism was far greater than now were, and beggars 
 abundant, is struck by the comparative size and finish of the new 
 houses occupied by operatives — by the better dress of workmen, 
 who wear broadcloth on Sundays, and that of servant girls, who 
 vie with their mistresses — by the higher standard of living which 
 leads to a great demand for the best qualities of food by working 
 people ; all results of the double change to higher wages and 
 cheaper commodities. The lowering of the death rate, again, 
 proves that the average life is less trying. — (From Freedom to 
 Bondage, by Herbert Spencer, Pop. Sci. Monthly, April, 1891.) 
 
 "On all the hearthstones of the civilized world for thousands 
 of years the kettle had boiled and lifted its lid by the expansive 
 power of its steam, yet to none had this seemingly trite and ever 
 recurring incident been significant, to none had it announced that 
 measureless power of which it was the humble, but distinct ex- 
 ponent. At length, the movement caught the eye of a lonely 
 student of nature, then a prisoner in the Tower of London, and. 
 
in the soil of his prolific mind, it proved the rapidly expanding 
 germ of that steam-engine whose triumphs have changed the 
 social, political and commercial aspects of the globe. 
 
 (Com'r Joseph Holt in x. p. Goodyear 14 June, 1858, vol. 3, 
 ms. 421.) 
 
 " From the very foundation of this Government, it has been 
 its settled policy to secure a just reward to all inventors, and it is 
 to the inflexible maintenance of this policy that we are indebted 
 for the unparalled advancement which, as a people, we have made 
 in the useful arts. All that is glorious in our past or hopeful in 
 our future is indissolubly linked with the course of human prog- 
 ress of which inventors are the preiix chevaliers. It is no poetic 
 exaggeration of the abiding sentiment of the country to say that 
 they are the true jewels of the nation to which they belong, and 
 that a solicitude for the protection of their rights and interests 
 should find a place in every throb of the national heart. Sadly 
 helpless as a class, and offering in the glittering creations of their 
 own genius the strongest tempation to unscrupulous cupidity, 
 they, of all men, have most need of the shelter of the public law, 
 while, in view of their philanthropic labors, they are of all men 
 most entitled to claim it." 
 
 (Ibid, 425.) 
 
 A SUGGESTION. 
 
 A more generous attitude towards patented inventions might 
 be expected to follow the circulation of short and trenchant 
 articles by competent writers whereby the public at large — 
 which is the chief beneficiary of all these conquests of the 
 material world — may be led to see that it is through these 
 that industry has become scientific and science has become in- 
 dustrial ; that it is through these that we are indebted, not only 
 
for such wondrous arts as that which makes Hght depict for 
 posterity the very features and expression of the Hfe it once 
 illumined ; or for the kindred art whereby scenes in the most 
 remote regions are made to pass in realistic panorama before 
 the pleasantly cheated vision ; or for the instrument which, hav- 
 ing analyzed the sunbeam and revealed the chemical constituents 
 of distant constellations, becomes, in the hands of the metal- 
 lurgist, the means of determining the precise instant at which 
 to arrest conversion in the Bessemer steel manufacture ; but 
 that it is also through invention alone that the masses of our 
 day are better fed, better clothed, and better housed than the 
 princes of medireval times ; that it is to invention that man is 
 indebted for possession of every comfort and refinement ; nay, 
 for the very necessaries of modern life ; for the arts of spoken, 
 written and printed speech ; for the means of transmitting the 
 very voice to distant generations, or for flashing it around the 
 terrestrial globe ; that it is to it that he is indebted for the home, 
 the fireside,* the garden, the orchard, the arts of music, poetry, 
 architecture, locomotion by sea, by land, and even through the cir- 
 cumambient air ; for the gift of soothing with healing wings the 
 bed of anguish ; — all the treasures of mind in all the ages, the 
 god-like in form and feature, the angelic in thought and deed; — a 
 vision and power of enjoyment multiplied ten thousand fold, and 
 reaching out from this tiny speck of earthly life into the eternities 
 of time and space. 
 
 * Mankind's earliest attempts to mold nature to his use — in the production of fire for 
 example, — were as noteworthy for their day as the invention of the Spectroscope or of the 
 Telephone for ours. 
 
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