ngly content to pursue the
beaten paths of imitation, that therefore he has made no contribution to
the inventive genius of our country, and so has gained no place for
himself in the ranks of those who have made this nation the foremost
nation of the world in the number and character of its inventions.

That this conclusion with reference to the colored man's inventive
faculty is wholly untrue I will endeavor now to show.

In the world of invention the colored man has pursued the same line of
activity that other men have followed; he has been spurred by the same
necessity that has confronted other men, namely, the need for some
device by which to minimize the exactions of his daily toil, to save his
time, conserve his strength and multiply the results of his labor. Like
other men, the colored man sought first to invent the thing that was
related to his earlier occupations, and as his industrial pursuits
became more varied his inventive genius widened correspondingly. Thus we
find that the first recorded instances of patents having been granted to
a colored man--and the only ones specifically so designated--are the two
patents on corn harvesters which were granted in 1834 and 1836 to one
Henry Blair, of Maryland, presumably a "free person of color," as the
law was so construed at that time as to bar the issuance of a patent to
a slave.

With the exception of these two instances the public records of the
Patent Office give absolutely no hint as to whether any one of the more
than 1,000,000 patents granted by this government to meritorious
inventors from all parts of the world has been granted to a colored
inventor. The records make clear enough distinctions as to nationality,
but absolutely none as to race. This policy of having the public records
distinguish between inventors of different nationalities only is a
distinct disadvantage to the colored race in this country.

If the inventors of England or France or Germany or Italy, or any other
country, desire to ascertain the number and character of the inventions
patented to the citizens of their respective countries, it would require
but a few hours of work to get exact statistics on the subject, but not
so with the colored inventor. Here, as elsewhere, he has a hard road to
travel.

In fact, it seems absolutely impossible to get even an approximately
correct answer to that question for our race. Whatever of statistics one
is able to get on this subject must be obta