s handling at a
profit, notwithstanding the great number engaged in their manufacture
and sale in every section of the country. Now, if there can be supplied
some better or cheaper article in any line of industry, the firm or
person who secures the monopoly of its manufacture and sale, simply
controls the market, and human endurance and energy are the only limits
to the degree of profits such a firm or person can secure from the
manufacture and sale of such an article, if adequately protected by a
valid patent.

[Sidenote: Industrial Progress Based on the Patent System.]

In an official report the Commissioner of Patents clearly sets forth
that from six to seven eighths of the entire manufacturing capital of
the United States is either directly or indirectly based upon patents.
This vast amount of money, upward of six thousand millions of dollars,
continually employing great armies of people, in industries based upon
patents of every class, supplies the country with improved articles of
every description. It has been well said that, "Patents and trade go
hand in hand."

The largest and most opulent manufacturers in the country will be found
to be the heaviest owners of patents, developers of inventions, and
patrons of the Patent Office. While all inventions are not telegraphs,
telephones, sewing-machines, or electric lights; nor can all business
houses be Westinghouses, Hoes, McCormicks, Bells, or Edisons, yet all
over this country, and others as well, there are springing up a great
number of moderately large growing firms who, ever on the alert for
success, devise or secure control of some valuable patent, by which they
can successfully invade and control to a certain extent particular lines
of industry.

Nearly every leading factory in the world owes its commencement and
success to the prestige and protection afforded by the possession of a
good and valid patent.

CHAPTER II

INCOME FROM INVENTIONS

It has been aptly said that the products of all the gold, silver, and
diamond mines in the world would not equal in value the annual income of
American inventors. It has been carefully estimated that there are at
least fifty patents in the United States which yield over $1,000,000
annually, some 300 that yield over one-half million, from 500 to 800
which bring from $250,000 to $500,000, and between 15,000 and 20,000
that bring over $100,000 annuities. Besides these, there are thousands
upon thousands of p