ear, concise,
and to the point.

[Sidenote: Correspondence as a Means of Bringing Patents before
Interested Parties.]

While to advertise, as suggested in the foregoing pages, would require a
very moderate outlay, and be, perhaps, the better course to pursue:
however, in connection with it, or if the patentee does not feel that he
can afford the expense of advertising, a very good plan is for him to
secure copies of a number of the trade journals of the class to which
his invention relates, and carefully look over the advertisements
therein, and select a list of such manufacturers as would seem likely to
be induced to purchase the patent in question, or manufacture the
article on royalty. In this manner the patentee will probably get the
best up-to-date list obtainable, and it may be set down as a fact, with
very few exceptions, that if manufacturers and dealers who make and
handle just such articles as the patent calls for cannot be interested,
it is very hard to interest others not engaged in such line, except when
the invention is large, and requires a great deal of capital to work the
same.

[Sidenote: How to Correspond with Manufacturers.]

To each of the parties of the list thus selected, or to a number of
them, the inventor should write a well-composed and convincing letter
setting forth the invention in its best light, and stating just why it
would be to the interest of the parties solicited to investigate the
same. Some time should be spent on this letter before attempting to
write it, and the writer should weigh well in his own mind what would be
best to say, and the proper way of expressing it. He should be as brief
as possible, consistent with legibility. The statements should be
assuming, yet in every respect true. He should state in brief terms just
what the invention is, what it will do, the points and advantages it
has, and at the same time endeavoring to get the parties interested so
that they will inquire into the invention, rather than attempt to come
to terms in the first letter.

The letter should be brief and pointed, and plainly written upon
business-size paper; and if the inventor has a typewriter, or access to
one, he should use it. If he has printed circulars he should send one
with his first letter, which will enable him to make the letter briefer
and more business-like.

In correspondence it is well not to name a price until the parties are
interested, and first endeavor to get them t