here and not elsewhere, was the circumstance that almost
from the start new ideas were given a market value in this country.
Unlike all others, the American patent law directly encouraged
independent thinking in all classes. The fees were low and the
protection offered fairly good. Men soon found that it paid to invent;
that one of the surest roads to competency was a patented improvement
on something of general use. If a household utensil or appliance went
wrong or worked badly, every user was directly interested in devising
something better; and, more than that, he was interested in making his
invention known and in securing its adoption. The workman at his bench
had an ever-present inducement to contrive something at once cheaper
and better than the article he was hired to make. He could patent his
improvement, or the wholly original device he might hit upon, for a
few dollars; and his patent would count as capital. It would make him
his own master, possibly bring him a fortune. The manufacturer could
not rest contented with the thing he set out to make, for the meanest
hired man in his employ might suddenly become a competitor. He must be
constantly alert for possible improvements, or his rivals would get
ahead of him. The result is a nation of inventors, at whose hands the
newest of lands has leaped to the leadership in the arts, almost at a
bound.

There is talk of changing all this; of emulating the conservative
spirit of the Old World; of putting inventors under bonds; of stopping
the rush of industrial improvement--to enable a few short-sighted yet
grasping corporations to get along without paying license fees for
such inventions as they happen to approve of. They profess to want
inventors to go on making improvements. They are willing to ascribe
all honor to the successful inventor; but they are determined not to
pay him for his work. Still more they are determined to change the
attitude of the public mind toward inventors and inventions, if such a
change can be wrought by plausible misrepresentations. The fact that
they were able to inveigle one branch of the American Congress into
assenting to their unjust and mischievous scheme is one of the
anomalies of our recent history. It should be taken as a timely
warning of impending danger to all the industrial interests of the
country. It is outrageous that the inventors of the land, after having
raised their country to the first rank among industrial nations,
sh