industries, their
securities are in our hands; we will consult them."

It may be, as a result of that consultation, you will be informed that it
is too bad, but it will be impossible to "accommodate" you. It may be you
will receive a suggestion that if you care to make certain arrangements
with the trust, you will be permitted to manufacture. It may be you will
receive an offer to buy your patent, the offer being a poor consolation
dole. It may be that your invention, even if purchased, will never be
heard of again.

That last method of dealing with an invention, by the way, is a
particularly vicious misuse of the patent laws, which ought not to allow
property in an idea which is never intended to be realized. One of the
reforms waiting to be undertaken is a revision of our patent laws.

In any event, if the trust doesn't want you to manufacture your
invention, you will not be allowed to, unless you have money of your own
and are willing to risk it fighting the monopolistic trust with its vast
resources. I am generalizing the statement, but I could particularize it.
I could tell you instances where exactly that thing happened. By the
combination of great industries, manufactured products are not only being
standardized, but they are too often being kept at a single point of
development and efficiency. The increase of the power to produce in
proportion to the cost of production is not studied in America as it used
to be studied, because if you don't have to improve your processes in
order to excel a competitor, if you are human you aren't going to improve
your processes; and if you can prevent the competitor from coming into the
field, then you can sit at your leisure, and, behind this wall of
protection which prevents the brains of any foreigner competing with you,
you can rest at your ease for a whole generation.

Can any one who reflects on merely this attitude of the trusts toward
invention fail to understand how substantial, how actual, how great will
be the effect of the release of the genius of our people to originate,
improve, and perfect the instruments and circumstances of our lives? Who
can say what patents now lying, unrealized, in secret drawers and
pigeonholes, will come to light, or what new inventions will astonish and
bless us, when freedom is restored?

Are you not eager for the time when the genius and initiative of all the
people shall be called into the service of business? when newcomers with
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