s raised in the newspapers against
"high rates and monopoly" to distract the minds of the people from the
real issue of legitimate business versus stock-company bubbles.

The most plausible and persistent of all the various inventors who
snatched at Bell's laurels, was Elisha Gray. He refused to abide by the
adverse decision of the court. Several years after his defeat, he came
forward with new weapons and new methods of attack. He became more
hostile and irreconcilable; and until his death, in 1901, never
renounced his claim to be the original inventor of the telephone.

The reason for this persistence is very evident. Gray was a professional
inventor, a highly competent man who had begun his career as a
blacksmith's apprentice, and risen to be a professor of Oberlin. He
made, during his lifetime, over five million dollars by his patents.
In 1874, he and Bell were running a neck-and-neck race to see who could
first invent a musical telegraph--when, presto! Bell suddenly turned
aside, because of his acoustical knowledge, and invented the telephone,
while Gray kept straight ahead. Like all others who were in quest of a
better telegraph instrument, Gray had glimmerings of the possibility of
sending speech by wire, and by one of the strangest of coincidences
he filed a caveat on the subject on the SAME DAY that Bell filed the
application for a patent. Bell had arrived first. As the record book
shows, the fifth entry on that day was: "A. G. Bell, $15"; and the
thirty-ninth entry was "E. Gray, $10."

There was a vast difference between Gray's caveat and Bell's
application. A caveat is a declaration that the writer has NOT invented
a thing, but believes that he is about to do so; while an APPLICATION is
a declaration that the writer has already perfected the invention. But
Gray could never forget that he had seemed to be, for a time, so close
to the golden prize; and seven years after he had been set aside by the
Western Union agreement, he reappeared with claims that had grown larger
and more definite.

When all the evidence in the various Gray lawsuits is sifted out, there
appear to have been three distinctly different Grays: first, Gray the
SCOFFER, who examined Bell's telephone at the Centennial and said it
was "nothing but the old lover's telegraph. It is impossible to make
a practical speaking telephone on the principle shown by Professor
Bell.... The currents are too feeble"; second, Gray the CONVERT, who
wrote fra