# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 3/The money value of an inventor

THE MONEY VALUE OF AN INVENTOR.
In the year 1847 an article entitled “Human Progress” appeared in the “Westminster Review.” A portion of it was a criticism on Lord Ashley’s endeavour to find work for needlewomen, and it was pointed out that the true remedy was to dispense with the needlewomen, as mere stitchers, or altogether by constructing machines to do their work, and ultimately to dispense with the machines also, by the construction of other machines to produce seamless garments direct from improved looms. The writer pointed out that so long as degrading work existed, so long would degraded human beings be found to perform it, but that the degrading work ceasing the degraded humanity would disappear also. The writer thought the stitching-machine a new idea, but while correcting the press an American gentleman, looking over it, remarked, “Are you aware that a stitching-machine has just been invented in the United States?” upon which the writer “made a note of it” at the foot of his page. “It is a question for the mechanician to solve how the powers of Nature shall produce human garments by machinery wholly and not in part? The problem will not be difficult to solve; and he who first solves it shall famous among men, as the chemist who shall first discover the mystery of the aromas. Then may men and women indulge in artistical decoration of their persons when it shall cease to be a result of painful handicraft.”
Through good and through evil the inventor worked on, and slowly his invention got into use, and it was patented in England and other countries.
It has been stated that the inventor, Mr. Howe, had realised upwards of 150,000l. by patent right on his machines in the United States, but, notwithstanding, he applied for an extension of the term of his patent, and obtained it for another seven years.
The ground on which the grant was obtained is as follows:—An invention is not to be regarded as ordinary labour, nor is its value to be measured by arbitrary rules. The utility and value to the community are the true test by which to judge of the invention, and the inventor’s reward should be proportional to its value.
Mr. Howe invented a labour-saving machine, by which an enormous amount of miserably-paid drudgery was removed from all those operations involving the clothing of the community, and every item involving the joining of materials by sewing. And, moreover, in a country of insufficient labour, the amount of work required could not have been supplied, and great numbers must have been deprived of the needful supply.
The value of the sewing done by Mr. Howe’s machines at the present time in the United States is at the least fifty-eight millions of pounds sterling per annum, and, if the original machines were used without the improvements, the value would amount to thirty-four millions of pounds sterling per annum. In the city of New York, the value is one million and a half per annum on men and boys’ clothing, ninety-two thousand on hats and caps, and one hundred and seventy thousand on shirt-fronts; and in Massachusetts the labour saved in boots and shoes amounts to one million and a half per annum.
Surely this man is a benefactor not only to his own community, but to the other nations in which his machines are used. In fourteen years the value of this invention rises to something like the whole of our National debt, and considerably more than the whole sum invested in our railways in the course of thirty years.
The Commissioners of Patents in the United States have given the inventor a seven years’ further right. In England the practice has been to grant renewal only in case of no profit having been made by the invention. If it can be shown that the inventor has received any sum, from a thousand pounds or so upwards, he has very little chance of renewal. And, moreover, the cost of the application amounts to so considerable a sum, that a poor inventor would have little chance of finding it, more especially as the cost increases by the opposition, supported commonly by the clubbed purses of manufacturers,—men not usually imaginative, and who recognise the work done upon matter, but not the work of mind, and still less the value of that perception and judgment which discerns utility and profit in embryo. The inventor points out the work that is hidden; he is the discoverer of the unknown mine. He is first scouted as a “schemer,” and has trouble to introduce his idea; and when the thought of the mind has grown to be the work of the hand, he is commonly denounced as a robber.
We believe that an application is about to be made for a renewal of Mr. Howe’s patent in England, and painful and humiliating to us as a nation will it be, if it fails. But it will probably not fail, for the reason that public attention is now called ​to the morality of the question. Our House of Lords is quite as moral as any institution of our American cousins, and it is probable that for the first time the question will be argued on its merits, and not upon the technicalities of routine. The part that an inventor plays in national progress will be taken into the account, and his services will not be measured at the rate of a foreman or inspector in a national dockyard or arsenal, or any other of the underpaid classes of public servants.
Rightly understood, this question of recompense to inventors is of the deepest national importance; and by the term inventors I do not mean merely machinists or chemists, but the general body of original-minded men who really create national progress—who are the chiefs and leaders marshalling the works of those following.
This England of ours stands out from amidst Continental troubles, in virtue of the fact that more than in any other country all men are equal before the law. Every man, according to his faculties, may rise by industry and perseverance; and if genius, perseverance, and favourable circumstances meet together, a day labourer may attain to any position under the Crown. In virtue of this conviction, all men are contented, because the door is opened for bettering their position, and lord and lout dwell together in harmony, and the lout is content, having few aspirations. But amongst the mass of both are to be found many individuals with high instinctive genius and original powers. These men look round the world and find that nearly all matter possesses owners, land and water, and bird and beast, and fish, and tree and plant, and minerals. Air and ocean alone are free to all. In their teeming brains they behold new powers into which matter may be shaped, new combinations of choice art; but the materials on which they must work are not theirs, and if they give forth their knowledge the holders of the materials will alone benefit by the wonder-working brain. The lord of the soil would be the lord of all things, and the owner of the originating brain would be only a slave. Bethlem Gabor imprisoning the alchemist, in the romance of St. Leon, was a type of this condition.
Had this condition of things existed in England, one of two things must have resulted. Either the men of brains would have tried conclusions with the lords of the soil, by incessant revolutions, or England would have remained in a condition of non-progress, to be appropriated by successive invaders.
Fortunately English rulers and law-makers understood this, and laws were made giving men a limited property in their inventions, in consideration of their promulgating them. It is true that the inventor had to pay black mail to the king for the time being, but genius thus obtained its fulcrum, and national progress followed. The prosperous inventor obtained the means of purchasing the land of the spendthrift, and founding a name.
Of late years there has been a disposition in England to decry patents, the decriers being in almost all cases rich men—capitalists desirous of obtaining the use of other men’s brains gratuitously. Could they be successful in taking away copyright from authors, and property in mind from inventors, it would simply be a one-sided socialism. Those who found their brains turned into common property would be apt to institute an inquiry why land and capital of all kinds should not be common property also, and if defeated in this, they would, as far as practicable, emigrate to other lands, where the rights of their brains might be respected; and the glory of England would have departed. If a simple sewing-machine produces fifty-eight millions per annum in the United States, what must be its value here? And what is the annual value of the steam engines, steam vessels, iron rails, iron ships, power looms, and innumerable other things that have been called into existence by the stimulus of patents?
But it may be argued, if this were to go on, patentees would absorb all the wealth of the country. Successful inventors would possess the largest resources in the realm. But, also, they would be the most enterprising. They would expend the wealth acquired by one invention by working out new inventions without end. Progress is kept back chiefly by the poverty of inventors, and the loss of time they undergo in hunting up unwilling and incredulous capitalists.
There are people, and they are numerous, who have an idea that inventors are a thoughtless, wasteful race, who throw away their own property and that of their neighbours in absurd schemes. No doubt, there are numbers of these imaginative schemers, without judgment: but what then? In other departments of life we have unsuccessful merchants, and quack doctors, and mock musicians, and mechanical poets, and pretenders of all sorts; and why should the realm of mechanical invention be without them? The fact remains the same, that this our England waged a contest of years against the whole continent of Europe banded under the elder Napoleon, and came off victorious, the cost being mainly contributed from the earnings of the steam-engine, and spinning machinery, and power looms, and other appliances. It was Watt, and Crompton, and Hargraves, and such men, the never wearying inventors, who were at the root of the winning of this great fight, in the service of humanity, pulling down the false prophet who broke down old despotisms to make a worse despotism of his own.
Under heavy discouragements have they all wrought. Watt, but for the exceptional renewal of his patent when stricken in years, would have died a pauper. But for the wealth and recognition of Boulton, the thought of his brain would never have grown to be the work of the hand, and Watt would have perished, if not unnoticed and unknown with, at best, the reputation of a “schemer,”—the general term of reproach for unsuccessful promulgators of new plans, whatever be the merits of the plans themselves.
Time was, that inventors holding patents were regarded as public enemies, and every judge on the bench thought it a triumph when a patent was overthrown. They have lived through this, but the community owes them yet a larger measure of justice—a law court of their own, in which rapid and cheap justice may be done, in which patents may be declared valid, or overthrown, without the law’s delay, as now practised; in which ​chicanery may be abolished, and in which the poor inventor may not be overwhelmed by the long purses of the unscrupulous. The inventors do not ask any favour from the community. They pay a tax of some score thousands per annum to acquire a right in the property of their own brains, and this revenue is poured into the public treasury. They ask only that a portion of their annual thousands shall be paid as salary to competent judges, especially fitted by skill and experience to deal with questions of invention, and to strip away the fallacies with which they are surrounded by interested rhetoricians. A lawyer of unblushing front once assigned as a reason why patents should be abolished, “that inventors could no more help inventing than hens could help laying eggs,” and that, therefore, the public would have the inventions without paying for them. Probably this may be true; but there is no security for their hatching their inventions, if they may be taken from them when they have arrived at chickenhood. The public is really interested in their arriving at full growth, and should therefore leave the charge of them wholly to their parents.
A patent is granted for three years on the payment of 25l., for seven years for 75l., and for fourteen years for 175l. Now it is notorious that scarcely any patent gets into use under seven years, and in many cases the fourteen run out without return. Why should not the inventor have the right instead of the favour of renewal, for another payment at the end of the fourteen years? And if the renewal is to be made a question of specific profits as royalty, why should it be left at an arbitrary amount, depending on the opinions of gentlemen perhaps not conversant with the subject? Why should there not be some mode of calculation analogous to payment for vested interests? If it can be demonstrated that the public gain a million a year by an invention, why should not the inventor obtain a small percentage during a prolonged period in his life-time? If one man combines a number of words in the form of a book, he obtains a per-centage for its use, fixed by himself or his descendants for three generations. Why should not an inventor have a claim for a longer or shorter period for a combination of mechanical principles? It may be said, that he shuts out the public from their free use. Not so: his reward will only serve to stimulate others to make new combinations, in which case competition brings down the per-centage. The world gets a hundred new inventions by the process of fairly rewarding one, and stimulating the rest. Stop property in inventions, and trade societies will immediately arise, and manufacturers will pass their time in trying to steal each other’s secrets, as the American cotton planters stole the cotton gin of Eli Whitney, and thereby defeated his patent.
Even now, the stitching-machine is paling its power, and other machines are planning, that shall give us cloaks, and tunics, and trousers free from seams. The tailor (tailleur), or figure studier, will become the manufacturer’s artist to design for him so many sizes and proportions, as will take in the whole human race; and stitches, as we now understand them, will cease to be an integral part of men’s garments. Fashion changing from month to month may continue to prevail with those who have a passion for mere change, and money in abundance to pay for it; but the great mass of manhood, including the Volunteers, will be as gracefully clad as the succinct or draperied Greeks of old, with their clothing prepared for them by machines instead of by human slaves.
What possible harm could result to a nation, though the inventor of such machinery should obtain a million instead of a thousand pounds for his reward? By the sweat of the brow shall the sweat of the face be dried up, and human drudgery be lessened. There are many more thoughts in the human brain than have yet come out of it, and the nation that can most intelligently recognise the value of originality by removing obstacles from the path of originators, will—other things being equal—wield the greatest amount of power.
W. Bridges Adams.