Morning journal and courier., 1882-06-19
Price Four Cents.

that electricity can be stored in insulated res ervoirs of earth or water? And lastly, the share holder LlRy discover that the new pow CT is much too valuable for his safety; that the world will use it, patents or no patents that the attempt to preserve his rights is like the attempt to monopolize the air; and that the best he can hope for is that the State will step in, grant compensation, and throw all electric patents open to the world An elixir of health which all could make would not be a valuable patent. If cheap mode of creat- ing the power should ever be devised, and men like Professor Silyanus Thomson believe we are on the threshold of it, governments will be obliged to step in and regulate prices with very strong hand, lest the great capi- talist should monopoIze the invention, and, by crushing all rivals, produce at last an in dustrial revolt. The owners of the storage patent would be selling industrial life.
 The State, as a rule, stands aside from such contests, but it would not allow 8 company to monopolize motor against which, for ex- ample, existing railways could not compete, or suffer all the machinery of trade to be thrown out of gear, in crder that one ship owning company should undersel the whole world. It is quite possible, more than pos sible if the problem of utilizing falling water to store electricity is ever solved. that elec- tricity mn- become the sole motor in use smong mankind, and then patentees will have d 1I self to be defeated in the industrial race, be- cause another people mas nad the sense 70 abolish royalties on power existing and pro- curable everywhere. There will be an ir- resistible demand for interference and for regulation, and in no long time for free trade demand before which private interests will be as powerless as they are before the demand for cheap bread. So certain do we deem this if the new motor succeeds, as saTants believe it will succeed, that we doubt whether new patents should be granted on the old terms, whether the Board of Trade should not be authorized to insert clauses in them all on the precedent set in the first Railway Acts, reserving the right of Parliament to absorb such patents, on repayment of the money in- vested in them. We could conceive very ca silly of patent for an improvement upon M. Faure's mode of storage becoming great public evil, its owner levying an exorbitant tax upon an article which, If England were to continue industrial country, might be one of prime necessity-that Is to say, no one not using electric force as his motor could hope to compete against the company which did use it, and which would thus control all in dustry If one man or one company owned all the coal in England, State regulation would have to be pretty strict, or industry might sustain a fatal shock from individual caprice or greed.
 inc idea may strike some as dreamy, but
 
 come a patent right, as the use of stored cleo tricity may become, the State would have in- terfered long since, or have seen the English shipping trade completely extinguished by foreign competition. The danger is one to be eraveIy considered, if Parliament is not in the end to confscate individual rights in the public interest; and we hope yet to hear that Mr. Chamberlain's committee, which is considering the whole subject, will discuss the advisability of reserving to Parliament at this early stage powers to make the com muuisy ultimate owner of all electric patents. No injustice whatever need be done to in- dividuals nor should there be any interfer- ence with private property. All that is re- quired is, that in granting future patents, as
 well as granting the privilege required for the distribution of electric light and force, provision should be made allowing the State to enforce its ultimate rights, if needful. All sales of patents would then be made under that understood reserve, and all concessio- naires would have, like railway share holders that ultimate right to dread, should they be- come either oppressive or extortionate. The right of theState to use all patents in its own workshops is already protected, and our sug- gestion, provided it is accepted in time, is but an extension of the principle already sd- mitted and acted on every day.