Arizona republican., 1901-12-02

way and sell it elsewhere. He signed an agreement. and left the office with a
 check for s50.000. quite satisfied with his share. Since then many billion
 pints of his motion" have been sold. l One of the easiest made of big sums on record was the S25 .OOO given for an idea" which you use every day-the perforated postage stamp edges, hit
 upon by Norman Miles. not so very long ago. He got that amount with as little trouble as man could take for a very simple notion, as formerly sheets of stamps had to be cut up with scis- sors. as you will see in most of those used before the present issue. and they Were never cut evenly, which was a great nuisance. Miles was not a shrewd. business-like inventor, but a dreamer of dreams. and as soon as this idea occurred to him he took it straight off to the authorities and preached it. He explained it with a needle and a scrap of paper, which he had not even brought with him.
 He made a series of bricks along penciled line to demonstrate his theory, and also suggested a simple device for q perforating machine. It did not take genius to perceive the value of this. and even the government officials saw it. Though he had no patent. Miles asked $25 900 for the idea and, after some delay. he got it, without as much as drawing a plan or making a model
 It is odd that two ideas connected with the same article. conceived by two different men. should both sell for big sums. just as they stood" but the modern gum used on postage stamps was also bought for $24,000. hot from the brain of the idea striker. Jacob Morris. who was a poor Jew from Spi- talfields, used to use a paste of cold starch and water to stick his handbills on the shop window. There was a great want at the postoffice for gum that could be allowed to dry. and stuck on afterwards with a lick" Morris hit on the idea of frying the starch to give il drying power. and offered the notion Very warily-to the government. who had been experimenting with all sorts of costly foreign gums, and had never heard of starch as a stickfast First, the wily Morris asked the price of sue cess in discovering d practicable gum. The government had been offering S1O.- 900 as a reward. but Morris asked S25, 900 and in the end got S20,O00 when his secret was proved. He drew his money, after no further trouble than q walk from Spitalfelds to Westminster to claim it. That was an easy S20.0
 When man has brain worth thou sands sterling, it seems strange that he should not deal with it in a busi- ness-like way. Twice in the late John Ruthin's life he sold for hard cash down bare notions that had come into his head just as they were. His won derful safety valve for locomotives, now used on half the engines of the world. was nothing but an idea un- worked out. and he offered it for what
 
 of Cooper, Hennessey & Co. They might easily have annexed the idea and patented it themselves, for Ruthin merely explained the idea as it had oc- cured to him.
 He, for his part, might have taken out the patent. and sold it, reserving a royalty, for there was no doubt it was as clever thing ever was thought of, but he preferred cash down for the idea rather than expense and risks, and he left Mir. Hennessey's office with check for S15000. It was five years