The Monmouth inquirer., 1926-11-25
Twenty-Year Battle of Poor
Inventor Ends With SUI
preme Court Award.

" o5AAi5 NACOA So N>HANRD~'A -
son, desert rat" miner, has won his
lone fight against big, powerful cor
poration and is to receive the millions
his inventive genius has brought him.
The United States Supreme court
has denied the American Smelling and
Refining company review in its ac-
ton to have Carson's patent infringe
ment claim set aside. Twenty years
ago he invented a process for the re-
duction of copper ore.
Adopted by the big smeIters, the
process brought about a ten-year
tangle of legal warfare.
Court after court has heard the
case. Time and again a favorable de-
cision has put sums ranging from 81
100000 to $20,O00,OO0 within the reach
of the sixty-year-old Western miner
as royalties, but always q further le-
gal combat postponed realization of
his dreams, Now, however, the classic
struggle in all probability is ever with
Carson assured of the fortune he has
pursued with such persistence. The
days of living In sailors lodging
house on the San Francisco water
front have drifted into the past and
the one-time "desert rat'' stands on
the threshold of new life. Without
money or friends he waged for years
a single-handed battle against corpo-
ration officials and lawyers until in
the end he obtained the assistance Of
Rudolph Spreckels and Robert Hayes
Smith, San Francisco capitalists.
And now that Carson has won, what
will he do with the millions? That is
a question which he has been asked
before and he has answered it char
acteristically. For the desert rat"
millionaire through ten years of cease
less litigation has proved himself a
philosopher. Last year when the
United States Circuit Court of Appeals
awarded him the royalties a swarm of
questioners descended upon him In
his waterfront lodging.
To Work in a Laboratory.
what am going to do with the
fortuneg' he is quoted as saying.
ave been simply swamped by piles
of letters from people who want to
sell me everything imaginable. / sup
pose it happens to everybody when
they come into money. What have
really always wanted is a workshop
and a laboratory, and now don't see
what is to prevent me from having
them"
Dozens of women have proposed to
the new millionaire. who, with a pa
tent smile, dropped their correspond
ence in the waste basket. "Even if
Pm rich now / don't believe any WON
an Is going to get me-" he informed
an interviewer. IF i ever decided to
get married. though. I'd look for the
domestic, settled type of woman. A
man, to NY way of thinking, ought to
marry woman about his own age. A
young woman makes things too darned
Interesting for an old husband What
DO think of the fiapper? There never
was jazz-mad fiapper who didn't
have her wings burned in the end"
Perhaps his time spent in the lonely
desert has made Carson yearn for the
sight of greenery. At all events he
has said that he would like to attempt
something along the lines of tree cul-
ture.
Il want to see the barren areas of
California put into trees and farms,
is the way he phrases it. $50, very
possibly, / shall work at that a while"
The Inventors Dream.
Chemistry, however, still is, as 1t al
ways has been. hobby with him, and
for some time he has been engaged on
experiments for the manufacture of
sulphuric acid His original invention,
which brought him into fame over
night by court award of a fortune
in royalties, practically revolutionized
copper smelling. He had run away
from his boyhood home In Kenton,
Ohio, at fourteen. Two years later he
was In Arizona working in a copper
mine. The furnaces at that period
were loaded from the top. AS he
watched the sweating, harassed labor
ers charging them under heavy diff
culties, the desire was born In Carson
to alleviate their lot and eliminate the
waste of energy necessary in the anti
quated process.