On another page we print in full a most suggestive paper recently
read before the Manchester (Eng.) Scientific and Mechanical Society,
by Mr. Frederick Smith, a prominent builder of that city, contrasting
the qualities, styles, and prices of American and English builders'
hardware--a paper which the _Ironmonger_ pronounces one of the most
serious indictments yet preferred against British workmanship in that
department.
The field covered by the paper--the supplying of house builders'
hardware--embraces a multitude of conveniences, but no real
necessities. Why is it that America has been prolific in novel devices
and clever improvements in this department of manufacture as in so
many others, while England has gone on stolidly copying ancient forms,
changing only to cheapen by the introduction of poor material and sham
construction? Mr. Smith mentions several reasons that English
manufacturers have given him for the state of things he, as an
Englishman, so greatly deplores; but evidently he is not satisfied
with any of them, and very justly; for none of them touches the real
cause--the radically different attitude of the public mind toward
inventions, characteristic of the two countries.
In England the user of household inconveniences accepts them as
matters of fact; or if he grumbles at them he never thinks of trying
to change them. It is not his business; and if he should devise an
improvement, ten to one he could not get it made. To patent it is
practically out of the question, for if it were not condemned off-hand
as trivial, the patent fees would make it cost more than it was likely
to be worth. The mechanic who makes such things is trained to work to
pattern, and not waste his time on experiments. Besides, if he should
make a clever invention he would not be able to raise the necessary
fees for a patent, or to get any one to help him thereto. The
manufacturer "makes what his customers call for." Why should he spend
his money and spoil his plant to introduce improvements? So things go,
until some pestilent Yankees flood the markets with better articles at
a lower price; and British consumers suddenly discover that they want
something that the native manufacturer cannot make. The need was
there; but invention did not follow. How happened it that the American
manufacturer did not pursue the same uninventive course? What produced
the radically different attitude of the American mind toward
newfangled notions out of which inventions proceeded and flourished?
No doubt several causes have been at work: freedom of thought and
action; popular education; a blending of races; and the tide of
adventurous spirits naturally resorting to a new and free land. These
have had their influence undoubtedly; but all these have existed, more
or less completely, in other new lands, without that outburst of
creative energy which has made America the nursery of inventions,
great and small. The determining cause, the one condition that
prevailed here and not elsewhere, was the circumstance that almost
from the start new ideas were given a market value in this country.
Unlike all others, the American patent law directly encouraged
independent thinking in all classes. The fees were low and the
protection offered fairly good. Men soon found that it paid to invent;
that one of the surest roads to competency was a patented improvement
on something of general use. If a household utensil or appliance went
wrong or worked badly, every user was directly interested in devising
something better; and, more than that, he was interested in making his
invention known and in securing its adoption. The workman at his bench
had an ever-present inducement to contrive something at once cheaper
and better than the article he was hired to make. He could patent his
improvement, or the wholly original device he might hit upon, for a
few dollars; and his patent would count as capital. It would make him
his own master, possibly bring him a fortune. The manufacturer could
not rest contented with the thing he set out to make, for the meanest
hired man in his employ might suddenly become a competitor. He must be
constantly alert for possible improvements, or his rivals would get
ahead of him. The result is a nation of inventors, at whose hands the
newest of lands has leaped to the leadership in the arts, almost at a
bound.
There is talk of changing all this; of emulating the conservative
spirit of the Old World; of putting inventors under bonds; of stopping
the rush of industrial improvement--to enable a few short-sighted yet
grasping corporations to get along without paying license fees for
such inventions as they happen to approve of. They profess to want
inventors to go on making improvements. They are willing to ascribe
all honor to the successful inventor; but they are determined not to
pay him for his work. Still more they are determined to change the
attitude of the public mind toward inventors and inventions, if such a
change can be wrought by plausible misrepresentations. The fact that
they were able to inveigle one branch of the American Congress into
assenting to their unjust and mischievous scheme is one of the
anomalies of our recent history. It should be taken as a timely
warning of impending danger to all the industrial interests of the
country. It is outrageous that the inventors of the land, after having
raised their country to the first rank among industrial nations,
should have to defend their constitutional rights against
Congressional invasion; but the fact exists; and the defense should be
made a matter of personal interest and effort not only by every
inventor and manufacturer, but by every honest citizen.
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