From a too lengthy communication to admit in full to our columns, a
resident of Madrid communicates to the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN some facts
relative to the fertility of the soil of Spain, her necessity for
improved agricultural and other implements, and closes with the
assertion that it is a good field withal for patents. We cull from the
letter as follows:
I have lived, says the writer, for a number of years in this beautiful
country, so little understood by foreigners, so little appreciated by
its own inhabitants. The Spain of romance, poetry, and song, is the
garden as well as the California of Europe. But it stands in great
need of the health-giving touch of the North American enterprise. We
have here the same mineral treasures, the same unrivaled advantages of
climate, that made Spain once the industrial and commercial emporium
of the world.
But Spain is awakening. She is endeavoring to shake off her lethargy.
The late Exhibition of Paris has proved this; and those who are
familiar with the past history and present condition of Spain have
been astonished at the result of this effort. A new era has commenced
for the country, and it is everywhere evident that a strong current of
enterprise and industry has set in. But it is with nations, as with
individuals, when they have remained long in complete inaction, brain
and muscles are torpid and cannot at first obey the will. Spain needs
the assistance of other nations hardened and inured to toil.
The plows now used to till the land are precisely such as were those
left by the Moors in the unfinished furrow, when with tears and sighs
they bade farewell to their broad fields, their mosques and palaces,
whose ideal architecture is still the wonder of the world, to go forth
as outcasts and exiles in obedience to the cruel edict that drove them
away to the deserts of Africa.
I doubt whether there is an American plow in Spain, much less a steam
plow. Sowing and reaping machines are here unknown, and grain is tread
out by oxen and mules just as it was in Scripture times, and cleaned
by women, who toss it in the air to scatter the chaff. Everything is
primitive and Oriental here as yet.
Spain could supply all Europe with butter and cheese, and, on the
contrary, these articles are imported in large quantities from
England, Holland, and Switzerland. The traveler crosses leagues and
leagues of meadow land where not a tree is to be seen, nor one sheep
pasture, and which are nevertheless watered by broad rivers that carry
away to the ocean the water that would, by irrigation, convert these
fields into productive farms. There are many places in Spain where the
wine is thrown away for want of purchasers and vats in which to keep
it. In the Upper Aragon, the mortar with which the houses are built is
made with wine instead of water, the former being the most plentiful.
Aragon needs an enterprising American company to convert into
wholesome table wine the infinite varieties there produced, and which
our neighbors the French buy and carry away to convert into Bordeaux.
We want American enterprise in Galicia and Asturias, where milk is
almost given away, to convert it into the best of butter and cheese;
and also in those same provinces, where delicious fruit is grown in
such abundance that it is left on the ground for the swine.
Spain needs many more railroads and canals, all of which, when
constructed, are subsidized by the government; the railroads at the
rate of $12,000 a kilometer, and many more additional advantages are
offered for canals.
With regard to commerce with Spain, we have to lament the same
indifference on the part of the Americans. I have, for instance, an
American double-burner petroleum lamp. All who see it admire and covet
it, but they are not to be had here. If we except one American in
Madrid, who brings mostly pumps and similar articles on a very small
scale, we have no dealers in American goods here. Wooden clothes pins,
lemon squeezers, clothes horses, potato peelers, and the hundreds of
domestic appliances of American invention, elsewhere considered
indispensable, are in Spain unknown.
We had confidently expected that the new Spanish law on patents would
draw the attention of American inventors toward this country, that
to-day offers a wide field for every new practical invention, but I am
sorry to see that, with the exception of Edison and a few others, the
Americans have not yet availed themselves of the easy facility for
taking patents for Spain, where new inventions and new industries are
now eagerly accepted and adopted. And while the Americans are thus
careless as to their own interests, the French take out and negotiate,
in Spain, American patents with insignificant variations.
Let American inventors be assured that any new invention, useful and
practical, and above all, requiring but little capital to establish it
as an industry, will find a ready sale in Spain.
I could enlarge to a much greater extent upon the indifference of
American inventors, merchants, manufacturers, and business men, as to
the market they have in Spain in their respective lines, and upon the
importance of building up a trade with this country, but to do so
would require more space than I think you would feel justified in
occupying in your columns.
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