COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT TREATMENT--A BOUNTY FOR RAISING "SUGAR BEETS,"
BUT A TAX ON INVENTIONS
Laws are framed and a great deal of money spent by our Government
for the encouragement of useful production by its people. For
illustration, it is considered that the best way to produce sugar,
is the raising of the sugar cane which is raised in the world in
sufficient quantities to meet all possible demands, and naturally
enough in places where it can be raised to the best advantage. Many
of those places are under the Stars and Stripes, namely, Louisiana,
Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippine Islands. Yet if a citizen who,
on his farm, could produce many diverse articles and sell the same to
advantage, chooses instead to raise a vegetable (beets), from which
sugar can be manufactured at a disadvantage, expects and receives
from the Government not only absolute protection of his production,
and also the securing of an enhanced price for the same, through a
high tariff, but an actual bonus of money known as a "bounty." But
the inventor who bestows great benefits on his fellow citizens and
the world at large, and gives it that which can not be had at all
elsewhere at the time, is evidently not deemed by our law-makers of
sufficient importance to receive any encouragement or justice.
From what has been said here, it ought to be very evident that there
is a wide difference in the treatment meted out by our Government to
him who renders services to society by digging in the dirt, and to
him who digs in the brain.
[Illustration: DIFFERENCE IN THE TREATMENT METED OUT BY OUR
GOVERNMENT TO HIM WHO RENDERS SERVICES TO SOCIETY, BY DIGGING IN
THE DIRT, AND TO HIM WHO USES THE BRAIN.]