SOCIETY'S DEBT TO THE INVENTOR
It is certainly good and just public policy that the Government
should spend a good deal of money for the benefit of the farmers,
but where is the justice and the good public policy in making money
out of the inventors? (See statistics of the fiscal returns from the
Patent Office.) Is the former more indispensable to society than
the latter? Has not the ingenuity of the inventor enabled even the
farmer, the special protegé of the Government, to get greater returns
from his labor than ever in the history of the world? Has he not made
his task lighter, and has he not enabled him to get more of the good
things of the world for the earnings of his labor? And is it not in a
great measure through the inventor's ingenuity and industry that this
country has attained its unprecedented prosperity in Peace and mighty
potency in War?