FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 209 



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off by a dyke or wall, uud the water, not drained, but lifted and carried off by 

 pumping, — and he said to himself, if this land can be made so valuable, why 

 cannot land in Michigan be made valuable where the water will take itself off 

 if the ditches are dug for it to flow in? and so he undertakes to solve the prob- 

 lem of the value of our marsh lands. Subsequent!}', Judge Miller, of Bay 

 City, has dried some seven or eight hundred acres of marsh by dyking and 

 pumping, a large i)ortion of which is now under crop. Our average farmer is 

 verv much mistaken if he thinks he can afford to laugh at these men as ama- 

 teurs. They are doing a grand thing for agriculture; they are solving prob- 

 lems that have been too long unsolved, — they are just the class of men, and 

 they are doing just that kind of work which is going to make farming more 

 inviting to our vouns: men than it has ever been before. I know of no class 

 of men who, by the influence of their example are doing so much to persuade 

 our youth from the exciting bustle and tempting pleasures of the city, to the 

 moral, safe and happy influences of a rural life. 



Young men, it will soon devolve upon you to make choice of an occupation 

 in which you are to find the work of your life, and whatever you do for your 

 own good and the good of the race to which you belong, will be mostly if not 

 exclusively in connection with that occupation. Among the occupations that 

 invite you, farming stands revealed as one which is more and more drawing 

 toward it men of unquestioned ability and of the broadest culture. And those 

 of you who, by your tastes and opportunities may be led to choose agriculture 

 as your life work, will be as likely to find here, as in any other calling, a rich 

 reward for honest manly work of head, and heart, and hand. 



OUR PATENT SYSTEM. 



BY PROF. R. C. CARPENTER. 

 [ Read at Buchanan and Mason Institutes.! 



Although but one person in three thousand, on the average, applies each year 

 for any kind of a patent, yet the patented process or machine is employed so 

 largely in every industrial pursuit that a knowledge of the character of the 

 monopoly created by tho patent is not without some value to every person. 

 The frequency of swindling operations, in connection with the sale of patents 

 or patent devices, ha?, within the last few years, thrown the whole patent sys- 

 tem into disrepute with the people generally. In many instances the people 

 have found it impossible to defend themselves from extortioiuite demands of 

 patentees, under the existing patent laws. Often the lawful claims of the 

 patent right agent are for devices from which there has been no "value 

 received,'' and which appear for this reason more like swindling than legiti- 

 mate business operations. 



Thus, in the patent case of the Birdsell clover thresher, royalty was collected 

 of every person who had ever owned or worked any other kind of a clover thresher. 

 Perhaps not one of these men knew anything in regard to the nature of tho 

 patents owned by Birdsell ; they bought and used other machines, on the sup- 

 position that they infringed the rights of no person. In many of these cases, 



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