28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The purchase of the American patents of Bessemer by this 

 firm at once challenged the right of the Kelly Process Company 

 to employ the jjrocess invented by Kelly, and to the use of the 

 apparatus invented by Bessemer ; but, at the same time, the Kelly 

 Process Company having purchased the Mushet patent for the 

 use of spiegeleisen, was in a position to challenge the possibility 

 of Messrs. Winslow, Griswold & HoUey's making steel by the 

 " Bessemer process " at all. The validity of the Bessemer patents 

 for apparatus was, from the first, conceded by the Kelly Process 

 Company, and arrangements were made, as soon as it was ascer- 

 tained that they could not purchase the American patents of 

 Bessemer, to dispense with the use of the machinery protected 

 thereby ; for they could avail themselves of that used by Kelly, 

 which, although not nearly as convenient, was still, with some 

 obvious improvements, capable of doing good work ; or, rather, 

 what the practice of the time called such.* 



In view of these facts the Kelly Process Company was clearly 

 the master of both the legal and commercial situation ; and had 

 it been governed by an enlightened business selfishness it would 

 have profited by the advantageous position in which (thanks to 

 the indefatigable labors of the late Z. S. Durfee, its secretary) it 

 was placed ; but in order to do this the law had to be invoked, 

 and to the majority of the members of the Kelly Process Com- 

 pany the law was a terror! Lawyers must be paid! Experts 

 would not testify gratuitously ! Costs of court would accumu- 

 late ! Judges were doubtful ! Jurors were uncertain ! And then, 

 if victorious, what would they gain ? And if defeated, utter ruin 

 would overwhelm them ! Never before or since has a party of rep- 

 utable business men been so needlessly alarmed and so utterly ob- 

 livious of the first principles of a sound business policy. The vari- 

 ous bugaboos and hobgoblins which their terrified imagination 

 conjured up of the horrors of the life to come among courts, judges, 

 lawyers, experts, witnesses, and obstinate jurors, in case they 

 ventured to assert in a court their manifest right, at last drove 

 them into making a proposition to Messrs. Winslow, Griswold & 

 Holley looking to a combination of the interests of the two com- 

 panies, and to their final acceptance of an agreement under which 

 they surrendered rights which were of great value to Messrs. 

 Winslow, Griswold & Holley, and obtained practically no rights 

 in return save that of receiving but thirty per cent of the royal- 

 ties earned by the combination, and that of leaving to Messrs, 

 Winslow, Griswold & Holley the remaining seventy j)er cent. 



* In the early days of the Bessemer process, three " blows " in ten hours was thought 

 to be a very creditable performance, but at the present time a works that could not make 

 that number in an hour would be regarded as a fit subject for an inquest. 



