HIS LIFE AND WORK 



from farmers, and raised a hue and cry that one 

 man was "trying to impose a tax of $500,000 

 a year upon the starving millions of the world." 



One firm of lawyers in Cincinnati sent a 

 letter to these manufacturers in 1850, saying 

 that, "McCormick can be beaten in the Patent 

 Office, and must be beaten now or never. If 

 funds are furnished us, we shall surely beat him; 

 but if they are not furnished us, he will as cer- 

 tainly beat us. Please, therefore, take hold and 

 help us to beat the common enemy. The sub- 

 scriptions have ranged from $100 to $1,000. . . 

 Send in also to Patent Office hundreds of re- 

 monstrances like this : We oppose the extension 

 of C. H. McCormick's patent. He has made 

 money enough off of the farmer." 



Towards the end of this famous case, the anti- 

 McCormick lobby at the Capitol became so 

 rabid that Senator Brown, of Mississippi, made 

 an indignant protest on the floor of the Senate. 

 He said: "Why, Mr. President, if it were not for 

 the people out of doors, people without inventive 

 genius, people without the genius to invent a 

 mouse-trap or a fly-killer, who are pirating on 



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