Jan.'15, 1912 



As a bee-keeper Mr. Heddon could and 

 did look ahead of the most of us. Indeed, 

 1 think I never ran across a man who could 

 catch on to a new trick of the trade quicker 

 than Mr. Heddon. While not all of his 

 ideas i)anned out as he hoped for, he left his 

 strong personal impress on the apicultural 

 world, and bee-keeping literature for years 

 will contain much of the name of .lames 

 Heddon, because he was a great bee-keeper 

 and a promoter of ideas that still hold sway. 

 \'ery few men who have risen to prominence 

 in the apicultural field could ever be called 

 a genius; but I think we can say, without 

 fear of successful contradiction, that, if 

 there ever was a man who deserved that title, 

 Mr. Heddon was the one. 



JAMES HEDDON. 



Mr. Heddon was, perhaps, misunderstood 

 by some of his opponents in discussion. He 

 ajipeared at times to be like the gladiator of 

 old, who, when his opponent was down, 

 seemed to have a ghoulish glee in sticking 

 the knife in deeper and giving it a twist. 

 This was a mistake, as the following inci- 

 dent, i)erhai)s, will illustrate. At first I 

 thought I would not tell it; but as it shows 

 another side of Mr. Heddon's character I 

 think it ought to be told. 



During the days of the " irrepressible con- 

 flict" of which I have spoken, there was a 

 war of words between myself and Mr. Hed- 

 don over the priority of his invention which 

 I think now was, in part, at least, unjusti- 

 fied, because it might encourage some to 

 trample Mr. Heddon's moral rights under 

 foot. I contended, as an examination of his 

 claims will show, that his patent, granted 

 Sept. 29, 1885, was very narrow in its scope; 

 that it did not cover the general principle 



of the'« shallow hives or divisible-brood- 

 chamber|hives, and that, therefore, he had 

 no more legal right to claim all divisible- 

 brood-chamber hives or shallow hives than 

 a squatter on a quarter-section of land had 

 a right to claim the earth; that his i)atent 

 was limited to the use of closed-end frames 

 in a close-fitting brood-chamber in combina- 

 tion with thumb-screws; that a divisible- 

 brood-chamber hive without any one of 

 these elements to complete the combination 

 were free to the public. He naturally con- 

 cluded that this argument, advanced by me, 

 meant that we, as manufacturers of hives, 

 had in mind putting a divisible -brood- 

 chamber hive on the market that would 

 evade his patent; and I confess that that 

 would be a natural inference. But that 

 thought was not in my mind; and the sub- 

 sequent history of our business shows that 

 we did not put any divisible-brood-chamber 

 hive on the market until after his patent 

 expired, as we felt that Mr. Heddon had cer- 

 tain moral rights; and that if, in these later 

 days, he had shown that the divisible-brood- 

 chamber hives were labor-savers, it would 

 be but fair that we respect those rights. 



Well, it was during this discussion that 

 Mr. Heddon felt that A. I. Root was about 

 to purloin his moral rights because he could 

 do so on account of the legal limitations of 

 his patent. Smarting under this sense of 

 wrong, I remember particularly one bitter 

 letter that he wrote and addressed to my 

 father and me. Father then was very sick 

 with fever, and w^e did not 'think he would 

 live. I replied something like this: 



Mr. Heddon.— Your letter reaches us just as my 

 father seems to be at the point of death. I have 

 neither the heart nor inclination to reply, any 

 further than to say you have surely misunderstood 

 the attitude of both of us in the matter. 



Back came the quick response, or as soon 

 as Uncle Sam could deliver the message, in 

 the shape of a letter reading about like this: 



Dear Mr. Root:— I sincerely beg your pardon. I 

 did not know your father was very sick. I desire 

 to recall what 1 said— every word of it; and I assure 

 you that, if you mean what you say, 1 will say no 

 more. 



While these may not have been his precise 

 words (for remember that was over 20 years 

 ago) yet they convey the thought. Mr. 

 Heddon, true to his word, never referred to 

 the matter again, and the hive question, at 

 least, was settled for all time. 



My only reason for repeating it here is to 

 show that Mr. Heddon had a big heart when 

 the heart-strings were touched. 



Moral. — We often fight over something 

 that we fancy has extraordinary value when 

 it has not. The divisible-brood-chamber 

 hive or the shallow hive was thought to save 

 half the labor in handling bees. It has been 

 tried in the balance of Father Time, and, 

 except in the hands of a few experts, has 

 been found wanting. Think of the pages 

 upon pages of printed matter, to say nothing 

 of the volumes of correspondence and time 

 that was wasted. Think of the ill-feelings 

 and misunderstandings that might have 

 been avoided. 



