THE CALL OF THE LAND 



therein. Edison has not, I believe, pros- 

 pectussed any of his inventions with a view 

 to placing them upon the market; but it is 

 conceivable that he might have done so. 

 Oftener promotorship consists in inventing, 

 or at any rate evolving for the market, im- 

 proved methods of conducting business, as 

 new forms of advertising or of bookkeep- 

 ing, new ways of dealing with help or mate- 

 rial, or of getting goods to customers; in 

 almost any one of which lines novelties 

 might be introduced so momentous as to 

 render a business practically a new thing. 

 The getting up of a successful trust would 

 illustrate, besides much else, this sort of pro- 

 moting. Wide new applications of inven- 

 tions afford fields for promotion efforts, as 

 when the gas engine principle is availed of 

 to propel road cars. A patent commonly 

 finds its way into use only as some promoter 

 takes hold of it. The extension of old in- 

 dustry to new fields is usually promoters' 

 work, as the building of cotton mills in 

 South Carolina and Georgia, the starting of 

 iron and steel manufactories in Alabama 



252 



