330 [ASSKAIBLY 



The mechanic and the machinist — in brief, every person engaged 

 in manufacturing here, from the humble -boy that tends the picker, to 

 the presiding genius over a brick palace, with its thousands of spindles, 

 on one of our beautiful water-falls — all, even the female eyes which, 

 far away from their mountain homes, watch those busy spindles, are 

 now and can be made more instinct with new mind, and a new am- 

 bition for further excellence. 



The laws usually secure to all of them some of the advantages'of 

 free schools and limited hours of labour ; and to him who tends the 

 loom or wields the sledge, no less than him who fills a learned profes- 

 sion, the doors of wealth and office and honour are flung open wider, 

 yearly. If true worth, then, be better encouraged in such men, and 

 their minds made more enlightened — as is the constant tendency of 

 the age, and of our American institutions — they will seize quicker on 

 all mechanical improvements, and bring continually more and more 

 intellect and science to their aid. 



But in no department of business can greater advancement be made 

 hereafter than in this, by increased information as to the past. In 

 manufactures and the arts, much expense and many years of toil have 

 been wasted in making inventions of what already existed elsewhere. 

 Without more information as to the past, genius is constantly devising 

 valuable machines ; but, when applying ior a patent at the proper 

 office, or, having obtained one, when applying for protection to their 

 rights, in a legal tribunal, such persons find themselves forestalled by 

 some piior artist, and all their toil and expense thus wasted in vain — 

 as they would have been saved by examining more fully, beforehand, 

 cyclopoedias and works of art on the same subject. Thus, for instance, 

 in 1847, alone, five hundred and fifty-seven applications for patents 

 were rejected, and many of them for this reason. Usually the annual 

 rejections, since 1836, equal in number the grants ; and of the grants, 

 several are, yearly, proved in the courts of law not to be original, and, 

 therefore, become void. These vain labours and expenses could, by 

 this fuller examination previously, be better directed, and thus, beside 

 discovering earlier what of value has been already invented, would 

 invent other improvements, really new, and add much to the existing 

 stock and capital of the mechanical world. 



4 



