372 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



be built at workmen's prices. For an invention thus circumstanced there 

 is no reasonable hope of such encouragement and reward as nations intend 

 to bestow by patent laws, except in the union of the few improvements 

 remaining- to be made, and of tiie talent of liberal experts, and the liberal 

 liazards and donations of those who recognize the principle that gentlemen 

 have special duties, one of which is the duty of promoting improvements 

 that are not understood by the multitude who toil for their daily bread; 

 that will not be promoted by the illiberal, so long as they can expect others 

 to bear the whole burden, while they themselves have the benefit; and that 

 are of most consequence to those whose tastes are most cultivated and 

 susceptible. 



It would be just to appeal to this liberality alone, for pure donations, in 

 such a case as this, in which is involved the cleanliness, and health, and 

 comfort of the home of most of us, and the present fate of an invention 

 believed by the best engineers in the world to be as important to small 

 trafSc as the railway is to large traffic; but it is better to ask for large 

 investments than for small donations, because, so far as the public welfare 

 is concerned, ten dollars invested is better than nine dollars given; and 

 because the chance of profit, as in cases of insurance, and of planting, is a 

 good reason for hazardous outlay. 



But I regret, for the honor of some who are gentlemen externally, that I 

 have been discouraged by an unwillingness to submit their interests to 

 arbitration. They prefer to bargain beforehand. Yet they say it is 

 impossible to bring about an agreement between inventors, or between 

 several inventors and the capitalists whose power is indispensable. They 

 would sit over paper representations of a machine not yet tried, and bar- 

 gain about its mei'its and value; and in that game of skill would win as 

 much as the necessities of their antagonists would constrain them to yield; 

 yet they would not trust to the decision of skillful judges, made after the 

 merit and value of each part and service has been proven by thorough 

 trial. 



We Americans are sometimes indignant when we read English writings 

 in which gentlemen are contradistinguished from tradesmen, and are com- 

 mended for the principle which restrains them from receiving, except as an 

 acknowledged gift, any value for which they do not render an equivalent; 

 and tradesmen are condemned and despised because they get all they can; 

 because they will buy a widow's house for ha^f its value, and sell it to 

 another widow for double its value, if they can, and boast of it as a 

 "splendid operation;" and will revel in millions gained by the invention 

 of a Crompton, while Crompton dies in poverty, and his children are so 

 poorly clad as to be ashamed to appear at the inauguration of the statue 

 raised to tlieir father's memory. We claim that merit, not pedigree, makes 

 the gentleman; that politeness, honesty, and a few such qualities, make the 

 gentleman; but it almost seems as if we considered that he may do what 

 he wills with his own; hoard or squander his own money; neglect the 

 public affairs of his country. State and city; crack jokes at the expense of 

 inventors; condemn them as visionaries to cloak his illiberality in declin- 

 ing to cooperate with them, not for their exclusive benefit, but for the 

 public benefit; and yet may claim equality in merit and honor with those 



