MANUAL OF THE APIARY. 205 



writers ignore his services entirely, not granting him the poor 

 meed of the honor. Since that time many machines have 

 been made, without even a thank you, as I believe, to this 

 old man, Weiss. Does not this show that patents, or some- 

 thing — a higher morality, if you please — is necessary, that 

 men may secure justice ? True, faulty foundation, and faulty 

 machines were already in use, but it was the inventive skill 

 of Mr. Weiss that made foundation' cheap and excellent, 

 and thus popularized it with the American apiarists. 



These Weiss machines turn out the comb-foundation 

 not only of exquisite mold, but with such rapidity that it can 

 be made cheap and practicable. Heretofore these machines 



Fig. 66. 



have been sold at an enormous profit. Last November, 1877, 

 I expostulated with one of the manufacturers of American 

 machines, because of the high price, saying, as I looked at 

 one of the machines: These ought to be sold for thirty or 

 forty dollars, instead of one hundred dollars. He replied 

 that such machines — with rollers, not plates — that gaVe the 

 foundation the exact figure of natural comb, were only made, 

 he thought, by the person who made his machines, and thus 

 convinced me that said person should be rewarded, amply 

 rewarded, for his invention. But as I have since learned 

 that this is only the Weiss machine, and does no more perfect 

 work, I now think Mr. Weiss should receive the super-extra 

 profits. Even with machines at one hundred dollars, founda- 



