Closely allied to the monopolies of which we have been treating is that of patents to inventors. The original idea in granting patents was to protect inventors and discoverers when their inventions and discoveries were new and useful. It is but just that the person who invents or discovers a new and useful principle in arts or mechanics, or makes a new and useful combination of principles not new, should be protected in his discoveries; that for a limited time he should reap the exclusive benefit of his discovery, in order that he may receive a fair consideration for the benefit his fellow-men are to derive from his studies and enterprise.

To these inventors and discoverers we are indebted for much that is of great value to the public. The arts, sciences, and mechanics, as well as agriculture, have been greatly benefited by discoveries and inventions. The wealth, comfort, and happiness of the nation have been increased, while the inventors, because of the protection afforded them, have received a fair remuneration. The fact that valuable inventions reward the inventor liberally has led to great and growing abuses of the patent right statutes, and to great frauds and impositions. The desire to acquire sudden wealth has caused dishonest adventurers to enter the field of invention and discovery, with the intent of defrauding the people, as well as deceiving the patent office department. The same desire has caused those whose inventions are of value to resort to various schemes and subterfuges to continue their exclusive right to manufacture and sell their inventions long after they have been fully compensated for all they have expended in thought, time, and labor, in arranging and perfecting their discoveries and inventions. Having been granted a monopoly, they contrive to continue it. Lobbyists and congressmen become interested for a consideration, and patents are renewed from time to time by an abuse of the law that was designed to encourage discoveries and inventions, but not to build up and continue oppressions of the people.

No class of the community has suffered as much from these monopolies as the agriculturalists. All improvements in farming implements and machinery are patented. Some of them, patented more than a quarter of a century ago, are still under the exclusive control of the patentees. Reapers that cost the manufacturer but fifty or sixty dollars, are sold for from one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred and twenty-five dollars, because the patentee, or his assigns, have now, and for nearly a generation have had, an exclusive right to make and sell them. So with seeders, plows, harrows, fanning mills, and almost all farming implements. The farmer is obliged to pay at least one hundred per cent royalty to the inventor, or his assigns, before he can receive any benefit from a discovery or an invention designed especially for his use. The inventors have already realized princely fortunes from their inventions, and the intent of the law has been fully accomplished; yet the patents are continued, and no one is allowed to make or sell these implements without the permission of the inventor. The law, which gave an exclusive right for fourteen years, has been amended from time to time; the rights have been extended, until patentees and their assigns annually claim tribute from the farmer in an amount that is oppressive. Patent right men operate together; they combine for the purpose of extorting from the people of this country, where they have a monopoly, while at the same time they sell their manufactured articles in foreign markets for one-half the price they demand in this country. We might illustrate this by numerous facts, but will content ourselves with reference to sewing machines and reapers. These are all patented, and all have patents for improvements made from time to time, many of which improvements are of little or no value, save as a pretext for the renewal of the patent. A sewing machine that cannot be purchased in the United States for less than seventy dollars costs but twelve or thirteen dollars for work and materials. This same machine (Singer's) is shipped to Europe and sold for $32.00. Here, where the patentee has an exclusive monopoly, we pay $38.00 more for the machine than it costs in England. We could order an American-made sewing machine from Belfast, pay freight and charges twice across the ocean, and get it for one-half it costs to buy it in America. If you purchase a McCormick's reaper in this country, it will cost you about $200.00. You can order the same machine from England, pay freights for its passage twice across the Atlantic, and get it for about one-half the money. The manufacturer cannot sell in this country without paying about one hundred per cent royalty to the inventor, but he can ship to Europe and sell at one-half the price charged in this country, and realize a fair profit on the sale. When a farmer purchases a reaper for himself, and a sewing machine for his wife, paying for the two $270.00, he pays as royalty to the inventor, $135.00. This same rate has been paid for the last twenty-five or thirty years. This large royalty is paid to the inventor, and is called protection. Continued beyond a reasonable time, it is nothing but legalized robbery.

The fact that large fortunes have been, and are, made by inventors and pretended inventors, has filled the country with sharpers and swindlers, who are constantly on the lookout for an idea that may lead to some sort of invention upon which they can apply for a patent. The ease with which patents can be obtained encourages them in their undertaking. If we are to judge of the ability and competency of the examiners of models and drafts by the patents issued for almost all conceivable articles, we must conclude that the only qualifications they possess are to receive the fees, and recommend the issuing of letters patent. Principles so old that the date of their discovery is lost, that have been in use so long "that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," are being monopolized by letters patent, until a mechanic, or farmer, if he puts a handle in a hatchet, a hoe, or rake, or changes the arrangement of a harrow, plow, churn, or washboard, must expect to have a sharp speculator call upon him for royalty for an infringement upon his patent. Or, if a seamstress cuts her thread in a particular way, she must pay royalty. If the farmer makes a glove to protect his hands in husking corn, before he has used them a half hour, some vender of patents will call upon him for royalty. If the owner of a house attempts to paint it, or repair the roof, he must pay royalty for the privilege, if his own judgment should prompt him to compound his paints with some article not ordinarily used; or to use for his roof a kind of composition not in general use.

The increase in the business of procuring patents is now so great that it has become a general and common nuisance to the whole country. The following is a list of one week's business in the patent office:

Patents were issued in one week to applicants from the western states for threading nuts; broom corn duster; threshing machine; school desk and seat; station indicator; binding screw; corn sheller; windmill; photograph skylight; corn husking thimble; land pulverizer; manufacture of sweet biscuit; railroad frog; dress pattern; two for plows; thread cutter for sewing machine; corn husking glove; wheel plow; bridle bit; railroad track wrench; cradle; paper file; garden hose holder; sawing machine; saw swage; scythe rifle; butter package; spring hinge; swage for forming horse shoes; automatic grain weigher; fire-place grate; potato digger; automatic gate; faucet; stock for mill-stone picks; piston valve for steam engine; car coupling; motive power; grain basket; dining table; portable fence; fishing torch; extension table; driving gear for hand car; horse collar; harrow; cross-cut saw handle; extension ladder; machine for cutting leather; bee hive; cloth measuring register; cutter for tonguing and grooving lumber; heating stove; rotary steam engine; manufacture of steel; blast furnace; compound for preventing incrustation; fruit press; fire extinguisher; two for cultivators; hub for heavy wheeled vehicles; horse-shoe attachment; egg carrier; hose pipe nozzle; cotton cultivator; shoe pegging and trimming machine; combined seed separator and drill; felloe; filter for corn-juice, oils, &c.; gate hinge; distilling of turpentine; cotton stalk knocker; automatic fan.

The above comprises only a partial list of the patents issued in one week. Followed up for one year, the list of patents would swell to near 4,000; about one in twenty of which are of value, while the residue are of no value save to enable the patentee to defraud the people upon whom he imposes his patent, or to force the timid to pay him royalty. Of the immense number of patents obtained for improved churns and washing machines, but few are of any real value. The same is true of patent bridges, reapers, and mowers, of threshing machines, of seeders and planters, of fences, and almost all farming implements. So of sewing machines.

Many of the patents obtained contained no new principle, discovery, or combination, but, by imposition and fraud, adventurers obtain letters patent for something in general use, for the purpose of levying blackmail, in the shape of royalty, upon those who, ignorant of any exclusive right claimed by any one, continue to use an article which has been in general use long before the letters patent were issued. But few farmers or mechanics have escaped the claims of these patent right sharpers. Rather than be at the expense of defending a suit in the United States court, they submit to the demands of the man who presents himself as the agent or assignee of the patentee demanding blackmail, well knowing that the rascal has no legal claim, but preferring to buy peace rather than to be annoyed by vexatious litigation.

No better illustration of the results of granting letters patent for pretended inventions or discoveries, as well as of the careless manner in which letters patent are issued, can be found than is presented by the gate, known in the west as "Teel's Patent." This gate in its combination and construction does not contain a single new principle. The same identical gate has been in use for thirty years in various parts of the Union. With the addition of "friction wheels" or "rollers," or "pivot wheels" (as they are indifferently called), this gate was on exhibition and sale in many of the western states in 1863. In fact, the patent for the friction wheels obtained in that year was attached to the gate and publicly exhibited, no claim being made for a patent upon the gate, but only upon the attachment. The gate itself consists of battens nailed upon the ends and near the center of four or five boards which forms the gate, with the posts so placed that after it is pushed a sufficient distance to make it balance on its center, it can be opened, its center acting as the pivotal point. The balancing principle for which the patent was obtained was first discovered by two of the descendants of Father Adam, in their youthful days, when they balanced a pole or board across a log or a fence, and, seated, one on each end, enjoyed a game of seesaw. The little boy who built a pig-pen years before the great intellect of Teel forged the idea, made the same kind of a balance gate for it. The man or boy of past generations who desired to make a cheap gate, instinctively made a Teel Gate. Yet some ten years ago the mighty intellect of Teel forged the idea, produced a model and forwarded it to the patent office. The Scientific (?) Examiner, who decides upon the merits of all inventions, who, if he had traveled and observed the common farm gate in many parts of the country, must have seen the gate in actual public use, issued to Teel letters patent, which are safely and securely held until the new western country is settled and this cheap gate is in general use, when he and his agents and assignees appear and demand royalty. He has been given an exclusive monopoly for the making, selling, and using a gate that is not new in any of its principles. By this fraud of the applicant and the incompetence of the examiner, the farmer is forbidden to use the old invention of a cheap gate until he pays a bounty to a patentee. The law for the protection of discoverers and inventors is prostituted, and the people compelled to pay out their money without consideration.

The same state of facts exists with respect to many other patents. Men travel over the country, examine all machinery and farming implements, not for the purpose of making new or useful discoveries or improvements, but for the purpose of learning whether they cannot so contrive as to collect royalty from others for an invention long in use, but for which the inventor had not asked or received a patent. Add this monopoly of patent rights to the other monopolies now cursing the country, and the need of a speedy reform, or the alternative of poverty and bankruptcy among the producing classes, becomes still more apparent.

This patent right monopoly is, in a great measure, owing to the want of proper care and knowledge in the department of the patent office, where the only pre-requisite for the granting of letters patent for almost anything, where the application is not contested, is a model and the patent office fee. The effect of this free and easy course in the department is to bring into disrepute the really valuable invention and discovery, and to impose upon the people useless burdens.