“I’m going to send you to school,” he continued, placing one hand on my head, and grasping my arm with the other. “You’re going to Mr. Carter’s at Exeter; he’s a very good man, and I daresay you’ll be very happy there; that is, if you learn to be a good boy. Will you try?”
I sobbed out that I would, for somehow my heart was thawed, and for the first time in my life I was shedding tears neither of passion nor of fear, though what the exact source of them was I did not know then, nor do I now.
I imagine my father thought I was crying at leaving home and him, for he was certainly touched, and he spoke to me with a tenderness I was quite unaccustomed to. He gave me a great deal of good advice, and two guineas out of his purse that lay full of gold upon the table—the first money I ever had in my life.
I confess that from the moment he placed the gold in my hand my tears were dried, and I listened to no more of the advice; nor do I recollect how my father took leave of me, nor anything that followed. I only know that one of the servants travelled with me, and that in due time we reached Mr. Carter’s school at Exeter.
THE MONEY VALUE OF AN INVENTOR.
In the year 1847 an article entitled “Human Progress” appeared in the “Westminster Review.” A portion of it was a criticism on Lord Ashley’s endeavour to find work for needlewomen, and it was pointed out that the true remedy was to dispense with the needlewomen, as mere stitchers, or altogether by constructing machines to do their work, and ultimately to dispense with the machines also, by the construction of other machines to produce seamless garments direct from improved looms. The writer pointed out that so long as degrading work existed, so long would degraded human beings be found to perform it, but that the degrading work ceasing the degraded humanity would disappear also. The writer thought the stitching-machine a new idea, but while correcting the press an American gentleman, looking over it, remarked, “Are you aware that a stitching-machine has just been invented in the United States?” upon which the writer “made a note of it” at the foot of his page. “It is a question for the mechanician to solve how the powers of Nature shall produce human garments by machinery wholly and not in part? The problem will not be difficult to solve; and he who first solves it shall famous among men, as the chemist who shall first discover the mystery of the aromas. Then may men and women indulge in artistical decoration of their persons when it shall cease to be a result of painful handicraft.”[1]
Through good and through evil the inventor worked on, and slowly his invention got into use, and it was patented in England and other countries.
It has been stated that the inventor, Mr. Howe, had realised upwards of 150,000l. by patent right on his machines in the United States, but, notwithstanding, he applied for an extension of the term of his patent, and obtained it for another seven years.
The ground on which the grant was obtained is as follows:—An invention is not to be regarded as ordinary labour, nor is its value to be measured by arbitrary rules. The utility and value to the community are the true test by which to judge of the invention, and the inventor’s reward should be proportional to its value.
Mr. Howe invented a labour-saving machine, by which an enormous amount of miserably-paid drudgery was removed from all those operations involving the clothing of the community, and every item involving the joining of materials by sewing. And, moreover, in a country of insufficient labour, the amount of work required could not have been supplied, and great numbers must have been deprived of the needful supply.
The value of the sewing done by Mr. Howe’s machines at the present time in the United States is at the least fifty-eight millions of pounds sterling per annum, and, if the original machines were used without the improvements, the value would amount to thirty-four millions of pounds sterling per annum. In the city of New York, the value is one million and a half per annum on men and boys’ clothing, ninety-two thousand on hats and caps, and one hundred and seventy thousand on shirt-fronts; and in Massachusetts the labour saved in boots and shoes amounts to one million and a half per annum.
Surely this man is a benefactor not only to his own community, but to the other nations in which his machines are used. In fourteen years the value of this invention rises to something like the whole of our National debt, and considerably more than the whole sum invested in our railways in the course of thirty years.
The Commissioners of Patents in the United States have given the inventor a seven years’ further right. In England the practice has been to grant renewal only in case of no profit having been made by the invention. If it can be shown that the inventor has received any sum, from a thousand pounds or so upwards, he has very little chance of renewal. And, moreover, the cost of the application amounts to so considerable a sum, that a poor inventor would have little chance of finding it, more especially as the cost increases by the opposition, supported commonly by the clubbed purses of manufacturers,—men not usually imaginative, and who recognise the work done upon matter, but not the work of mind, and still less the value of that perception and judgment which discerns utility and profit in embryo. The inventor points out the work that is hidden; he is the discoverer of the unknown mine. He is first scouted as a “schemer,” and has trouble to introduce his idea; and when the thought of the mind has grown to be the work of the hand, he is commonly denounced as a robber.
We believe that an application is about to be made for a renewal of Mr. Howe’s patent in England, and painful and humiliating to us as a nation will it be, if it fails. But it will probably not fail, for the reason that public attention is now called- ↑ While writing this we are informed that an American has brought over a “stitching machine.” This is the first step. The next is to manufacture garments not requiring stitches. The artist and the mechanician must combine for this.
