Industrial Progress Based on the Patent System.
In an official report the Commissioner of Patents clearly sets forth that from six to seven eighths of the entire manufacturing capital of the United States is either directly or indirectly based upon patents. This vast amount of money, upward of six thousand millions of dollars, con[p. 12]tinually employing great armies of people, in industries based upon patents of every class, supplies the country with improved articles of every description. It has been well said that, "Patents and trade go hand in hand."
The largest and most opulent manufacturers in the country will be found to be the heaviest owners of patents, developers of inventions, and patrons of the Patent Office. While all inventions are not telegraphs, telephones, sewing-machines, or electric lights; nor can all business houses be Westinghouses, Hoes, McCormicks, Bells, or Edisons, yet all over this country, and others as well, there are springing up a great number of moderately large growing firms who, ever on the alert for success, devise or secure control of some valuable patent, by which they can successfully invade and control to a certain extent particular lines of industry.
Nearly every leading factory in the world owes its commencement and success to the prestige and protection afforded by the possession of a good and valid patent.
CHAPTER II
INCOME FROM INVENTIONS
It has been aptly said that the products of all the gold, silver, and diamond mines in the world would not equal in value the annual income of American inventors. It has been carefully estimated that there are at least fifty patents in the United States which yield over $1,000,000 annually, some 300 that yield over one-half million, from 500 to 800 which bring from $250,000 to $500,000, and between 15,000 and 20,000 that bring over $100,000 annuities. Besides these, there are thousands upon thousands of patents which yield yearly more profit to their fortunate possessors than could be accumulated in a lifetime by a wage-earner.
Independence through Successful Invention.