“Every inventor supposes that he has a fortune in every conception that he puts into wood and iron. Stealing tremblingly and furtively up the steps of the Patent Office, with his model concealed under his coat, lest some sharper shall see it and rob him of his darling thought, he hopes to come down those steps with the precious parchment that shall insure him a present competency and enrich his children. If he were offered a million in the first flush of his triumph, he would hesitate about touching it without sleeping over it for a night. Yet fourteen thousand millions would be a pretty heavy bill to pay from a treasury not over full. No commission could satisfy the inventor, and no price that we could afford to pay would take the place of the hope of unlimited wealth, which now lightens his toil.... We say, we cannot pay you in money, we will pay you in time. A new thought developed, explained, described, put on record for the use of the nation—this is the one side. The right to the exclusive benefit of this new thought, for a limited time, and protection in that right, this on the other. This is the patent system. A fair contract between the inventor and the public.
“The inventor’s best security is to take out a patent.
“To secure this fair dealing, we have on the one side the Patent Office, with its examiners, its drawings, its models, its books and its foreign patents, to scan and test the invention.
“On[“On] the other side we have the courts of law to protect the inventor and punish the thief. It is impossible that these instrumentalities should do their work imperfectly. This is the American system. Under its protection great inventions have been born, and have thriven. It has given to the world the steamboat, the telegraph, the sewing-machine, the hard and soft rubber. It has reconstructed the loom, the reaping-machine, and the locomotive. It has won from the older homes of the mechanic arts their richest trophies, and like Columbus, who found a new world for Castile and Leon, it has created new arts in which our nation has neither competitive or peer.”
The first Superintendent of the Patent Office was Doctor W. Thornton, a gentleman of great attainments, who held his position for many years. The present Commissioner of Patents is General Mortimer D. Leggett, born of Quaker parents, in the State of New York, fifty years ago. At an early age, he went with his parents to the Western Reserve, Ohio. He received an academical education, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and at twenty-eight, was established in a flourishing business in Warren, Ohio. Jacob D. Cox, late Secretary of the Interior, studied law with General Leggett, and ultimately became his partner under the firm name of Leggett & Cox. General Leggett afterwards filled the position of Professor of Pleadings and Equity Jurisprudence, in the Ohio Law College, which he occupied till 1857, and later was called to become the Superintendent of Public Schools in the city of Zanesville, which his management made pre-eminent among the schools of the West. At the beginning of the war, he entered the field at the head of the Seventy-eighth Ohio. This regiment received its first baptism in the snow and sleet of Fort Donelson, and was under fire there.
The executive and administrative ability of Colonel Leggett, as shown in the discipline and condition of his regiment, attracted the attention of General Grant, who made him Provost-Marshal of the post. He did his work so well, that he was repeatedly chosen again, and by the warm commendation of his chief, was made Brigadier-General. At the battle of Shiloh, and the siege of Corinth, General Leggett held advanced posts. In the siege of Vicksburg, General Leggett commanded the first brigade of Logan’s Division—the brigade which, for its gallant service, was honored by being designated for the coveted distinction of marching first into the captured works. Soon after, he received command of this division, and was made Major-General, and with it, made with Sherman, the famous “march to the sea.”
There are many young men who live to say—that the most genial, beneficent, and valuable influence, exerted upon them during the toilsome campaign, and the dangerous periods of idleness in camp-life, was that of General Leggett, who ever inspired patience by his unfailing good humor, persistent fidelity to temperance, both by precept and lofty example. He made many a dreary march seem like a picnic excursion; and his quick, fearless, yet sympathetic glance, often inspired the sinking heart at the moment of danger. Beyond this, he was a true soldier, in caring anxiously for the comfort of his soldiers, in enforcing rigid discipline, and in stimulating officers and men to excel in drill and all service.
At the close of the war, General Leggett became Superintendent and Business Manager of the engine works at Zanesville and Newark, Ohio, the largest establishment of the kind in the West, where he remained, till he was called by the friend who remembered his brave services in the peril of war,—to the administration of one of the most important branches of the Government service in time of peace. He has already inaugurated one of the most potent movements toward the encouragement of the useful arts, ever made in this country—viz.: the publication in popular form, and at low rates, of the Patent Office drawings and specifications.
General Leggett has a clear red-and-white complexion, wide, open laughing blue eyes, and an aspect of fresh health which amounts to youth. His frame and brain are cast in herculean mould. He is a man of muscle, as well as mind—the former having been toughened by long geological foot-tramps through the mountains of Virginia, as well as by the exposures of war, and of an all-time active life.
The official chair of General Leggett has not proved too much for his better self, as it does for so many. He meets all who approach him with a smile and kind word, apparently not forgetting that in a republic the potentate of to-day may be the suppliant of to-morrow, and that at any rate, but one man at a time can be a Commissioner of Patents. He brings to his official administration and decisions the same untiring industry, intelligence and integrity; the same broad views, clear insight and devotion to duty, which in every previous sphere that he has filled have made his whole life an honorable success.