Historic Inventions

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Pirates now filled the field, and the lawsuits which they were compelled to bring to defend themselves went against them. Miller wrote to Whitney on May 11, 1797, “The event of the first patent suit, after all our exertions made in such a variety of ways, has gone against us. The preposterous custom of trying civil causes of this intricacy and magnitude by a common jury, together with the imperfection of the patent law, frustrated all our views, and disappointed expectations which had become very sanguine. The tide of popular opinion was running in our favor, the judge was well disposed toward us, and many decided friends were with us, who adhered firmly to our cause and interests. The judge gave a charge to the jury pointedly in our favor; after which the defendant himself told an acquaintance of his that he would give $2,000 to be free from the verdict, and yet the jury gave it against us, after a consultation of about an hour. And having made the verdict general, no appeal would lie.

“On Monday morning, when the verdict was rendered, we applied for a new trial, but the judge refused it to us on the ground that the jury might have made up their opinion on the defect of the law, which makes an aggression consist of making, devising, and using or selling; whereas we could only charge the defendant with using.

“Thus, after four years of assiduous labor, fatigue, and difficulty, are we again set afloat by a new and most unexpected obstacle. Our hopes of success are now removed to a period still more distant than before, while our expenses are realized beyond all controversy.”

The failure of that patent suit loosed all the pirates, and Whitney saw the cotton fields flooded with gins, all of which were really based on his invention, and yet from which he did not receive one penny. The public had given over paying any attention to his patents. Every one seemed determined that a machine which meant so much to the cotton lands should be free to all, irrespective of any legal or moral rights in the matter. Miller wrote him a little later, “The prospect of making anything by ginning in this state is at an end. Surreptitious gins are erected in every part of the country, and the jurymen at Augusta have come to an understanding among themselves that they will never give a cause in our favor, let the merits of the case be as they may.”

Whitney, the Inventor of the Cotton Gin

Affairs could not well have been worse for the partners. They would have been willing to give up making gins and devote themselves to selling the rights they had already obtained, but it was difficult to find purchasers for titles which were so openly disregarded on every hand. They found it almost impossible to collect payments for the few machines they did sell, the buyers preferring to be sued, trusting to a jury of their neighbors deciding for them against the unpopular manufacturers, who claimed to control such an important machine as the gin. Whitney tried to sell his patent rights for South Carolina to that state itself, and had the matter brought before the Legislature. It met with better success than usual. “I have been at this place,” he writes in a letter, “a little more than two weeks attending the Legislature. A few hours previous to their adjournment they voted to purchase for the state of South Carolina my patent-right to the machine for cleaning cotton at $50,000, of which sum $20,000 is to be paid in hand, and the remainder in three annual payments of $10,000 each.” To this he added, “We get but a song for it in comparison with the worth of the thing, but it is securing something. It will enable Miller & Whitney to pay their debts and divide something between them.”

This plan of selling the rights to the states seemed to promise better things for the inventor. In December, 1802, he arranged for the sale of similar rights to the state of North Carolina, and a little later a similar agreement was made with Tennessee. But imagine his dismay when the South Carolina Legislature suddenly annulled its contract with him, refused to make any further payments, and began suit to recover what had already been paid him. The current of popular opinion had again set against this firm of two. It was said that a man in Switzerland had invented a cotton-gin before Whitney, and that the main features of his own machine had been taken from others. But there were some upright and honorable men in the South Carolina Legislature, and they finally succeeded in convincing their associates that Whitney had been maligned. In the session of 1804 the Legislature rescinded its latest act in regard to the gin, and testified to its high opinion of Whitney.

The inventor’s faithful partner, Miller, died in 1803. He had stood by Whitney through thick and thin, and had met one buffet after another. In spite of his splendid spirit the ceaseless war to protect their claims had somewhat broken him, and he had despaired of ever receiving justice in the courts. Whitney himself was now receiving some return from the sales to the states, and these enabled him to keep out of debt, but the greater part of his earnings had still to go for the costs of his suits at law.

In December, 1807, the United States Court in Georgia gave a decision in Whitney’s favor against a man named Fort who had infringed on his patent. The words of Judge Johnson in this case became celebrated. “To support the originality of the invention,” said he, “the complainants have produced a variety of depositions of witnesses, examined under commission, whose examinations expressly prove the origin, progress, and completion of the machine of Whitney, one of the copartners. Persons who were made privy to his first discovery testify to the several experiments which he made in their presence before he ventured to expose his invention to the scrutiny of the public eye. But it is not necessary to resort to such testimony to maintain this point. The jealousy of the artist to maintain that reputation, which his ingenuity has justly acquired, has urged him to unnecessary pains on this subject. There are circumstances in the knowledge of all mankind which prove the originality of this invention more satisfactorily to the mind than the direct testimony of a host of witnesses. The cotton-plant furnished clothing to mankind before the age of Herodotus. The green seed is a species much more productive than the black, and by nature adapted to a much greater variety of climate, but by reason of the strong adherence of the fibre to the seed, without the aid of some more powerful machine for separating it than any formerly known among us, the cultivation of it would never have been made an object. The machine of which Mr. Whitney claims the invention so facilitates the preparation of this species for use that the cultivation of it has suddenly become an object of infinitely greater national importance than that of the other species ever can be. Is it, then, to be imagined that if this machine had been before discovered, the use of it would ever have been lost, or could have been confined to any tract or country left unexplored by commercial enterprise? But it is unnecessary to remark further upon this subject. A number of years have elapsed since Mr. Whitney took out his patent, and no one has produced or pretended to prove the existence of a machine of similar construction or use.