extension of public activity in the domain of natural monopoly, "socialistic," and there is no use in being alarmed thereby. The term, however, is misleading, for even judges of the supreme bench of the United States, whom no one calls socialists, believe in these so-called socialistic measures.

The removal of secret rates to favored shippers upon our railroads and of some of the present doubtful methods of rapid accumulation in other natural monopolies is likely to retard the growth of trusts in manufactures and trade, which the true socialist looks upon with delight as the logical preliminary of socialism.

LABOR ORGANIZATIONS HAVE THEIR PLACE.

Since organization is a necessity of the capitalist, the reformer, the philanthropist, and even the Christian Endeavorer, we must be in sympathy with labor organizations and other efforts of the toiler toward self-help. Organized labor has already secured many reductions in hours of labor and other improvements in the wage-contract. It has been the chief and, in most States, almost the sole agent in securing restriction of child labor, the inspection of factory, mine, and sweat shop, the establishment of bureaus of labor statistics, and other great and needed blessings. A large and rapidly growing proportion of our over eighty national trade unions, with their membership of about five hundred thousand, spend more every year in relief of their sick, unemployed, or otherwise needy members than on strikes and the salaries of officials. In Chicago, in the hard winter of 1893-94, public and private relief agencies were hardly ever called on to relieve a member of a labor organization.

ABUSES ENDANGER EVERY GOOD MOVEMENT.

But the writer is by no means blind to the present corrupt leadership of some of our trade unions, and to the tendencies to violent treatment of the non-union man, and to the low moral tone generally of the labor movement in some places in

this country, though it must be granted that much of business ethics is no better and that the officers of our labor unions average as well as do the city councils elected by all the people in our large cities. It is not so much, however, because of greater moral development, as of greater need, that the mass of wage-workers appeals to us. A better ethical development and a greater enthusiasm for self-sacrifice in the interest of juster social conditions is the fundamental obligation upon us all. It is our bounden duty as Christians to be reformers,— in a wise and conservative spirit, to be sure, and yet true reformers. "No one," as a prominent clergyman has said, “can be a Christian who is not a reformer."

In this spirit of conserving the great preponderance of good in our social order, while striving for its betterment and for a nearer approach of the kingdom of God on earth, the writer assumes for one year the responsible duties of his new position upon so honorably and widely known a magazine as the BIBLIOTHECA SACRA.

ARTICLE XI.

MONOPOLY BY PATENTS.

BY Z. SWIFT HOLBROOK.

IN the excellent work by Professor John Bascom, of Williams College, on "Social Theory," just published by Crowell and Company, the subject of patents receives a brief treatment of two and one-half pages. Professor Bascom has not assumed to treat the subject exhaustively. He makes only two points: (1) patent laws allow unreasonable profits, which go not to the inventor, but to the capitalist or entrepreneur; and (2) that injustice is caused by delay in issuing patents. The second point, without doubt, is wisely urged, but it is of small importance comparatively. Professor Bascom assumes that inventors, as a rule, are defrauded of their rights by receiving an unjust proportion of profits, made upon the manufacture or sale of devices under their patents, because, in some instances, inventions prove valuable and enrich, not the inventor, but others. It is an inference not at all warranted from the premises, and even more remote from the facts in the world of invention.

It is undoubtedly true of many of the most successful inventions that enormous profits accrue to others than to the inventors; but these are exceptions to the general rule, for the great majority of patents are not worth the final fee, and, but for the hope of gain, stimulated by the more successful ones, would never be taken out of the Patent Office. The instances often cited, where inventors have been defraudedsuch as the Colt revolver or the McCormick reaper-do not bear investigation. Such public reports oftentimes have their

origin in envy or prejudice or in the vainglorying of the inventor. It certainly has not been true of Howe, Pullman, Edison, Bell, McKay, and hosts of others, that the inventor is not properly rewarded. Professor Bascom says: "Patent laws are now at fault in allowing them to accrue to the benefit of those who have appropriated, not rendered the service rewarded by them. It is said that the gimlet-pointed screw has been worth to the manufacturer $10,000,000” (p. 415).

Now the question is not, What have the inventors of certain successful devices received for their inventions? but, Do inventors on the whole, and as a rule, receive a fair reward for their services? It is generally assumed that they do not. If such were the case, however, to attempt to remedy it by law would be a most chimerical undertaking, not to say a clear invasion of the right of private contract, on the part of the State that assumes to guarantee and protect that very right. It would be an attempt on the part of the State to make good bargains for inventors who are poor business men, and would involve an interference with private rights that no class of men would resent more strenuously than inventors themselves. And yet social critics imagine that the patent laws could, and should, protect inventors from making such poor bargains. Just how it is to be done, of course, no one has explained.

The broad question is one of patents in general as a form of investment; of the kind of ability required to invent; what its reward should be, and what that reward really is; whether patent laws can be enacted and enforced to help inventors in making good bargains or to prevent them from making bad ones when they are enlisting the aid of executive ability and capital to market their ideas; whether inventors themselves really desire the enactment of such laws for their protection as assume that as a class they are, commercially speaking, non compos mentis, and need legal guardianship; and whether, beyond the mere issuing of a patent with an assignable title

in the one who swears the invention to be his own, and beyond the establishing of courts to protect from infringements and to enforce contracts, there is anything practically that the State can do.

Inventive ability in mechanics is not of the highest order. The exceptions prove the rule. It may be inventive genius or inventive talent. Genius is creative and propulsive, while talent is more intellectual and purposeful. Genius works by spasms, and talent from principle. The former is a child of the imagination, and not so much of the reason. It dwells in the realm of fancy, and not of fact. The mind of an inventive genius is full of imagery and of quaint conceits. It is seldom a mind that works by rote or rule. It imagines, it dreams, it fancies, it pictures. But such a mind, as has been well said, has a kind of insanity that is scarcely amenable to ordinary laws. It is, in a measure, spasmodic, erratic, and untrustworthy. Paul Morphy was a most creative genius in chess, but a lawyer of inferior ability. Talmage, the pulpit actor and orator, whom so many esteem, to speak charitably, as sui generis, will read out of the Scriptures what the inspired writers never dreamed of.

The greatest inventions, those that have been of the highest service to mankind and the most profitable, from a commercial standpoint, have been the work of geniuses. The ordinary mind dreads too close a practical contact with genius. We prefer to view it from a point of delightful perspective. It has its uses, but, as Jane Carlyle learned, it is difficult to live with. The best appreciation of it comes on tombstones and in biographical dictionaries. The mildew and dust of at least a century make the most picturesque setting, for it hides defects, and leaves the character like a lonely mountain in bold relief against the sky. The defects and disagreeable details are thus lost sight of in the grandeur of a single view.

Now, in the marts of trade, the practical, hard-headed business man too often considers the inventive genius a crank