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Show MAKING MOIEY 1 PJTEiTSjlFFICULT: How Prejudice Holds Back ihe Sales of Inventions Is Discussed. To invent a successful device is ono thing; to mako money out of it is another, an-other, writes Waldemar Knempffrot in a recent issuo of the Outlook. It is no easy matter to sell an invention that means a change in a time-honored waj of manufacturing bedposts or of boil-ing boil-ing eggs. Tho man who invented tho vacuum cleaner had to fight rusty household conservatism that found tho old broom "good enough." Try and kick up something new and you aro bound to stub your toe against the brick concealed beneath tho high hat of prejudice. It takes as much ingenuity to market mar-ket an invention as to create it. Just how that ingenuity thall be cxercisod depeods much upon the character of the invention. A loom that costs $20,-000 $20,-000 to manufacture cannot be sold as if it wore a breakfast food. There may bo only fifty possible buyers iu the whole count ry, " and of thepo perhaps not ten could write a check for the purchase pur-chase price. That situation is encountered lime and timo again. It was oncouutered. for example, during tho building ol the Chicago drainage caual. Contractors Contract-ors who bid on rock excavation were told that, their tenders must not exceed SO cents a cubic yard. Eock nad never been excavated before at that price under un-der the same conditions. Tho apparent' appar-ent' impossible, could bo accomplished by a. combination of two inventions the cabloway and tho cantilever, later used with success at Panama. Of these tho cantilever cost $2S,000. Fow contractors con-tractors could afford to pay that sum. Accordingly the manufacturer leased the niachiuo, with tho result that contractors con-tractors ultimately excavated rock at 5(5 cents a cubic yard, the fctate of Illin6is saved about $5,000,000, and tho manufacturer manu-facturer niado more money out of his machines than if he had sold them out right. Leasing is probably tho most approved ap-proved business method of placing a complicated machine on tho market. Tho most important machines used in I shoe manufacturing nre welters und stitchers. Theso are leased and never sold leased, moreovor, on such conditions condi-tions that the welter ma- not be used with a competing stitcher, nor the stitcher with a competing woltor. About o cents for every pair of shoes made by those machines is paid by shoo manufacturers in royalties. Tn addition to tho welter and stitcher, the shoe machinery patentees place at the disposal of the shoe manufacturer some twonty-six auxiliar' machines, v.'hich ho may or may not use as he sees fit, and lor which ouly a nominal rental is charged, varying from $7 to .35 a year barely enough to pay for wear and tear. These auxiliary machines, ma-chines, however, may not bo used unless tho welter and "stitcher arc leased. Such "trying" clauses in leases were invented long before the modern trust Was conceived. Although their legality I is now being subjected to judicial scrutiny scru-tiny under the Sherman law, it cannot j be denied that the leasing sj'slum has onablod many a poor man who could not afford to buy machinery to cngago in shoe manufacturing with little capital. cap-ital. I In tho testimony taken in tho now famous "Dick-Heury caso" we learned of still another method of marketing patontod machinery, a method which consist? in sollinc a device at less than j cost and compelling the purchaser to buy from the manufacturers whatever supplies may bo necessary to oncrate the dovicc. " Jf supplies bought in the open market are used tho patent is infringed, in-fringed, because tho inventor or his ! assignee has the exclusive constituf ,tional right io use the machine in any I way that he himself sees fit and has permitted tho purchaser to use the machine ma-chine only in a certain prescribed wny. So the courts have held time and time lacain in cases long before Dick vs. 1 Henry aroused comment. In a patent-infringement snit involv-iuc involv-iuc the Mergenthaler linotvpe the brilliant Judge Co4cc went out of his way to comment on tho cruditj ofJ epoch-making inventions and tho sys- i tematic improvements necessary before! they could be commercially introduced. Not only -was the Morso telegraph a fit subject for a museum within a few months after its first feeblo success, but the ITowo sewing machine, ho announced an-nounced from the bench, could not bo successfully used by any woman for. ten years after the'patont was grant-! cd. Yet both "Morse and JTowc are de-! I pervedly regarded as great American In-1 In-1 veniors. Troy Times. |