Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879. Various
British consumers suddenly discover that they want something that the native manufacturer cannot make. The need was there; but invention did not follow. How happened it that the American manufacturer did not pursue the same uninventive course? What produced the radically different attitude of the American mind toward newfangled notions out of which inventions proceeded and flourished?
No doubt several causes have been at work: freedom of thought and action; popular education; a blending of races; and the tide of adventurous spirits naturally resorting to a new and free land. These have had their influence undoubtedly; but all these have existed, more or less completely, in other new lands, without that outburst of creative energy which has made America the nursery of inventions, great and small. The determining cause, the one condition that prevailed here and not elsewhere, was the circumstance that almost from the start new ideas were given a market value in this country. Unlike all others, the American patent law directly encouraged independent thinking in all classes. The fees were low and the protection offered fairly good. Men soon found that it paid to invent; that one of the surest roads to competency was a patented improvement on something of general use. If a household utensil or appliance went wrong or worked badly, every user was directly interested in devising something better; and, more than that, he was interested in making his invention known and in securing its adoption. The workman at his bench had an ever-present inducement to contrive something at once cheaper and better than the article he was hired to make. He could patent his improvement, or the wholly original device he might hit upon, for a few dollars; and his patent would count as capital. It would make him his own master, possibly bring him a fortune. The manufacturer could not rest contented with the thing he set out to make, for the meanest hired man in his employ might suddenly become a competitor. He must be constantly alert for possible improvements, or his rivals would get ahead of him. The result is a nation of inventors, at whose hands the newest of lands has leaped to the leadership in the arts, almost at a bound.
There is talk of changing all this; of emulating the conservative spirit of the Old World; of putting inventors under bonds; of stopping the rush of industrial improvement—to enable a few short-sighted yet grasping corporations to get along without paying license fees for such inventions as they happen to approve of. They profess to want inventors to go on making improvements. They are willing to ascribe all honor to the successful inventor; but they are determined not to pay him for his work. Still more they are determined to change the attitude of the public mind toward inventors and inventions, if such a change can be wrought by plausible misrepresentations. The fact that they were able to inveigle one branch of the American Congress into assenting to their unjust and mischievous scheme is one of the anomalies of our recent history. It should be taken as a timely warning of impending danger to all the industrial interests of the country. It is outrageous that the inventors of the land, after having raised their country to the first rank among industrial nations, should have to defend their constitutional rights against Congressional invasion; but the fact exists; and the defense should be made a matter of personal interest and effort not only by every inventor and manufacturer, but by every honest citizen.
PLEURO-PNEUMONIA
The cattle plague, which is creating so much anxiety throughout the Eastern States, is a contagious fever, affecting cows chiefly, characterized by extensive exudations into the respiratory organs, and attended by a low typhus inflammation of the lungs, pluræ, and bronchia. It has prevailed in Europe for ages, at times developing into wide-spread scourges, causing incalculable loss. It was imported into England in 1839, and again three years later; and it was estimated that within twenty-five years thereafter the losses by deaths alone in England had amounted to $450,000,000. In 1858 the disease was carried to Australia by an English cow, and, spreading to the cattle ranges, almost depopulated them.
In 1843 an infected Dutch cow brought the disease to Brooklyn, where it has since lingered, slowly spreading among the cattle in Kings and Queens counties. In 1847 several head of infected English cattle were imported into New Jersey, and, spreading among a herd of valuable cattle, made it necessary for them all to be slaughtered, the only certain method of stamping out the disease. In 1859 four infected cows were imported into Massachusetts from Holland; the plague spread rapidly, and was stamped out only by persistent effort, the State paying for over 1,000 slaughtered cattle. Since 1867 the disease has not been known there. Meantime the pest had invaded Eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, where it has since prevailed in isolated localities. The absence of large herds of moving cattle in these districts, except for speedy slaughter, has prevented the disease from developing into a general plague.
The recent action of the British Council in forbidding the importation of American live cattle is likely to prove of inestimable benefit to this country, in forcibly calling attention to the grave risk that the presence of the disease on Long Island and elsewhere constantly entails. Fortunately the drift of the cattle traffic is eastward, and as yet there has been no propagation of the poison in the great cattle ranges of the West. Unless summarily arrested, however, the disease will surely reach those sources of our cattle supply, and occasion losses that can be estimated only in hundreds of millions of dollars.
The experience of all countries into which this disease has gained access appears to prove that there is only one way of getting rid of it—namely, the immediate killing of all infected cattle, and the thorough disinfection of the premises in which they are found.
The disease is purely infectious, and is never found in regions where it has not gained a foothold by importation. Palliative measures have in every instance failed to eradicate the disease, and are only justifiable, as in Australia, after the plague has reached dimensions utterly beyond the reach of any process of extermination.
Professor Law, of Cornell University, one of our best informed veterinary surgeons, most emphatically opposes every attempt to control the disease by quarantining the sick or by the inoculation of the healthy. "We may quarantine the sick," he says, "but we cannot quarantine the air." To establish quarantine yards is simply to maintain prolific manufacturers of the poison, which is given off by the breath of the sick, and by their excretions, to such an extent that no watchfulness can insure against its dissemination. Besides, the expense of thorough quarantining operations would amount to more than the value of the infected animals whose lives might be saved thereby. Inoculation is still less to be tolerated at this stage of the pest.
The Professor says: "Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, and England, have been treating the victims of this plague for nearly half a century, but the result has only been the increase of disease and death. Our own infected States have been treating it for a third of a century, and to-day it exists over a wider area than ever before. Contrast this with the results in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where the disease has been repeatedly crushed out at small expense, and there can be no doubt as to which is the wisest course. As all the plagues are alike in the propagation of the poison in the bodies of the sick, I may be allowed to adduce the experience of two adjacent counties in Scotland when invaded by the rinderpest. Aberdeen raised a fund of £2,000, and though she suffered several successive invasions, she speedily crushed out the poison wherever it appeared by slaughtering the sick beasts and disinfecting the premises. The result was that little more than half the fund was wanted to reimburse the owners for their losses, and the splendid herds of the county were preserved. Forfar, on the other hand, set herself to cure the plague, with the result of a universal infection, the loss of many thousands of cattle, and the ruin of hundreds of farmers. Finally the malady was crushed out in the entire island by the method adopted by Aberdeen and other well advised counties at the outset."
And again, "Cattle have been inoculated by the tens of thousands in Belgium and Holland, and of all Europe these are the countries now most extensively infected. France, Prussia, Italy, Austria, and England have each practiced it on a large scale, and each remains a home of the plague. Australia has followed the practice, and is now and must continue an infected country. Our own infected States have inoculated, and the disease has survived and spread in spite of it, and even by its aid. Whatever country has definitively exterminated the plague (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holstein, Mecklenburg, Switzerland, Massachusetts, and Connecticut), that country has prohibited inoculation and all other methods that prevail on the principle of preserving the sick, and has relied on the slaughter of the infected and the thorough disinfection of their surroundings. So will it be with us. If any State adopts