The specification is drawn up and filed before the grant of the patent to which a copy is annexed-the two being construed together as one document. The patent may be dated from the time of filing the specification and drawing, if it be more than six months previous to the actual issue. 94. The oath or affirmation is a statement annexed to the specification, signed by a person lawfully qualified to administer an oath, certifying that the applicant had made oath in proper form that he believed himself to be the original inventor of what he claimed, and that he did not know or believe that the same was ever before known or used. If he be a resident alien, intending to become a citizen, that circumstance also must be stated on oath. 95. Drawings, models, and specimens are always absolutely requisite whenever the case admits of their being supplied. 96. The fees payable are as follow: If the application be made by a citizen, or foreigner who has resided for one year previous to his application, and made oath of his intention to become a citizen, the fee is If a subject of Great Britain $30 (£6) The principle on which this scale appears to have been drawn up will be alluded to hereafter. When these six requisites have been furnished, the application is taken up in its turn, unless the commissioner should otherwise decide for convenience of classification, or unless the applicant has already taken out a foreign patent. For, since an American patent can only run for fourteen years from the date of a foreign patent, the applicant would suffer by delay. 97. The examination of the documents furnished to the Patent Office with the application is very strict, and the claims in respect of novelty undergo long consideration; all claims savouring of a "double use " being, as was before stated, rejected. If the drawings or specification are found defective, they are returned to the applicant with instructions how to alter them. If it be deemed advisable to prepare new papers, the originals must be returned, and if the character of the invention is materially changed after the application is filed, it must be withdrawn altogether, and a new one filed, twothirds of the former fees being allowed. If, on examination, the claims are found to embrace what, in the judgment of the examiners, is considered to be old, the application is at once rejected, and notice is given to the applicant, with a full statement of the grounds of the rejection, and reference to prior inventions which he may examine in the office. He has also the opportunity of explaining his claims to the examiner in a private interview. If, in the end, he is dissatisfied with the decision of the Commissioner of Patents, he may appeal to the District Judge of Columbia, on paying $25 (£5), and a still further appeal may be made by bill to a court of equity. When, on an examination of an application, it is found that a caveat has been entered for a similar invention within the previous year, notice is given to the caveator to complete his application within three months; and if, on its coming in, the claims are found to be conflicting, an "interference" is granted. When an applicant claims anything embraced in an unexpired patent, and persists in his claims to priority, the commissioner will, at his request, "grant an interference" between him and the patentee. The Office has, however, no power over the patent, even though it decide in favour of the other party, and grant him also a patent for his claim. The unsuccessful party is allowed an appeal to the District Judge of Columbia. 98. If additional improvements be made to an invention subsequent to the date of a patent, they may be added to the specification, and incorporated with the original patent: fee, $18 (£8). The object of this provision appears to be to save an inventor the extra expense and trouble of taking out a new patent, comprising his recent inventions, and founded on his original claims. The incorporation of new claims in a patent bearing an antecedent date, seems open to great objection. 99. Re-issue. The specification and claims of a patent undergo considerable modification in the case of a re-issue, and the provision is one liable to entail great abuses. Section 13 of the Act of 4th July, 1836, enacts that when a patent is inoperative, or invalid by reason of a defective or insufficient description or specification, if the error arise from inadvertency, accident, or mistake, and without any fraudulent or deceptive intention, the commissioner may, on the surrender of the old defective patent, " cause a new patent to be issued for the same invention, and for the residue of the period then unexpired for which the original patent was granted, in accordance with the patentee's corrected description and specification; and the patent so re-issued, together with the corrected descriptions and specifications, shall have the same effect and operation in law, on the trial of all actions hereafter commenced, for causes subsequently accruing, as though the same had been originally filed in such corrected form, before the issuing of the original patent." The fee for a re-issue is $15 (£3). But if it be found that the specification comprises several distinct substantive inventions, a patent is issued for each, and the fee for each is $30 (about £6). It is obvious that there is scarcely any limit to the permutations and combinations which may be made out of the claims of a long, complicated, and ambiguous specification. Modern improvements are seldom or never so new in character and form as to be entirely dissimilar to every previously patented invention. It frequently happens that there exist a variety of patents whose claims are similar in character, and which are all worthless from the lack of something which is hit upon by a subsequent discoverer, who supplies the one thing needful to success. 66 It may be conceived with what eagerness antedated patents would in such a case be surrendered "--with what ingenuity their claims would be strained and distorted so as to embrace the identical one thing, and embody it in a "re-issued" patent, bearing the same date as the old one, and thus rob the really meritorious inventor of the fruits of his labours. 100. Extension of the term of a Patent. The commissioner has power to grant an extension of a patent for seven years, if it shall be shown that the invention is in itself "novel, useful, and important to the public, and that the inventor has not been adequately remunerated, though he used due diligence in introducing his invention into general use." The extension cannot be granted after the patent expires, so the application must be made a sufficient time before its expiration, to allow of a hearing and a decision, and yet not so long as to render the general statement of profits and expenses materially inaccurate. 101. Assignment.-An invention may be assigned by an instrument in writing, either partially or entirely, before or after a patent is obtained. If the assignment be of the entire interest, and precede the grant of the patent, it must be recorded in the Patent Office, and then the patent issues to the assignee. If the assignment be of the entire interest, and be made after the grant, it must be recorded within three months at the Patent Office to hold good against a subsequent purchaser without notice. 102. Refusal of Letters Patent.-When an application for a patent is refused or withdrawn, two-thirds of the fees paid are returned, unless a caveat fee had been reckoned in the amount. The money is paid in specie at the Patent Office, or is forwarded by mail to the applicant, or paid to his order. 103. Designs.-A patent for a design is granted only to citizens, or aliens who have resided for one year in the United States, and made oath of their intention to become citizens. The fees payable are only one-half what are paid for a patent for an art or manufacture, and the term of the grant extends only to seven years. All other regulations and provisions are the same as in the case of ordinary patents. 104. All applicants for letters patent have direct access to the examiners, and are frequently heard again and again while they explain the principles of their discoveries in personal interviews. Their applications, when defective, are returned, the defects pointed out, and also the best method of correcting them; sometimes an application is returned for correction as many as six times. The principle of affording an applicant direct access to the Patent Office has many advantages; but it is doubtful if the long and laborious investigation which an application receives is ultimately beneficial. It seems impossible that such investigations can ever be complete and satisfactory, however great may be the skill of the examiners, however wide and extended their knowledge of arts, sciences, and manufactures. The accumulations of business are necessarily very great, in spite of the most assiduous attention of the examiners to their duties, and the system which is adopted of assigning to each a separate department; a period of five or six months usually, and in some cases a much longer time, elapses before an application can be decided upon, a delay which is often attended with great inconvenience. It may be doubted whether too much is not attempted by the examiners in undertaking to decide the important questions of novelty and utility, either in the case of applications allowed or rejected; and whether any such preliminary inquiries ought not to be limited to warning an applicant of what has been done or known before, and referring him to authentic sources of information, but allowing him upon such warning to take out letters patent at his own risk. In such a case the patent might safely be left to find its proper position and value when brought before the public, and there would be ample opportunity of testing its validity and utility both by public opinion and, if requisite, ultimately in a court of law. The policy of requiring models of inventions in every case where they can be supplied, and forming them into one vast indiscriminate collection, has been already discussed. The abuses arising from the system of extending and altering the claims of a specification in the case of re-issues, have also been noticed. 105. Repeal of Letters Patent.-It appears to be a subject of much complaint, that there exist no means of repealing or quashing an invalid patent by legal proceedings, similar to those provided for by an English writ of scire facias. It may be true that an invalid patent is naturally disregarded by the public, but it is still a weapon of legal offence and annoyance which it would be as well to put aside altogether. 106. It remains to say a few words, in conclusion, on the scale of fees. These are extremely moderate in the case of citizens, and the privileges and protection afforded by letters patent are most properly placed within the reach of all citizen inventors. But foreigners labour under great disadvantages, being required, if British subjects, to pay nearly seventeen times as much as a citizen ($500), if any other foreigner, ten times as much as a citizen ($300). The principle of retaliation, which alone can be alleged as a reason for drawing up a scale of fees so disadvantageous to foreigners, seems wanting in fairness, at least in the case to which it was most pointedly directed. For a citizen of the United States, on applying for letters patent in England, stands, and always has stood, on terms of perfect equality with British subjects. The following is the scale of fees payable in connection with the grant of letters patent in the United States: Copies of letters patent are furnished by the Office on payment of ten cents (5d.) for every 100 words, and the cost of copying the drawings. The charge for recording an assignment is for The parts of the United States which I visited form, geographically, a small portion of their extended territory, but they are the principal seats of manufactures, and afford ample opportunities for arriving at general conclusions. I could not fail to be impressed, from all that I saw there, with the extraordinary energy of the people, and their peculiar aptitude in availing themselves to the utmost of the immense natural resources of the country. The details which I have collected in this report show, by numerous examples, that they leave no means untried to effect what they think it is possible to accomplish, and they have been signally successful in combining large practical results with great economy in the methods by which these results are secured. The labouring classes are comparatively few in number, but this is counterbalanced by, and indeed may be regarded as one of the chief causes of, the eagerness with which they call in the aid of machinery in almost every department of industry. Wherever it can be introduced as a substitute for manual labour, it is universally and willingly resorted to; of this the facts stated in my report contain many conclusive proofs, but I may here specially refer, as examples, to plough making, where eight men are able to finish thirty per day; to door making, where twenty men make 100 pannelled doors per day; to last making, the process of which is completed in 13 minutes; to sewing by machinery, where one woman does the work of 20; to net making, where one woman does the work of 100. It is this condition of the labour market, and this eager resort to machinery wherever it can be applied, to which, under the guidance of superior education and intelligence, the remarkable prosperity of the United States is mainly due. That prosperity is frequently attributed to the possession of a soil of great natural fertility, and it is doubtless true that in certain districts the alluvial deposits are rich and the land fruitful to an extraordinary degree; but while traversing many hundred miles of country in the Northern States, I was impressed with the conviction that the general character of the soil there was the reverse of fertile. It is not for a moment denied that the natural resources of the United States are immense, that the products of the soil seem capable of being multiplied and varied to almost any extent, and that the supplies of minerals appear to be nearly unlimited. The material welfare of the country, however, is largely dependent upon the means adopted for turning its natural resources to the best account, at the same time that the calls made upon human labour are reduced as far as practicable. The attention paid to the working of wood, some details connected with which I have included in the report, is a striking illustration of this. The early settlers found in the forests which they had to clear an unlimited supply of material, which necessity compelled them to employ in every possible way, in the construction of their houses, their furniture, and domestic utensils, in their implements of labour, and in their log-paved roads. Wood thus became with them a universal material, and work-people being scarce, machinery was introduced as far as possible to supply the want of hands. The character thus given to one branch of manufactures has gradually extended to others. Applied to stone-dressing, for example, one man is enabled, as I have shown, to perform as much work as twenty masons by hand. So great again are the improvements effected in spinning machinery, that one man can attend to a mule containing 1,088 spindles, each spinning 3 hanks, or 3,264 hanks in the aggregate per day. In Hindoostan, where they still spin by hand, it would be extravagant to expect a spinner to accomplish one hank per day; so that in the United States we find the same amount of manual labour, by improved machinery, doing more than 3,000 times the work. But a still more striking comparison between hand and machine labour may be made in the case of lace making in England. Lace of an ordinary figured pattern used to be made "on the cushion" by hand, at the rate of about three meshes per minute. At Nottingham, a machine attended by one person will now produce lace of a similar kind at the rate of about 24,000 meshes per minute; so that one person can, by the employment of a machine, produce 8,000 times as much work as one lace maker by hand. The results which have been obtained in the United States, by the application of machinery wherever it has been practicable to manufactures, are rendered still more remarkable by the fact, that combinations to resist its introduction there are unheard of. The workmen hail with satisfaction all mechanical improvements, the importance and value of which, as releasing them from the drudgery of unskilled labour, they are enabled by education to understand and appreciate. With the comparatively superabundant supply of hands in this country, and therefore a proportionate difficulty in obtaining remunerative employment, the working classes have less sympathy with the progress of invention. Their condition is a less favourable one than that of their American brethren for forming a just and unprejudiced estimate of the influence which the introduction of machinery is calculated to exercise on their state and prospects. I cannot resist the conclusion, however, that the different views taken by our operatives and those of the United States upon this subject are determined by other and powerful causes, besides those dependent on the supply of labour in the two countries. The principles which ought to regulate the relations between the employer and the employed seem to be thoroughly understood and appreciated in the United States, and while the law of limited liability affords the most ample facilities for the investment of capital in business, the intelligent and educated artizan is left equally free to earn all that he can, by making the best use of his hands, without let or hindrance by his fellows. It may be that the working classes exhibit an unusual independence of manner, but the same feeling insures the due performance of what they consider to be their duty with less supervision than is required where dependence is to be placed upon uneducated hands. It rarely happens that a workman who possesses peculiar skill in his craft is disqualified to take the responsible position of superintendent, by the want of education and general knowledge, as is frequently the case in this country. In every State in the Union, and particularly in the north, education is, by means of the common schools, placed within the reach of each individual, and all classes avail themselves of the opportunities afforded. The desire of knowledge so early implanted is greatly increased, while the facilities for diffusing it are amply provided through the instrumentality of an almost universal press. No taxation of any kind has been suffered to interfere with the free development of this powerful agent for promoting the intelligence of the people, and the consequence is, that where the humblest labourer can indulge in the luxury of his daily paper, everybody reads, and thought and intelligence penetrate through the lowest grades of society. The benefits which thus result from a liberal system of education and a cheap press to the working classes of the United States can hardly be overestimated in a national point of view; but it is to the co-operation of both that |