Journal OF THE Patent Office Society Published monthly by the Patent Office Society Office of Publication 3928 New Hampshire Ave., Washington, D. C. Subscription $2.50 a year Single copy 25 cents EDITORIAL BOARD. E. D. Sewall, Chairman. Publicity Committee. G. P. Tucker, Editor-in-Chief. J. Boyle. E. R. Cole. E. S. Glascock. W. J. Wesseler F. W. Dahn. W. I. Wyman. M. L. Whitney, Business Manager, (Room 57, U. S. Patent Office.) 3928 New Hampshire Ave., Washington, D. C. N. E. Eccleston, Circulation. Entered as second class matter. September 17, 1918, at the post office at Washington, D C., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1920, by the Patent Office Society. Publication of signed articles in this journal is not to be understood as an adoption by the Patent Office Society of the views expressed therein. The editors are glad to have pertinent articles submitted. VOL. II. FEBRUARY, 1920. EDITORIAL. No. 6. In this number of the Journal is printed in full H. R. 11984, reported to the House of Representatives Feb. 7: accompanying it is the report on the Bill by Mr. Nolan from the Committee on Patents, with the unanimous recommendation that it be placed before the House for adoption at the earliest possible moment. Lack of space forbids a discussion here of the details of the Bill and Report. The changes in the statutes pro 'vided in the Bill may be ascertained by a comparison of their present wording with the language proposed for them. The Report is devoted to setting forth the conditions in the Patent Office which doubtless impelled the Patents Committee to favorably consider the sections of the Bill relating to force and salaries. The Report acknowledges a wide-spread desire for this legislation. More evidence of interest in the subject is found in recent actions taken by the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and the Patent Law Association of Chicago, paragraphed in another column of this issue, and in Bulletin No. 9, Dec. 10, 1919, of the American Patent Law Association, which is devoted almost entirely to the "Condition of Affairs in the Patent Office." The question now is-how this widespread interest can best be made effective to produce the desired result. The Bill and Report in printed form are now available to all congressmen and our reprint gives all the necessary data for their identification. The time has now arrived when those who desire the various proposed improvements in the statutes should say so; it is up to those who have been demanding better service from the Patent Office to now urge the passage of this Bill. An opportunity is now offered to inventors and manufacturers whose business and prosperity may largely depend upon the issuance of valid patents, to rise in their place and most earnestly urge that this legislation be immediately passed. The iron is now hot. The Bill makes no radical changes in our system of patent law. It imposes no financial burden on the public, as its expenditures come within the estimated revenues of the Office with two hundred thousand dollars to spare. Its enactment will increase the efficiency of the work of the Office, restore the morale of the employees, assure an enhanced output of patents, and promote the public welfare. Philip Francis Thomas, the eighth Commissioner of Patents was a native of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, born in Easton, Talbot County, on September 12, 1810. For half a century he was more or less active in Maryland politics and he was for some years one of its foremost sons. Decidedly original, he refused to follow the beaten political track of his Whig ancestors and to the surprise of his friends and neighbors of the Whig faith, who were in overwhelming majority in his native county, he declared himself a Democrat. He was regarded by his relatives and friends as a man of "most erratic temperament" because he "occasionally dealt fogyism and excess respectability some rather telling blows." Buchholz's "Governors of Maryland." His father was Dr. Tristram Thomas who practiced medicine on the Eastern Shore for more than fifty years. His mother was Miss Maria Francis. Educated at the Academy at Easton, and at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., he studied law in the office of Wm. Hayward and was admitted to the bar in 1831. Mr. Thomas' political career began in 1834 at the age of 24, when he ran for the legislature of his state and was badly defeated. He ran for the same office in 1836, defeated by 200 votes and again in 1837 when he fell short only 17 votes. At this point in Maryland history the State Constitution was amended to provide for the election of the Governor by the direct vote of the people. As indicative of Thomas' growing power and leadership in his home county, at the Democratic State Convention in Baltimore in 1838, at which he was a delegate from Talbot County, he pledged Talbot County to the Democratic candidate for Governor, and fulfilled his pledge by carrying the county for the Democratic candidacy by a majority of 130 and he was himself elected to the legislature by a majority of 190. Mr. Thomas entered National politics in 1839 when he was elected to the 26th Congress from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He carried this Whig stronghold for his party by 188 votes. During this Congress he had little opportunity to exercise his ability as a statesman because he was sawing wood on the Committee on Elections during the whole session. He refused a renomin ation and resumed the practice of law at Easton but later accepted public office as Judge of the Land Office Court for the Eastern Shore. He was returned to the State Legislatures of 1843 and 1845 and nominated for Governor in 1847, being elected by a majority of 709 votes on October 6, 1847. He was an ardent advocate of State financial and constitutional reform, his first message to the Legislature Jan. 3, 1848 forcibly presenting the need of these reforms. The State's credit was restored in his administration by the resumption of the interest payment on the State bonds and the way was paved for the revision of the State's 70 year old constitution, a convention having been called for this purpose at the close of his administration. At this period in our National history, the troubled atmosphere preceding the clouds of Civil War was already appearing. The Wilmot Proviso, threatening an embargo on the extension of slavery into non-slave territory, was pending before Congress, the abolition movement was looming up as a powerful force in national politics, and several States in their legislatures had already taken positive sides on the slavery extension question. Gov. Thomas had strong feelings on this question, thinking that the constitutional rights of a certain class of his fellow citizens were about to be trampled upon. On assembling the legislature Dec. 31, 1849, the Governor reviewed the financial and general affairs of the State. Under his administration Maryland's credit was restored; her debts were being paid. He referred to the resolutions passed by several southern States on the exclusion of slavery from the new territories in the following forceful language: (Sharf's History of Maryland). "Resolutions of the legislatures of the States of Virginia, S. Carolina, Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire and Vermont in relation to the subject of slavery in the territories are herewith transmitted, and will be found to present the true issues between the North and South sections of the Union upon that dangerous and threatening question in a manner that cannot fail to commend itself to your most thoughtful consideration, and to elicit a solemn declaration of the policy which Maryland will feel bound to adopt, should a choice of alternatives be precipitated upon her. The dark and baleful spirit of abolitionism which has hitherto contributed so fearfully to alienate the affections of the people of these States, to disturb the harmony and to endanger the permanence of the Union, is still progressing in its mad career unmindful of the compromises which alone imparted vitality to the Constitution and regardless alike of the admonitions of patriotism, the dictates of Justice and the equal and undeniable rights of all the members of this confederacy. Concealing its lust for political power under the spacious garb of an enlarged philanthropy while luxuriating upon the labor of the slave, it wages unceasing and relentless warfare against the rights of his master. What was once considered and treated as an impotent faction of wicked or deluded fanatics, from the very impunity which a cautious forbearance too often affords, has now assumed the character of a formidable sectional organization, resolved, unless the signs of the times are strangely deceptive, not only to appropriate to its own exclusive use the common property of the United States, but by forcibly depriving the southern States of all participation in its enjoyment, to disgrace and degrade them from an equal rank with the other States of the Union. The Constitution of the United States recognizes without limitation the institution of domestic slavery, guarantees its existence and vindicates the right of the owner to the possession and service of the slave; and it cannot be doubted that if the power now claimed to be exercised by Congress to prohibit the emigration of the people of the slave-holding States with their property and effects of all kinds to any territory owned by the United States had been asserted at the time when the Constitution was submitted for ratification to the States, that instrument would not have been adopted, nor could the Union have ever been formed. If the union of the States can only be preserved by an unconditional surrender of clear constitutional rights, secured to its members, if the Federal Government, instead of a system of liberty, equality, and law, is to be perverted into an engine of force, oppression and fraud, then indeed has the day arrived when the South at least must pause in sorrow and anguish to calculate its value. "The crisis though impending is not yet come and the evil power of disunion so much to be deprecated may, it is devoutly to be hoped, be forever averted. Non-inter |