The damper put on the inventive genius of America by the trusts operates in
half a dozen ways: The first thing discovered by the genius whose device
extends into a field controlled by a trust is that he can't get capital to
make and market his invention. If you want money to build your plant and
advertise your product and employ your agents and make a market for it, where
are you going to get it? The minute you apply for money or credit, this
proposition is put to you by the banks: "This invention will interfere with
the established processes and the market control of certain great industries.
We are already financing those industries, their securities are in our hands;
we will consult them."

It may be, as a result of that consultation, you will be informed that it is
too bad, but it will be impossible to "accommodate" you. It may be you will
receive a suggestion that if you care to make certain arrangements with the
trust, you will be permitted to manufacture. It may be you will receive an
offer to buy your patent, the offer being a poor consolation dole. It may be
that your invention, even if purchased, will never be heard of again.

That last method of dealing with an invention, by the way, is a particularly
vicious misuse of the patent laws, which ought not to allow property in an
idea which is never intended to be realized. One of the reforms waiting to be
undertaken is a revision of our patent laws.

In any event, if the trust doesn't want you to manufacture your invention,
you will not be allowed to, unless you have money of your own and are willing
to risk it fighting the monopolistic trust with its vast resources. I am
generalizing the statement, but I could particularize it. I could tell you
instances where exactly that thing happened. By the combination of great
industries, manufactured products are not only being standardized, but they
are too often being kept at a single point of development and efficiency. The
increase of the power to produce in proportion to the cost of production is
not studied in America as it used to be studied, because if you don't have to
improve your processes in order to excel a competitor, if you are human you
aren't going to improve your processes; and if you can prevent the competitor
from coming into the field, then you can sit at your leisure, and, behind
this wall of protection which prevents the brains of any foreigner competing
with you, you can rest at your ease for a whole generation.

Can any one who reflects on merely this attitude of the trusts toward
invention fail to understand how substantial, how actual, how great will be
the effect of the release of the genius of our people to originate, improve,
and perfect the instruments and circumstances of our lives? Who can say what
patents now lying, unrealized, in secret drawers and pigeonholes, will come
to light, or what new inventions will astonish and bless us, when freedom is
restored?