Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

We assert as a fact that if the steamboat presented to the Academy of Sciences by Fulton were now submitted to the judgment of a committee of machine builders, they would declare unanimously that the boat could not navigate. We wish in no way to seek to depreciate the acknowledgments which mankind owes to Fulton; but his invention, as all are at starting, was only a sketch, which required half a century of labour to perfect and to make as practical as it now is.

Here there is room for an observation which must be noted.

The advocates for the principle of property in inventions fall into ecstacies before a transatlantic steamer, and exclaim, “Behold, what a crying injustice! what deplorable ingratitude! Society has denied the rights of the inventor to this wonder of the sea! He died in poverty, or nearly so.”

Others go further back, and attribute to Solomon de Caux, or to Papin, all the honour; they forget that between Papin, or Solomon de Caux and Fulton, a crowd of men of genius brought their contributions of knowledge, experiment, and work of every kind; and that between Fulton and the makers of our day there are so many inventors, so many explorers, fortunate or unfortunate, ridiculous or serious, whose attempts or applications have helped to perfect the steam-engine, that it may truly be said that every one has had a hand in it.

It is the same with the railway, the electric telegraph, and the different machines for spinning, carding, weaving, &c.

IX.

To pretend, as does the defender of the principle of property in inventions, in the ninth paragraph of his work, that the sudden and inconsiderate introduction of a new invention may cause a sensible injury to existing manufacturers, and that it is consequently advisable to maintain the system of Patents, which during a certain time limits their use and hinders production, to prevent the lowering of prices immediately at least; so to pretend is to renew the plea of the protected manufacturers, who demanded that the greatest precautions should be taken to facilitate the transition from Protection to Free-trade. But we do not see clearly what benefit there can be to the community at large in delaying the advantages to be derived from an invention. The misunderstood interests of certain manufacturers may appear to require this delay, but common sense tells us that manufacturers and consumers have every interest in immediately adopting every invention which saves labour, capital, and time.

If we look back, we will see that a delay of this kind would have retarded for an indefinite period the discoveries of Columbus in order to avoid a sensible injury to the monopoly which Venice had acquired in Eastern commerce. We maintain, as indeed experience proves, that however innovating inventions may be, displacement of labour occurs gradually. We will only cite, in support of this assertion, the well-known instance of the substitution of printing for manuscript copying. It may be answered that the substitution of mechanical spinning and weaving for hand-work caused great suffering. We answer, that you should blame the system of Patents, which, raising inordinately the cost of the machines, must have restricted labour, although they lowered the price of the product. If there had been no royalty to pay to the inventor, the number of the machines would have rapidly increased, and a greater number of workmen would at once have found employment similar to that to which they had been accustomed.

How many enterprising and intelligent speculators would most eagerly have availed themselves of these new outlets for their activity, if the course had been cleared of all these obstructions which the law has arbitrarily established.

At the risk of being considered by the honourable Professor grossly ignorant of the laws of political economy, we do not believe that monopolies will always exist, as he ventures to affirm. We know that there always will be intellectual superiority, unrivalled artistic ability, or special natural advantages; but these do not constitute monopolies, in the proper acceptation of the term; and the object we shall not cease to strive for is that no others shall exist.

X.

It is beyond our province to consider the inquiries of M. le Hardy de Beaulieu as to the best plan of securing to inventors exclusive right in their discoveries. To take up this question is to undertake the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, or the squaring of the circle; several generations have vainly grappled with it, and the different attempts made without satisfactory results in almost every country prove this conclusively.

But the honourable Professor seems to calculate on the improvement of public morals, in order to reach the point where every attempt against the property of the inventor shall be considered as guilty as robbery, or as any injury done to property existing in material shape.

Under the uncompromising Protective system also it was attempted to improve the morals of the public, who would not see the equal guilt of the smuggler and the robber, and always loudly protested when repression was enforced by bloodshed.

No reform of public morals will change the nature of these acts; they will always be received as the appeal of right against abuse; and we would deeply pity the country where it would be sufficient to say such is the law, and where no conscience might protest against it.

XI.

“Discovery, the appropriation and creation of outlets, is too complicated a work,” says M. le Hardy de Beaulieu, “for the inventor singly, and especially without the aid of capital, to undertake with sufficient chance of success.”

Here again we believe the learned economist is in error; he seems to imagine one inventor arriving at perfection either at a jump, or after many attempts—one inventor giving us at once our ocean steamer, or a spinning-mill with a hundred thousand spindles! Inventions go more slowly; when they spring from the brain of the thinker, they are only sketches, and no man in his senses will risk a large capital before making many trials, and that only on a small scale. We do not believe there has been a single invention which, after numerous trials, has not been modified, improved, and perfected.

And how many have at last been thrown into oblivion, from which they will never be recalled?

Also, when we see the defenders of property in invention draw a sad picture of the piercing miseries which inventors of these last have had to endure, we are always tempted to ask them to show us the pitiful account of ruin caused among those who placed faith in their promises and delusions. Every medal has its reverse, and if more than one real inventor has been misunderstood, many of the too-confident have been victims of the mad and inapplicable ideas of inventors who imagined themselves men of genius.

Is the law, which seems to promise an Eldorado to all inventors, to blame for these losses, for these undeserved sufferings?

Bernard de Palissy’s saying, “Poverty hinders the success of the clever man,” is often quoted. But this saying will always be true, whatever the law may be. Can we admit that if perpetual property of invention had existed in his time, Bernard would more easily have found the money which he required?

The success of an invention is secured by the services it can render being easily understood, immediate, and speedily realisable. The capitalist, in dealing with hazardous undertakings—and inventors’ undertakings “are always hazardous”—does not calculate on perpetuity. He works for immediate and large profits; he is in a hurry to realise, because he knows that some other invention may dispossess him of all his advantages. Little does he care, therefore, about the perpetuity.

XII.

In his twelfth and last paragraph the learned Professor answers several minor objections to the system of property in inventions—objections which seem to us not to carry great weight.

However, in answer to the objection taken from the case of two applications for similar Patents, made at intervals of a few minutes only, the eminent economist says that this case occurs only at rare intervals, and making light of the rights of the slower, affirms that it is not worth considering. Does not this denial of a right on account of its infrequency, however, seem to show how arbitrary and artificial is the constituting of property in invention?

We are among those who believe in the harmony of all economic relations, of all legitimate interests; and when we see the right of one sacrificed to false exigencies, we mistrust the exigencies. We believe them unjust and contrary to the principles of equity, which forms the basis of all economic science. We should wish to have seen M. le Hardy de Beaulieu more logical in his deductions, claiming, as he has done, for real property [la propriété foncière] that the right of one ought to prevail over the interest of the greater number, and give a chance of obtaining an indemnity, if he could not be assured of a part of the property [Donner ouverture a l’obtention d’une indemnité si l’on ne pouvait lui assurer une part de propriété].

But we repeat, these questions of the arrangement [organization] of property, which we do not acknowledge, are beyond our province, and if we accidentally touch upon them, it is only to show how little the foundations of this right are similar to those on which rests the principle of material property.

In recapitulation, we reject property in inventions and the advantages claimed for it, because it seems to us that all this scaffolding of legal prescription and Government protection only results in throwing out of their natural course a crowd of workmen who would become more useful to society and to themselves in ceasing to pursue chimeras.

We reject the proposed assimilation of this property to that of the soil, because the privilege sought to be created cannot fail to hinder and lessen the right of each member of the body politic. We reject this privilege because nothing justifies it; the services rendered to society by inventors being nowise different in their nature from those daily conferred by skilful manufacturers, intelligent agriculturists, _savants_, navigators, &c.

Finally, we reject it because history attests that great discoveries were made before there was any conception of such property, and that it could hardly be in operation at this day, except with regard to modifications, or, if you will, improvements [perfectionnements], which do not merit this abstraction from the common right.

ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS (FROM THE MAY NUMBER OF THE _JOURNAL DES ECONOMISTES_).

The question of granting or denying a property in inventions is of such importance that the discussion raised by the honourable Belgian Professor, M. le Hardy de Beaulieu, ought not to be allowed to drop, and that we should try to renew it.

We believe it to be of importance for the future of manufactures and of progress, and most especially to the security of real property, that whatever is doubtful and disputed in this question be deeply studied, and that all should be agreed as to what property is, and if this title ought to be applied to all or any of the inventions which daily start up.

M. le Hardy de Beaulieu pretends that one of the most frequent errors of those whose enlightenment ought most to guard them against it is to believe that property being inherent in matter, is, like it, imperishable, and that property in land especially is as durable as the land itself. He adds that we should beware of it, because this error lays open landed property without defence to the attacks of communists and socialists, who, sliding down the incline of irresistible logic, are fatally led to declare all property illegitimate, to whatever purpose it is applied.

Here, it seems to us, is a misunderstanding which may be easily explained.

We do not believe that property is inherent in matter, any more than we believe that value is confined to any given substance. We believe that property is the result, the consequence, of human labour which has been incorporated in matter. As long as value conferred on land by labour endures, so long the property has a _raison d’être_, and cannot be contested. It is labour which has allowed the utilisation of the productive faculty of the soil, and productive faculty remains, like the property, as long as labour is bestowed in preserving, improving, and increasing it.

M. le Hardy de Beaulieu adds that he could cite numerous examples of lands abandoned or sold at a nominal price by their owners, either because they had exhausted and rendered them unproductive by an unintelligent culture, or because they had not been able to withstand the competition of more fertile soils, recently brought into cultivation or brought nearer the common centre of consumption by a considerable reduction in the expense of transport.

We do not contest this fact, of which the exactness may be verified any day in the increase or diminution of the value of property induced by the various changes brought about either in the grouping of the population, in the modes of culture, or in the means of transport. There are, however, few lands completely abandoned; to find examples, we should probably have to go back to those fatal times when by force of conquest proprietors were removed or all their means of culture and production were suddenly seized.

But we do not see how this can help the argument of M. le Hardy de Beaulieu. It has small relation, it seems to us, to the question of property in inventions, that—perpetual by law, as long as labour continues and renews it—landed property should sometimes come to an end by occurrences or violence such as we have been speaking of.

However, to state all our thoughts on the subject of landed property, we must confess (and here may be seen in all its clearness the radical difference between placing under culture, or cropping land, and working an idea), the vindication of property is found in the fact that land can only be cultivated by one at a time, must be subject to one will, and under one direction. It would be to my injury and the injury of the entire community that Peter should be allowed to plant potatoes in the field where Paul has already sowed wheat, or that James should open a quarry where John has built a house, and so on.

As we have already said, the power of the lever, the laws of gravity, those of the expansion of steam, the attraction of the magnet, the caloric of coal, the facility of traction imparted by the wheel, the optical properties of glass, &c., may be utilised to the great profit of all, in a thousand different ways, by a thousand individuals at once, without the efforts of any one being diminished, hindered, obstructed, or lessened, as to their useful result, except by the beneficent laws of competition.

“The first cause of property,” says M. Matthieu Walkoff,[4] “is the impossibility of matter being moved in more than one direction at one time, or, to state it otherwise, of its being subject at one time to more than one will.” “If matter,” says this eminent economist, “were gifted with ubiquity, like ideas, knowledge, or truth, which several may use simultaneously, and each in his own way, property would never have been constituted; and it is even difficult to imagine how any idea on this phenomenon could have arisen in men’s minds.” “In fact,” he adds, “to preserve property in an idea would have required that it should never have been expressed nor practised, to hinder it, being divulged, which would have been equivalent to its non-existence.”

We do not go so far as M. Walkoff; we do not affirm that the impossibility of matter being subject at one time to more than one will is the _first cause_ of property; but we say it is the distinctive character of property, and, like him, we cannot see a subject, for property is a shape, plan, or system, which, to see once, as in a spade, the wheel, the corkscrew, is to possess an indelible idea.

Besides, the author whom we have quoted expresses so clearly our opinion on this subject, that we must further borrow from him the following quotation, which will not be uncalled for at a time when property itself is threatened. It is of importance that the lawful bounds should be carefully marked:—

“Economists have too much neglected the first cause of the perpetual subjection of matter to exclusive property. They made property to be derived only from a man’s original possession; from himself and his acts; that which leads to possession of the result of his activity. But this reasoning only establishes the indisputable right of the appropriation of that which he appropriates or produces; it does not explain why exclusive property in material things is permanent, and does not show how the very nature of things renders this possession inevitable. It is to the incomplete understanding of the causes of property that is probably attributable the contradictions of those economists who, while professing the doctrine of free labour, are still in favour of the establishment of artificial barriers against the free use by every one of ideas, skill, progress, and other products of the mind, conceived and suggested, or realised, by any one.”

Let us remark here that in fact the manufacturing community, more liberal in practice than the economists in theory, are eager freely to submit to inspection at exhibitions the processes in use at their different factories.

“To require that an idea be subject to only one will,” continues M. Walkoff, “is to require no less an impossibility than to pretend that a material point can obey more than one will—that is to say, that it can be moved in more than one direction at once. It is true that it is not proposed to hinder ideas from being developed; it is desired simply to convert their reproduction or their material realisation into an indefinitely prolonged monopoly. But, in order completely to succeed in anything, it is necessary that the object aimed at be in conformity with the nature of things. Now, is it not placing oneself in opposition to everything which is most natural, this denying to every one the use of an idea? And even where this interdict is most successful, we soon find, in a manner most unassailable by the law, works copied from those to which the law has guaranteed a monopoly. The effect of the interdict is here, as in all regulations contrary to the nature of things, essentially demoralising; it begets fraud, entices to it, even forces to it, in making it useful and often even indispensable. Forbid men, as was once supposed by the witty author of the ‘Sophismes Economiques,’ the use of the right hand, after a few hours, there would not remain, in the eye of the law, a single honest man. It may be boldly affirmed that such a law would be immoral, and all those which recklessly contradict the natural order of things are incontestably such.”

In fact, we repeat, the field which I turned into a garden may not be used by my neighbour as a pasture-land for his cattle; where I have planted a vine another may not plant colza or beet-root; but the steam-engine which I have invented, or the electric power which I have discovered, may be applied to the grinding of corn, or the spinning of cotton, or to the extraction of iron, or to the draining of a marsh, or to traction by land or sea, without the productive force being neutralised, wasted, or lost, like the application of the productive force of the soil to different purposes.

Not only do the various applications of the idea not hinder the inventor in the employment which he may make of it, but if the application made by others is exactly the same as his, he is only subjected to the universal law of competition—a law of progress, if ever there was one.

[4] Precis d’Economic Politique Rationale, page 44; Paris, 1868.

II.

The Hon. M. le Hardy de Beaulieu asks, “Why the effort which consists in rendering productive some natural agent in which this quality was not formerly recognised, should not entitle to a recompense of property in the value given to the natural agent in rendering it productive, in the same way that labour bestowed on barren land to render it productive, to the profit of all, makes him proprietor of that portion of land who performed this labour?”

Here is our answer: He who renders productive some natural agent has an incontestable property in that agent which he has rendered productive, but not in all similar or identical agents in nature; he who converts a certain quantity of water into steam, to obtain a motive force, is incontestably proprietor of the water he employs and of the steam, as well as of the force which he obtains, but the remainder of the water, and of the steam which may be produced from it, and the force which may be derived from it, remain the common property of mankind; that is to say, each should have it in his power to employ an unlimited quantity of water to obtain the same results. The man who first broke up and sowed a field never could have claimed as property all the ground in the world; he only retained for himself, and that reasonably and justly, the portion which he had reclaimed and rendered fertile by his labour.

We may add that he who renders productive some natural agent avails himself in this work of all the acquired knowledge and all the work previously done, and he would unduly monopolise it if the community recognised his exclusive right to it.

It is said that Pascal invented the wheelbarrow; did he not borrow from the social capital both the wheel and the axle, and the two arms, not to speak of the species of box which forms with the other parts the whole wheelbarrow?

Our learned opponent maintains “the perfect identity between the labour of discovery, and of the putting the soil in culture, and of this same labour applied to other natural agents which did not exist in indefinite quantity; and he makes the deduction, having the same result, that inventors placing at the disposal of mankind new quantities of gratuitous utility, not hitherto available, deserve the same reward—property in the natural agent, or portion of this agent, whose gratuitous services have been acquired by mankind.”

We must allow that we do not know of any natural agent of which the quantity is not indefinite, excepting only the earth; but steam, wind, light, electricity, magnetism, the force of attraction, that of weight, the affinity of particles, their divisibility, their different properties, may be employed in whatsoever quantities, and still there would be no perceptible diminution or restraint in the use of them to any one. The only possible restraint is that which comes from the unreflecting action of the law, from artificial hindrances and obstacles which may be made law.

We believe, with Bastiat, that the greatest service that could be conferred on mankind would be to remove the obstacles which stand between his efforts and the supply of his wants.

How does M. le Hardy de Beaulieu not see that no one has the right to make burdensome that which is naturally gratuitous, and that it is just to exact that no one should appropriate any part of what constitutes common property?

That learned Professor of the Brussels Museum tells us the inventor has a right to say to the manufacturer, “Find out my process for yourself if you can, search for it as I have done; but if you wish to spare yourself this labour, and avoid the risk of spending it in vain, consent to yield me a part of the expenses which I save you in simplifying your appliances.” And he asks us if we find this demand unjust or unreasonable.

Not only do we find this demand just and reasonable, but we maintain that it is the only one we can recognise. But M. le Hardy de Beaulieu forgets that, according to the Patent-Laws, things are not thus arranged. The inventor, with the law in his hand, and the law courts to support him, says to the manufacturer, “It is forbidden to you to search and to find; or if you search and find, you are forbidden to use the power or the agent when you have found it: the process which I have invented is my property, and no one has the right to use it, even if his researches, his labour, enable him to discover it; even if he had commenced the search before me, all his labour is lost. I alone am proprietor of this agent, power, or process.” If this system be right, he who first rendered productive the most indispensable natural agent could have confiscated the whole world to his profit.

III.

M. le Hardy de Beaulieu acknowledges that the savage who first thought of substituting a hut, as a habitation, for the cave, has not the right to forbid the construction of others like it.

This concession is as important as the preceding, and we shall probably end in agreeing. We must now inquire where may be found the exact limit between inventions of which imitation is allowed, and those in which it is forbidden.

The man who first made a canoe from the trunk of a tree, either naturally hollow or artificially by fire, or otherwise,—may he forbid his neighbours to make one like it?

If he may, where, then, is the difference between the hut and the boat? If not, what is the reason for this prevention?

From the boat we might gradually go on, up to the latest Patent, by invisible transitions; and we have still to find the exact point at which M. le Hardy de Beaulieu might say, There is the limit!

We do not know whether, in the absence of all positive right which would guarantee a recompense to the inventor of the hut, a natural sentiment of justice would prompt the savages living in that country to make him a present of some useful object as a reward for this service, as M. le Hardy de Beaulieu suggests. We doubt it much; gratitude is an analytic virtue. The savages would probably have a certain respect for this man, whom they would look upon as gifted with superior qualities and faculties, but the presents would only arrive when, the contemporary generations being extinct, cheats and hypocrites would found on the inventions of this man some system of religion.

Yes, we acknowledge the truth and justice of the principle in virtue of which it is said, “Reward for merit.” But it must not be abused. Let a cultivator make a thousand trials, a thousand experiments, to give to the potatoes all the elementary qualities, all the nutritive virtue of wheat, and arrive at the object of his researches—to what recompense will he be entitled? According to the system of M. le Hardy de Beaulieu, no reward could equal the service which this individual would have rendered to mankind.

According to the system of non-property in inventions, this man would only have made his trials and his experiments—he would only have risked his advances of money, of time, and of labour—with the view of being able to sell his potatoes at a higher price than before, and, in fact, they would command a higher price, by means of which he would find himself sufficiently rewarded. This man asks nothing of society; he requires neither Patent, nor guarantee, nor monopoly, nor privilege; because the law has wisely placed beyond the reach of Patents all improvements in agriculture.[5] Does this imply that agriculture no longer progresses, that the breeder of cattle does not improve, that they remain completely _in statu quo_? It is not from M. le Hardy de Beaulieu that we learn that the want of Patents does not hinder for an hour the progressive advance of agriculture; quite the contrary.

Establish the same system for all that concerns manufactures, and inventions will follow one another as rapidly as they now do. They will be more serious, for those who are engaged in them will no longer be excited by the allurements which the Patent-Laws dangle before their eyes, and will no longer lose their time in running after useless things and mere chimeras.

We do not wish to prolong too far this answer, but we cannot pass in silence the arguments which M. le Hardy de Beaulieu thinks he has found in the facts relating to the inventor of the mariner’s compass, and to the discoveries of Lieutenant Maury. We will simply remind him of the following passage from Bastiat: “He who can gain assistance from a natural and gratuitous force confers his services more easily; but for all that, he does not voluntarily renounce any portion of his usual remuneration. In order to move him, there is required external coercion—severe without being unjust. This coercion is put in force by competition. So long as it has not interfered—so long as he who has utilised a natural agent is master of his secret—his natural agent is gratuitous, no doubt; but it is not yet _common_; the victory is gained, but it is for the profit of a single man, or a single class. It is not yet a benefit to all mankind. Nothing is yet changed for the multitude, unless it be that a kind of _service_, though partly rid of the burden of labour, exacts nevertheless full pay [_la rétribution intégrale_]. There is, on one hand, a man who exacts of all his equals the same labour as formerly, although he offers in exchange only his reduced labour; there is, on the other hand, all mankind, which is still obliged to make the same sacrifice of time and labour to obtain a product which henceforth nature partly realises. If this state of things should continue with every invention, a principle of indefinite inequality would be introduced into the world. Not only we should not be able to say, value is in proportion to labour; but we should no more be able to say, value has a tendency to be in proportion to labour. All that we have said of _gratuitous use_, of _progressive community_, would be chimerical. It would not be true that labour [_les services_] is given in exchange for labour [_des services_] in such a manner that the gifts of God pass from hand to hand, _par-dessus le marché_, on the man intended [_destinataire_], who is the consumer. Each one would always exact payment for not only his labour, but also for that portion of the natural forces which he had once succeeded in applying. In a word, humanity would be constituted on the principle of a universal monopoly, in place of the principle of progressive community.”—_Harmonies Economiques_, Vol. vi., p. 354.

We think, with Bastiat, that the use of natural agents ought to be gratuitous, and that no one has the right to artificially monopolise in such a way as to exact royalties [_prélever des redevances_], which are not due, and which often are obstacles almost as insurmountable as those which invention ought naturally to remove.

T. N. BENARD.

[5] Unfortunately, this is not true of British law. The illustration founded on it is (like the rest of these papers) admirable.—R. A. M.

SPEECH OF MICHEL CHEVALIER, AT THE MEETING OF THE “SOCIÉTÉ D’ÉCONOMIE POLITIQUE,” ON THE 5TH JUNE, 1869.

(From the June Number of the _Journal des Economistes_.)