The superintendent of the Patent Office at Washington has confirmed the official report of the French Patent Office--that there has been no invention of especial value which has not been either found or improved upon by some poor man. The best life-preserver was invented by a sailor who had fallen overboard and had been nearly drowned. An obscure native of a duchy bordered on three sides by powerful nations invented the quick-firing gun, which can fire six hundred shots while the ordinary gun is being loaded. It was a poor Cambridge machinist, whose family often suffered from lack of food, who invented the sewing-machine, which has changed the condition of home life throughout the world, and relieved women of one of their great household burdens. The ship's chronometer was made practical for navigation by a man who had been lost at sea and despaired of ever again reaching the shore. The locomotive, which has contributed more than any other one thing to the spread of our people over our vast country, was given to the world by an Englishman, Stephenson, who in early life had been so poor that he had little schooling.
More than eight hundred agricultural inventions were patented in 1905 and 1906, and every one of them is the invention of some poor man or woman.
As inventors, women have in recent years become close competitors of men, and from kitchen utensils to floor covering have added much to home comfort and home furnishing. All the household articles exhibited lately in a large shop in Chicago were either invented or improved by women. They have invented many things for agriculture, for manufacturing, and for school furnishings--and not a few of the great patents which have been issued to men should have been issued to their wives. Women have often awaked an idea which men have wrought out for practical purposes. The majority of the benefactors of the world made their discoveries to relieve some necessity which oppressed them personally. This is especially true of stock-breeding, where the improvements of observant men have so greatly increased the value of domestic animals.
The value of any study depends entirely upon what it has done for us and what we are doing with it. Lowell says that mere learning is as insignificant as the collection of old postage-stamps. Professor Virchow was obliged to try various foods in his experiments with his own cats, before he discovered what has ever since been of such benefit to all breeders of animals throughout the world. From the earliest days the bee has offered a store of the most useful information, but it would never have been known had it not been for such patient observers as Huber, who, although blind, discovered more about bees than the world had ever known before his day, through the patient service of his wife and valet. The mouse in the field, the squirrel in the tree, the eagle in her nest, the fish in the brook, all have taught us valuable lessons in conduct. They have doubtless given hints which have enabled observant men to give mankind many a useful invention.