asy one. The experiences of
many of them often lie along paths that seem like the proverbial "way
of the transgressor." This was fitly exemplified in the case of Henry
A. Bowman, a colored inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts, who devised
and patented a new method of making flags. After he had established a
paying business on his invention, the information came to him that a
New York rival was using the same invention and "cutting" his
business. Bowman brought suit for infringement, but, as he informed
the writer, the suit went against him on a legal technicality, and
being unable to carry the case through the appellate tribunals, the
destruction of his business followed.

One inventor, J. W. Benton, of Kentucky, completed an invention of a
derrick for hoisting, and being without sufficient means to travel to
Washington to look after the patent, he packed the model in a grip,
and walked from Kentucky to Washington in order to save carfare. He
obtained his patent, October 2, 1900.

One other instance in which the inventor regards his experience as one
of special hardship is the case of E. A. Robinson of Chicago. He
obtained several patents for his inventions, among which are an
electric railway trolley, September 19, 1893; casting composite and
other car wheels, November 23, 1897; a trolley wheel, March 22, 1898;
a railway switch, September 17, 1907; and a rail, May 5, 1908. He
regards the second patent as covering his most valuable invention. He
says that this was infringed on by two large corporations, the
American Car and Foundry Company, and the Chicago City Railway
Company. He endeavored to stop them by litigation, but the court
proceedings in the case[21] appear to reveal some rather discouraging
aspects of a fight waged between a powerless inventor on the one side
and two powerful corporations on the other. So far as is known, the
case is still pending.

These instances of hardships, however, in the lot of inventors are in
no sense peculiar to colored inventors. They merely form a part of the
hard struggle always present in our American life--the struggle for
the mighty dollar; and in the field of invention as elsewhere the race
is not always to the swift. A man may be the first to conceive a new
idea, the first to translate that idea into tangible, practical form
and reduce it to a patent, but often that "slip betwixt the cup and
the lip" leaves him the last to get any reward for his inventive
genius.

Beca