been extended beyond the duration of its most important
patent, and that patent was in its day broader than it should have
been; and yet there never was a time when the use of the telephone in
facilitating business, and in saving time and trouble in a myriad of
ways, did not far outweigh the total cost which the users of
telephones incurred. As we shall soon see, important inventions
invariably confer some benefit on the public at the start. The owner
of the new device must find a market for his products, and must offer
them on terms which will make it for the interest of the public to use
them largely.

_The Effect of Competition in Causing Improvements to
Multiply._--Competition insures a large number of inventors and offers
to each of them a large inducement to use his gifts and opportunities.
A great corporation may employ salaried inventors and, because of its
great capital and large income, it may experiment with inventions with
far less risk to itself than an inventor usually takes. When large
corporations compete actively with one another, the employment of
salaried inventors is very profitable to them; and improvements in
production go on more rapidly than they are likely to do after these
firms consolidate with each other and cease to feel the spur which the
danger of being distanced in a race affords. It is a fact of
observation, and not merely an inference, that monopolies are not as
enterprising as competing companies.

_Effects of Monopoly on the Spirit of Enterprise._--In monopolies,
theoretically, there is the same inducement to adopt inventions as in
the case of competing firms, excepting always the motive of
self-preservation. The monopoly can make money by improvements as
competing firms would do. A perfectly intelligent monopoly, with
disinterested management, would adopt an improvement offered to it as
promptly as any competing firm, if the sole motive were profit. There
is no reason why an intelligent monopoly should hold on to antiquated
machinery, when modern machinery would enable it to stand the cost of
introduction and make a net improvement besides. A competing producer
gains an advantage over his rivals by discarding old machinery and
adopting new at exactly the right time, neither too late nor too
early. The true point of abandonment of the old machine, as we have
already seen, is reached when the labor and capital that now work in
connection with it can make a shade more by casting it of