he public is the permanent
beneficiary.

_Patents as a Means of Curtailing Monopolies._--While a patent may
sometimes sustain a powerful monopoly it may also afford the best
means of breaking one up. Often have small producers, by the use of
patented machinery, trenched steadily on the business of great
combinations, till they themselves became great producers, secure in
the possession of a large field and abundant profit. Moreover, in the
case of a patent which builds up a monopoly and continues for the full
seventeen years of its duration unsupplanted by any rival device, the
public is likely to get more benefit than the patentee, or even the
company which uses his invention. In widening the market for its
product the company must constantly cater to new circles of marginal
consumers, and must give to all but the marginal ones an increasing
benefit that is in excess of what it costs them. Probably few patents
have been issued in America which illustrate the unfavorable features
of the system more completely than did the Bell telephone patent,
which gave to a single company during a long period a monopoly of the
telephone business; and yet there are few men of affairs who do not
perceive that, in the saving of time which the telephone effected and
in the acceleration of business which it caused, they gained from the
outset more than they lost in the shape of high fees. Something of the
same kind is true of the users of domestic telephones; for though they
may cost more than they should, they do their share toward placing
those who use them on a higher level of comfort.

_The Law of Survival of Efficient Organization._--In broad outlines we
have depicted the conditions which favor technical progress. There is
a law of survival which, when competition rules, eliminates poor
methods and introduces better ones in endless succession. Under a
regime of secure monopoly this law of survival scarcely operates,
though desire for gain causes a progress which is less rapid and sure.
The same may be said of changes in organization, in so far as that
means a cooerdinating of the labor and the capital within an
establishment. When the manager of a mill so marshals his forces as to
get a much larger product per man and per dollar of invested capital
than a rival can do, he has that rival at his mercy and can absorb his
business and drive him from the field. In order to survive, any
producer must keep pace with the aggressive and gro