improved articles from coming into general use.

The difference between the English and American inventor and designer
seems to consist in this--that while an Englishman devotes all his
energies to the improvement of an existing shape, the American throws
the old article under his bench and commences _de novo_.

I think I have made out a case against the English hardware
manufacturer, but when I have pointed these matters out to merchants
and ironmongers, I have been met with various reasons for this
manifest inferiority. I do not know how far these excuses may be
valid, but one man says that the reason, as regards locks, is somewhat
as follows: The locksmiths of the district wherein they are made in
many cases work at their own homes; one man making one part of a lock,
while other men make other parts. This goes on generation after
generation, and the men become mere machines, not knowing how the
entire lock is constructed, and not caring to know. Another attributes
it to the influence of the trades-unions, and says that if a
manufacturer wants a different kind of lock, the price for the work is
immediately put higher, even though the actual labor may not be
increased. A third says it is due to the drunkenness of the hands, and
their consequent poverty and physical and social demoralization, which
prevents them from rising to such an intellectual level as will enable
them to see the evils of their system, and adopt the right means to
remove them. A fourth boldly says, "We make these goods because our
customers want them." How far the reasons assigned by the first three
are correct I am unable to say, but for the fourth, the extent to
which the builders of England have patronized the Americans is a
complete answer.

This defense, "Our customers want them," is as old as the hills, and
has been used to cover every kind of deception and inferior article
ever manufactured. Our Lancashire manufacturers use it when they are
charged with sending china clay and mildew (and call it calico) for
the mild Hindoo and the Heathen Chinee to dress themselves in. Our
butter merchants use it when they make up grease and call it butter;
and our hardware merchants use it when they send us sham locks, and
call them brass bushed, etc.

It is the duty of the manufacturer to invent for his customers, and it
is preposterous to say that the builder would prefer that embodiment
of fraud--the English rim-lock, which I showed to you--to the Am