Do you know, have you
had occasion to learn, that there is no hospitality for invention
nowadays? There is no encouragement for you to set your wits at work to
improve the telephone, or the camera, or some piece of machinery, or some
mechanical process; you are not invited to find a shorter and cheaper way
to make things or to perfect them, or to invent better things to take
their place. There is too much money invested in old machinery; too much
money has been spent advertising the old camera; the telephone plants, as
they are, cost too much to permit their being superseded by something
better. Wherever there is monopoly, not only is there no incentive to
improve, but, improvement being costly in that it "scraps" old machinery
and destroys the value of old products, there is a positive motive against
improvement. The instinct of monopoly is against novelty, the tendency of
monopoly is to keep in use the old thing, made in the old way; its
disposition is to "standardize" everything. Standardization may be all
very well,--but suppose everything had been standardized thirty years
ago,--we should still be writing by hand, by gas-light, we should be
without the inestimable aid of the telephone (sometimes, I admit, it is a
nuisance), without the automobile, without wireless telegraphy.
Personally, I could have managed to plod along without the aeroplane, and
I could have been happy even without moving-pictures.

Of course, I am not saying that all invention has been stopped by the
growth of trusts, but I think it is perfectly clear that invention in many
fields has been discouraged, that inventors have been prevented from
reaping the full fruits of their ingenuity and industry, and that mankind
has been deprived of many comforts and conveniences, as well as of the
opportunity of buying at lower prices.

The damper put on the inventive genius of America by the trusts operates
in half a dozen ways: The first thing discovered by the genius whose
device extends into a field controlled by a trust is that he can't get
capital to make and market his invention. If you want money to build your
plant and advertise your product and employ your agents and make a market
for it, where are you going to get it? The minute you apply for money or
credit, this proposition is put to you by the banks: "This invention will
interfere with the established processes and the market control of certain
great industries. We are already financing those