PROTECTION FOR THE PUBLIC.

Improvements and inventions in industry today are being used for the benefit of a small minority--the employers and employees in the particular business in which the improvement is installed. During the reign of free competition in the nineteenth century it was generally assumed that the employer had a right to all the profit he could make. Faced by a mass of competitors he could not boost the price and thereby make the public pay. But with the growth of organized labor came a demand from the workers that all payment should be at a standard rate, and hence that the profit on inventions should be solely theirs.

This natural growth of organized labor led to two results, both detrimental to the consumer. On the one hand, the contentions for profits on inventions and improved management by employers and employees resulted in a compromise whereby both share in the profits.

This in itself, is fair enough. But we are faced, either by understandings between capital and labor which all to take into consideration the public for by capitalistic solidarity which interferes with the free play of competition. The result is that the public does not share in the benefits growing out of inventions.

That inventors should receive good rewards from their inventions cannot be denied, for without inventions modern business methods would never have been possible. But it is equally undeniable that the public has a right to share in the improvements. A diminishing cost of production must benefit the consumer. In order to safeguard him, the public must make itself heard above the wranglings of labor-capital disputes.