THE LAW THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
© 2001 James David Pearce
Clem had just beaten Elmo in another checker game at Seba Underwood's barber shop in Murfreesboro, and since being beaten at checkers always made Elmo feel sort of low, he ~ as was his wont ~ retreated to a corner seat near the window, picked up an old magazine and just dropped out of the conversation.
Clem liked to win at checkers, but he didn't particularly like seeing his older relative downhearted. He decided to ask Elmo a question, as he had learned over time that the best way to pull Elmo out of a funk was to let him think he was educating some lesser being about some of life's greater questions.
And, as Clem knew it would, the strategy worked ~ because Clem had selected a question that Elmo could get his (and his wife's) teeth* into.
"Elmo," he had asked, "what do you think about the fact that during all recorded history ~ from around 6000 B.C. until around 1800 A.D. ~ nothing ever changed? In all that time, people lived in just about the same kind of houses, rode in just about the same kind of vehicles, worked by the same daylight or the same kind of artificial light, cooked over the same kind of fires and wrapped up in the same kind of clothes. That was about 8,000 years!
"And, then," Clem continued, making room for Elmo to put some real meat into his answer, "along about 1800 A.D. all heck started breaking loose, and everything changed.
"Changes in housing, transportation, manufacturing and merchandising and everything else just exploded ~ one thing right after the other ~ and the changes never stopped once since. I mean we've gone from chariots, buggies and spinning jennies to Sears Roebuck, planes and the moon in no time at all.
"What in the world brought all that about so sudden, Elmo?" asked Clem.
"Clem," said Elmo, "you have asked a good question."
He put aside his pipe and cleared his throat.
"And if you'll just sit and listen, I can give you a mighty good answer."
So Clem, and several others, sat and listened, and Elmo set out to explain it all.
"I'm going to tell you about the law that changed the world," he said.
~~~~~~~~~
This is the way Elmo explained the law that changed the world.
Since way back in time, the world always has been run by important people. Sometimes they were kings, sometimes they were proconsuls, czars, "greats," pharoahs, or even queens, dukes and princes, presidents, senators or just plain rich people.
Whoever they were, they were the people in charge. And since the beginning of time, the people in charge always knew that if they were going to stay in charge, they had to keep the status quo. Meaning they knew very well that it was in their best interest to see that things didn't change too much.
Things went along pretty well like this for 8,000 years or so at least ~ pretty well, that is, for the people in charge.
But during all that time, try as the people in charge might, they never could find but one way to keep the population at large from coming up with new ideas and making general nuisances of themselves.
Their solution always was that every time somebody came up with some new idea or some new way of doing something, if he didn't run straight to the boss-man and hand it over, they'd see to it that he would wind up minus his head or wrapped around a pole with a fire tickling his toes ~ maybe even nailed to a cross.
But if it was some really good new idea and if the miscreant could keep it away from the boss-man, then sometimes it would turn out that he himself might become the new boss-man, dumping the old overlord.
And then, of course, he quickly learned that it was in his interest to see that there were no further changes that might come along and endanger his new and hard-earned winnings. And so he then would start keeping an ax-blade ready for anybody coming along with some idea that might upset his apple-cart.
Sufficient to say, this situation tended to keep a damper on new ideas for a long, long time. Up until the "civilized" world discovered that there was a whole new "uncivilized" world out there for the taking ~ and the in-charge people made the mistake of letting the not-in-charge people get to these new fields first.
Now, after these out-of-control people had been in their new quarters awhile, they became so contentious and contrary that they just decided to disassociate themselves completely from the old places and the old ways.
They called it "independence" ~ a Declaration, in fact.
~~~~~~~~~
Independence brought its own problems, and soon the brighter brains in the crowd decided that if they were going to get along at all, they were going to have to compromise and keep some of the old ways ~ like putting somebody in charge.
But everybody had a big mistrust of having anybody really in charge, and the only solution they could come up with was to write a "Constitution" ~ one so simple and at the same time so complicated that nobody they might put in charge could easily figure how to do an end-run and take over completely. They even decided to add a "Bill of Rights."
~~~~~~~~~
Now, the thing was, these people who did all this were the folks who were the real "brains" of the new world, and who already had proved that fact by acquiring most of the wealth therein.
But when they got down to the task of writing Declarations, Constitutions, Bills of Rights and other such, they were so intent on distancing themselves from the old-time bosses in the old world that they wrote some mighty convincing literature about what "men" ought to do and what they intended to do.
Problem was, they didn't pay too much attention to some of the nouns and pronouns they were using ~ what words meant at the time and what they might come to mean in times to come ~ and the general effect was that as a few years began to go by, a lot of people came to be considered "men" who might not have been thought so in the late 1700s. (After a long time, even Africans, women, Chinese and even some Mexicans began to profit from that one loosely used noun.)
Whatever the Founders and Constitution-writers had intended to say, they had let the cats out of the bags, and what they did say came to be taken seriously and soon began to have some profound effects.
~~~~~~~~~
Now, back to progress in homes, transportation, manufacturing and merchandising:
Along about the same time the Republic-builders were indulging in their slips of the tongue about equality and freedom and so forth, a set of junior lawmakers working on the other side of town came up with their own set of good intentions that didn't work exactly the way they had intended.
They called their new invention the Patent Law. It was put into effect in 1790.
~~~~~~~~~
The intent of the Patent Law was good. It was written to allow a person who came up with a really new gadget to make a lot of Continental dollars from it without having to worry about a lot of claim-jumping imitators horning in on the territory. In other words it re-instituted ~ in a minor way for the marketplace ~ the old overlord rule of "This is mine and I'm in control. And I'm going to be the one who is going to gain from it."
Seemed fair. He built it. Let him profit from it.
The law worked well, producing almost instantly new "kings of commerce" from among the brighter tradesmen of the land.
Then old problems resurfaced. When somebody invented something new that really worked, he quickly found that it would be in his interest if nobody could come up with anything different or better that would trim his proceeds. And the new kings strove mightily to maintain their status quo. Indefinitely.
Then they began to run into a technical problem with the Patent Law.
~~~~~~~~~
It had occurred to somebody on a back bench that maybe if someone did build something really new, it might be best if he wasn't allowed to control it forever and pass it down like the old kings had done. They'd had enough of kings ~ and queens.
What to do about that? Well, after a little talk it was decided to insert a cutoff point ~ 17 years. Long enough for any kind of "king," regal or mercantile, they decided.
The inventor thus would be allowed to make all he could for a certain length of time, but after that date the ownership would revert to the masses. "Public use," they called it. They did decide that if he could make some changes to it and improve it, he could patent his new idea for another 17 years. And so on and so on. But if he didn't ~ tough.
~~~~~~~~~
To budding industrialists, the cutoff wasn't much of a problem at first, because most people didn't live all that long after inventing something new and wonderful, anyway. But as home, health and transportation conditions improved under the new law that allowed any blacksmith or jack-of-all-trades to advance civilization and line his pockets alone as a result, life-spans began to expand, and some of the inventors chafed under the 17-year restriction and resorted to ingenious methods to maneuver around it.
The situation stayed in flux all through the 1800s, up until the early 1900s, and resulted in things like "tycoons," "trusts," "robber barons" and Teddy Roosevelt, as well as ever-increasing benefits to the public at large from the cornucopia of new items flowing from the 17-year horn of plenty.
With Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison ~ not to mention the Carnegies, Harrimans, Pullmans and Rockefellers ~ the byproduct of the 17-year protection of inventions reached full flood.
Electric motors, airplanes, automobiles and other appliances roared around the country in ever-increasing quantities and quality.
And despite the best efforts of some of the genius inventors to stem the tide once their work had put them on top, other geniuses always soon followed and improved on the predecessors, and progress was in full flower.
~~~~~~~~~
"You have to understand," said Elmo, "Henry Ford was a smart man, and built a better automobile, called the Model T, with his 17-year patents. And it was proper that he was able to get filthy rich from that car. But then he decided that no better auto could ~ or should ~ be built.
"If Old Henry had had his way the Model T would have been the only car ever built. We'd be driving them today ~ and every one of them would be black.
"But even with all his money, he couldn't hold on to all his patents after that 17 years, and new auto builders came along with their new patents and went around him like he was standing still.
"Thomas Edison worked like a beaver, and used his patents to electrify the wealthiest portion of the country with direct current. But when he decided it would be best if nobody messed with alternating current, he was zapped by his competition with their 17-year protection.
"Orville and Wilbur Wright built an airplane and were real proud of it. They thought it was the best airplane in the world, and that if anybody built a better one, it would be them.
"But as smart and as honest as they were, if that 17-year cutoff hadn't been there to hobble Orville and Wilbur, we'd probably be flying now in something just about like the one they flew in 1903.
~~~~~~~~~
"So you see," said Elmo, "it's nice to have geniuses come along and show us better ways.
"But it's even better to be able to cut 'em off at the knees when they want the world to stop with them on top.
"Particularly when somebody else comes along with a better idea."
~~~~~~~~~
"Mighty countries grow from small mistakes," said Elmo. "If you really wanted things to stay the same always, you would have to watch your nouns and pronouns, and you would have to be careful about letting some smart-aleck sitting on a back bench slip his two cents' worth into the mix when everybody else is getting sleepy.
"Because," said Elmo, "that's how we got where we are."
~~~~~~~~~
(Editor's note: Here it must be stated that Elmo arrived
at these conclusions well before the days
of IBM and Bill Gates. ~ JP)
~~~~~~~~~
*Elmo: I've got to get on home. It's time for Cellie to eat lunch.
Clem: Why do you have to go home so your wife can eat lunch?
Elmo: Well, I've got our teeth.
~~~
W. Gary Parker and Elmo L. Parker
relax after weighty discussions
of major issues of the day
~~~~~~~~~
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