Page:Masterpieces of American Humor (Little Blue Book 959).djvu/36

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Few people have any accurate idea of the immense number of ingenious inventions that are annually patented at Washington. It is creditable to the inventors that for the most part these inventions are intended to serve some really useful end and to meet some obvious want. Nevertheless, there are inventors who appear to have more desire to display their ingenuity than to accomplish any public benefit. Such inventors are akin in spirit to those captious persons who decline to rent a room or an office unless it possesses facilities for swinging a cat, although they have not the remotest intention of ever performing that exciting but frivolous experiment. The Patent Office contains numerous models of machines framed with the utmost skill, but intended for purposes for which no man will ever desire to employ them, or which are hostile to the best interests of the community. We may admire the ingenuity of these machines, but at the same time we must regret that the inventors have wasted or perverted their abilities.

It is to this latter class of inventions that the recently patented "Smith Rolling and Crushing Machine" undoubtedly belongsunless, indeed, the nature and object of the invention have been grossly misrepresented. As its name implies, it is obviously intended for diminishing