Society pays them for their labor, and
not for the usefulness of the invention. _That_ has become a
gratuitous benefit, a common heritage to mankind.
The wisdom and beauty of these laws strike me with admiration and
reverence.
What has been said of printing, can be extended to every agent for the
advancement of labor--from the nail and the mallet, up to the
locomotive and the electric telegraph. Society enjoys all, by the
abundance of its use, its consumption; and it _enjoys all
gratuitously_. For as their effect is to diminish prices, it is
evident that just so much of the price as is taken off by their
intervention, renders the production in so far _gratuitous_. There
only remains the actual labor of man to be paid for; and the
remainder, which is the result of the invention, is subtracted; at
least after the invention has run through the cycle which I have just
described as its destined course. I send for a workman; he brings a
saw with him; I pay him two dollars for his day's labor, and he saws
me twenty-five boards. If the saw had not been invented, he would
perhaps not have been able to make one board, and I would none the
less have paid him for his day's labor.
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