Testimonies for the Church Volume 1 - A New You Ministry

with us. Many particulars of this meeting have been given in the Review, and want ofroom in these pages alone seems to forbid their repetition. In no state have the brethrenbeen truer to the cause than in old Vermont.On our way from Enosburgh, we stopped for the night with the family of BrotherWilliam White. Brother C. A. White, his son, introduced to us the matter of hisCombined Patent Washer and Wringer, and wished counsel. As I had written againstour people engaging in patent rights, he wished to know just how I viewed his patent.I freely told him what I did not mean in what I had written, and also what I did mean.I did not mean that it was wrong to have anything to do with patent rights, for this isalmost impossible, as very many things with which we have to do daily are patented.Neither did I wish to convey the idea that it was wrong to patent, manufacture, and sellany article worthy of being patented. I did mean to be understood that it is wrong forour people to suffer themselves to be so imposed upon, deceived, and cheated by thosemen who go about the country selling the right of territory for this or that machine orarticle. Many of these are of no value, as they are no real improvement. And thosewho are engaged in their sale, are, with few exceptions, a class of deceivers.And, again, some of our own people have engaged in the sale of patented wareswhich they had reason to believe were not what they represented them to be. Thatso many of our people, some of them after being fully warned, will still sufferthemselves to be deceived by the false statements of these vendors of patent rights,seems astonishing. Some patents are really valuable, and a few have made well onthem. But it is my opinion that where one dollar has been gained, one hundred dollarshave been lost. No reliance whatever can be placed on these patent-right pledges. Andthe fact that those engaged in them are, with few exceptions, downright deceivers and664