class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 43]"/> peculiar trait in the Romanoff family to admire liberty in the abstract, however absolute in practice. Sharing the prevailing good will toward Russia, Mr. Wood conceived this happy thought of making a truly substantial contribution to Cossack civilization, a civilization ever ready, with all its crudeness, to adopt foreign improvements. That gift, in one point of view slight, proved of great benefit to Russian agriculture. It is impossible to state the extent of actual advantage derived by Russia from that truly imperial gift. It was in effect giving to that country, second only to the United States in area of tillage, in proportion to population, the free use of the perfected plow. In an old copy of the New York Tribune, in its palmy days of Horace Greeley and Solon Robinson, the tale of the Plow and the Ring is unfolded. It runs thus:

“During the year, 1820, Jethro Wood sent one of his plows to Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, and the peculiar circumstances attending the gift and its reception formed a large part of the newspaper gossip of the day. Wood, though a man of cultivation, intellectually as well as agriculturally, was not familiar with French, which was then as now the diplomatic language. So he requested his personal friend, Dr. Samuel Mitchill, President of the New York Society of Natural History and Sciences, to write a letter in French to accompany the gift.

“The autocrat of all the Russias received the plow and the letter, and sent back a diamond ring—which the newspapers declared to be worth from $7,000 to $15,000—in token of his appreciation. By some indirection, the ring was not delivered to the donor of the plow, but to the writer of the letter, and Dr. Mitchill instantly appropriated it to his own use. Wood appealed to the Russian Minister at Washington for redress. The Minister sent to His Emperor and asked to whom the ring belonged, and Alexander replied that it was intended for the inventor of the plow. Armed with this authority, Wood again demanded the ring of Mitchill. But there were no steamships or telegraphs in those days, and Mitchill declared that in the long interval in which they had been waiting to hear from Russia, he had given it to the cause of the Greeks, who were then rising to throw off the yoke of their Turkish oppressors. A newspaper of the time calls Mitchill’s course ‘an ingenious mode of quartering on the enemy,’ and the inventor’s friends seem to have believed that the ring had been privately sold for his benefit. At all events it never came to light again, and Wood, a peaceful man, a Quaker by profession, did not push the matter further.”

Perhaps another and quite as potent a reason why Friend Wood did not follow up this matter was that weightier affairs demanded his immediate and entire attention. One difficulty was overcome only to develop another. No sooner had he silenced the cavils of the farmers and demonstrated the value of his patent, than infringements upon his rights threatened to, and actually did, rob him of the fruits of his invention. “Uneasy rests the head that wears a crown” of genius.

The patent laws of that day were very imperfect, and there was a strong prejudice against their enforcement. The cry of “no monopoly” was raised. Mr. Wood had expended many thousands of dollars in perfecting his patterns and getting ready to supply the demand which he felt sure would arise for his plows, many of which, during the first few years, he gave away, that their value might be established to the satisfaction of the public. The stage of probation over, the plow makers of the country, defiant of patent law, engaged in their manufacture. His patent had fourteen years to run. In an incredibly short time their use by the farmers in all parts of the land became almost universal, and had he been allowed a royalty, however small, he would have realized a vast fortune. Instead of that he very nearly exhausted all his property in unavailing endeavors to establish through the courts his rights as inventor and patentee.

In 1833, when his patent expired, Congress granted a renewal for fourteen years. He was now bowed with the burden of years, and debts incurred in trying to protect himself against infringers. His remaining days were spent in vain efforts to maintain his rights. His broad and kindly nature had conceived noble plans for the use of the wealth which at one time seemed so nearly within his reach. He had always been deeply interested in education, and had fortune smiled upon him it is not too much to say that in spirit, however different in detail, Jethro Wood would have anticipated Stephen Girard, Ezra Cornell and John S. Hopkins, in nobly founding a great institution of learning.

In private life Jethro Wood was a model man. If he had faults it is impossible to ascertain them, for it would seem, from the concurrent testimony of all who were acquainted with him, that