"*
* Cited in Roe, "English and American Tool Builders", p. 153.
Miller and Whitney were somewhat more fortunate in other States
than in Georgia though they nowhere received from the cotton gin
enough to compensate them for their time and trouble nor more
than a pitiable fraction of the great value of their invention.
South Carolina, in 1801, voted them fifty thousand dollars for
their patent rights, twenty thousand dollars to be paid down and
the remainder in three annual payments of ten thousand dollars
each. "We get but a song for it," wrote Whitney, "in comparison
with the worth of the thing, but it is securing something." Why
the partners were willing to take so small a sum was later
explained by Miller. They valued the rights for South Carolina at
two hundred thousand dollars, but, since the patent law was being
infringed with impunity, they were willing to take half that
amount; "and had flattered themselves," wrote Miller, "that a
sense of dignity and justice on the part of that honorable body
[the Legislature] would not have countenanced an offer of a less
sum than one hundred thousand dollars. Finding themselves,
however, to be mistaken in this opinion, and entertaining a
belief that the failure of such negotiation, after it commenced,
would have a tendency to diminish the prospect, already doubtful,
of enforcing the Patent Law, it was concluded to be best under
existing circumstances to accept the very inadequate sum of fifty
thousand dollars offered by the Legislature and thereby
relinquish and entirely abandon three-fourths of the actual value
of the property.
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