means." Several cases of "attempted bribery" had occurred within the
year, stated Commissioner Mason. (Executive Documents, First Session,
Thirty-third Congress, 1853-54, Vol. vii, Part I: 19-20.) Every
successive Commissioner of Patents called upon Congress to pass laws
for the prevention of fraud, and for the better protection of the
inventor, but Congress, influenced by the manufacturers, was deaf to
these appeals.]

These same manufacturers objected in the most indignant manner, as
they similarly do now, to any legislative investigations of their own
methods. Eager to have the practices of Vanderbilt and Gould probed
into, they were acrimoniously opposed to even criticism of their
factory system. For this extreme sensitiveness there was the amplest
reason. The cruelties of the factory system transcended belief. In,
for instance, the State of Massachusetts, vaunting itself for its
progressiveness, enlightenment and culture, the textile factories
were a horror beyond description. The Convention of the Boston Eight
Hour League, in 1872, did not overstate when it declared of the
factory system that "it employs tens of thousands of women and
children eleven and twelve hours a day; owns or controls in its own
selfish interest the pulpit and the press; prevents the operative
classes from making themselves felt in behalf of less hours, through
remorseless exercise of the power of discharge; and is rearing a
population of children and youth of sickly appearance and scanty or
utterly neglected schooling."...

As the factory system was in Massachusetts, so it was elsewhere. Any
employee venturing to agitate for better conditions was instantly
discharged; spies were at all times busy among the workers; and if a
labor union were formed, the factory owners would obtain sneak