"After the death of Jethro Wood, his son Benjamin, who received the invention as a legacy, continued his efforts to wrest justice from the unwilling hand of the law. Nearly all his father's failures had proceeded from the inadequacy of the patent laws, which were almost worthless to protect the rights of the inventor. Even now a patent is worth little until it has been fought through the Supreme Court of the United States. In those days so many obstacles were thrown in the way of inventors, and the combinations against them were so formidable, that Eli Whitney, in trying to establish his right to the cotton-gin in a Georgia court, while his machine was doubling and trebling the value of lands through the State, had this experience, which is given in his own words: I had great difficulty in proving that the machine had been used in Georgia, _although at the same moment there were three separate sets of this machinery in motion within fifty yards of the building in which the court sat, and all so near that the rattling of the wheels was distinctly heard on the steps of the Court House_. "Similar difficulties had met Jethro Wood in _his_ suits; so his son resolved to strike at the root of the evil by securing a reform in the laws. He accordingly went to Washington, where he remained through several sessions, always working to this end. Clay, Webster, and John Quincy Adams, all of whom had known Jethro Wood and his invention, aided his son powerfully with their votes and counsel, and he succeeded in securing several important changes in the patent laws. "Then he returned to New York, and commenced suit to resist encroachments on his right, and the wholesale manufacture of his plow by those who refused to pay the premium to the inventor. The 'Cast-Iron Plow' was now used all over the country, and formidable combinations of its manufacturers united their capital and influence against Benjamin Wood. William H. Seward, then practicing law, was retained as Wood's counsel, and the plow-makers engaged all the talent they could muster to oppose him. "Heretofore it had never been contradicted that Jethro Wood was the originator of the plow in use, but now his right to the invention was denied, and it was alleged that his improvements had been forestalled by other makers. Again and again the case was adjourned, and Europe and America were ransacked for specimens of the different plows which were declared to include his patent.