Many of the troubles of inventors can be traced originally to certain semi-professional men who call themselves patent attorneys. There are two classes of patent attorneys, one class consisting of conscientious, honorable gentlemen, who consider it their duty, when an unsophisticated inventor comes before them with an idea which the inventor considers new, to tell him the truth about his invention and to inform him whether it is really an original invention or not, or merely a slight modification of some old idea on which no protection can be secured. There is another class of attorneys who have been more properly termed patent sharks, who will get a patent on anything brought to them; for by juggling words they are able to get claims which mean nothing, except that they serve the purpose of getting the attorneys their fees. Many an inventor has an idea which is original with him but which may be as old as Bushnell's submarine or entirely impractical. The patent shark will get him a patent on this, and the inventor then thinks his fortune is made. He is very likely then to sell his farm and go to New York and advertise in the papers that he has a valuable invention, there to fall into the hands of some unscrupulous promoter who secures all of his money without letting him know that the patent is worthless; or if he happens to have a valuable invention the promoter will in all probability arrange matters so that he himself gets the cream and leaves the inventor a mere pittance. Since the war began, and there has been the general editorial demand by the papers of the country for some means to destroy or offset the submarine menace, I have received hundreds of letters asking advice, etc., regarding various devices. I have received visits from a number of people who have come from long distances, some from the West, others from Canada and from the South, to ask my opinion regarding certain attachments to be applied to submarines or on devices to capture submarines. Many of the ideas were old and some of them pitiful in the fact that they showed such ignorance of the laws of nature and of mechanics on the part of their projectors. One man sends me a copy of his allowed patent with a letter from one of these patent sharks acknowledging the receipt of final payment of a considerable amount for his having received an allowance of his patent. I will, without betraying the name, quote in part from his letter: