The purchase of the American patents of Bessemer by this firm at once challenged the right of the Kelly Process Company to employ the process invented by Kelly, and to the use of the apparatus invented by Bessemer; but, at the same time, the Kelly Process Company having purchased the Mushet patent for the use of spiegeleisen, was in a position to challenge the possibility of Messrs. Winslow, Griswold & Holley's making steel by the "Bessemer process" at all. The validity of the Bessemer patents for apparatus was, from the first, conceded by the Kelly Process Company, and arrangements were made, as soon as it was ascertained that they could not purchase the American patents of Bessemer, to dispense with the use of the machinery protected thereby; for they could avail themselves of that used by Kelly, which, although not nearly as convenient, was still, with some obvious improvements, capable of doing good work; or, rather, what the practice of the time called such.[1]
In view of these facts the Kelly Process Company was clearly the master of both the legal and commercial situation; and had it been governed by an enlightened business selfishness it would have profited by the advantageous position in which (thanks to the indefatigable labors of the late Z. S. Durfee, its secretary) it was placed; but in order to do this the law had to be invoked, and to the majority of the members of the Kelly Process Company the law was a terror! Lawyers must be paid! Experts would not testify gratuitously! Costs of court would accumulate! Judges were doubtful! Jurors were uncertain! And then, if victorious, what would they gain? And if defeated, utter ruin would overwhelm them! Never before or since has a party of reputable business men been so needlessly alarmed and so utterly oblivious of the first principles of a sound business policy. The various bugaboos and hobgoblins which their terrified imagination conjured up of the horrors of the life to come among courts, judges, lawyers, experts, witnesses, and obstinate jurors, in case they ventured to assert in a court their manifest right, at last drove them into making a proposition to Messrs. Winslow, Griswold & Holley looking to a combination of the interests of the two companies, and to their final acceptance of an agreement under which they surrendered rights which were of great value to Messrs. Winslow, Griswold & Holley, and obtained practically no rights in return save that of receiving but thirty per cent of the royalties earned by the combination, and that of leaving to Messrs, Winslow, Griswold & Holley the remaining seventy per cent.
- ↑ In the early days of the Bessemer process, three "blows" in ten hours was thought to be a very creditable performance, but at the present time a works that could not make that number in an hour would be regarded as a fit subject for an inquest.
