made, during his lifetime, over five million dollars by his patents. "high rates and monopoly" to distract the minds of the people from the the crusade. And a loud hue-and-cry was raised in the newspapers against The reason for this persistence is very evident. Gray was a professional first invent a musical telegraph--when, presto! Bell suddenly turned he filed a caveat on the subject on the SAME DAY that Bell filed the shameless pretenders--were brought forward with strangely concocted "monopolies" was turned aggressively against the Bell Company. A few blacksmith's apprentice, and risen to be a professor of Oberlin. He The most plausible and persistent of all the various inventors who renounced his claim to be the original inventor of the telephone. hostile and irreconcilable; and until his death, in 1901, never adverse decision of the court. Several years after his defeat, he came political factor in the Middle West, and its blind fear of patents and snatched at Bell's laurels, was Elisha Gray. He refused to abide by the while Gray kept straight ahead. Like all others who were in quest of a sending speech by wire, and by one of the strangest of coincidences inventor, a highly competent man who had begun his career as a aside, because of his acoustical knowledge, and invented the telephone, real issue of legitimate business versus stock-company bubbles. tales of prior invention. The Granger movement was at that time a strong All manner of injurious rumors were presently set afloat concerning better telegraph instrument, Gray had glimmerings of the possibility of forward with new weapons and new methods of attack. He became more In 1874, he and Bell were running a neck-and-neck race to see who could the Bell patent. Other inventors--some of them honest men, and some Senators and legitimate capitalists were lifted up as the figureheads of