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The Discovery of Cheap Steel 45 could do little or nothing without the carburet of manganese, attempted to mulct the steel inventor in royalties for permission to use Mushet’s patent. It proved a powerful weapon with which to assail Besse- mer, but the latter maintained that Mushet’s patent had been anticipated. The situation, however, was responsible for the creation of pronounced animosity between Bessemer and Mushet. Yet Fortune, which had waited upon Bessemer, did not desert him. Mushet learned, to his cost, as Bessemer had learned years before, that creative genius and commercial acumen must go hand in hand. Mushet was not a business man. He left the handling of his patent to a partner, who does not appear to have been very astute. Either through negligence or forgetfulness, this partner omitted to pay the annual fee for the maintenance of Mushet’s patent. The result was that it lapsed, became public property, and could be used by anybody and every- body, including Bessemer. The steel inventor now found himself in a powerful position, and released from the trammels of the hostile firm which had been assailing his employment of what they claimed to be Mushet’s discovery. But while the summary lapse of a rival contentious patent assisted Bessemer, it ruined his rival. Mushet, who had been induced to expect a large nest-egg out of his discovery, was forced to penury, and would even have been compelled to struggle hard for the bare necessaries of life but for Bessemer’s generosity. The steel inventor subsequently learned that Mushet had not contributed to the ill-feeling which had arisen between the two men. One afternoon Bessemer was