AMERICAN OPINIONS ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. AN OPEN LETTER TO READERS OF BOOKS. THE AMERICAN Copyright LEAGUE, which includes among its members the authors of America, asks from all citizens who desire the development of American literature and regard the good name of the American people their personal and active aid in securing international copyright. The United States is at present the only nation, itself possessing a literature of importance and making a large use of the literature of the world, which has done nothing to recognize and protect by law the rights, international as well as national, of authors of whose production it enjoys the benefit. In declining to assure compensation to foreign authors whose books are read here, it has debarred itself from claiming for its own authors recognition and protection abroad, and it has placed them at a disadvantage at home suffered by no other American craftsmen. 1. To raise our own country to the standard of national morality and of international fair play maintained by all other civilized nations, now united in the International Copyright Union. 2. For the wholesome development of our national literature, now hampered by the fact that those who must earn their living by their pen cannot devote themselves to producing books if their products must compete with books on which no payment is made to the producer. 3. In justice to American authors, who ask for their products no government "bounty" and no "protection" in the sense of the privilege of taxing the products of foreign writers, but only a fair field for their own in this country and abroad, and a fair chance to make authorship in America a selfsupporting profession, instead of a by-calling at the end of a day's toil in other fields. 4. In justice to foreign authors, who are entitled to receive from Americans who read and benefit by their books the same fair payment an American would expect to make on any other article, as clothes or pictures, which he buys from foreign producers. 5. In order to widen the circulation of the best new literature, American and international, by the lessening of price which would ensue, in the case of original American books, from distributing the first cost among the greater number of copies for which sale would be secured among American readers if they were not diverted by the cheap reprints of poor English novels and in the case of books of international importance, whether from American, English, or continental writers, by giving a basis of law to business arrangements for sharing the expense of production among the several nations interested. We have been told that the American people will not grant this justice lest it might prevent "cheap books." We believe, on the contrary, that the American people are willing to pay for what they get, and will agree that "there is one thing better than a cheap book, and that is a book honestly come by." But the example of France and Germany, countries whose literature is fully protected by international copyright, and whose books are the cheapest in the world, shows that the price of books depends not upon the copyright, but upon the nature of the public demand. American readers want cheap books adapted to their special requirements. This demand will be met. Authors and publishers will profit by wider sales, though at smaller prices for the individual book. Any increase of price because of international copyright will be almost exclusively in the cheapest issues of foreign fiction, un-American and in many cases undesirable for American readers, while no copyright law can in any degree affect the prices of past or future editions of books already published. Translations of Zola's future novels may cost fifty cents instead of twenty-five cents, but as an offset for this misfortune, more American fiction will be sold, and cheap reprints of ephemeral English fiction will make way for decently printed editions, at a fair price, of American and the better class of new English novels. We submit also that the term "monopoly," as used against copyright, is wrongly used. A monopoly, in the current sense of the word, is the setting apart by law of certain natural products or facilities, or of certain property of the commonwealth, which, in the absence of such a law, would be open to all. This does not apply to an author's control of his productions any more than to a shoemaker's control of the pair of shoes which he makes. The man who earns his living by his brain asks only the same fair play that is given to the man who earns his living by his hands. A domestic copyright to the writer of a history of the United States, or an international copyright to the writer of a history of England, debars no other author from writing a history of either country; it does not grant a "monopoly." The author asks only payment for the service he has done, and not for any restriction of the work of others; in fact, one reason for paying him is that it encourages others to write. Every American citizen has a practical interest in this reform. We desire to impress upon Congress the fact that the public opinion of intelligent readers is in its favor. We ask each reader to do his part, either by joining the league, which welcomes readers as well as writers of books, or by signifying to its secretary his willingness to sign the memorial for international copyright, or still better by writing at once to his senators and representatives in Congress, urging them to vote for such a measure. The league appeals to the honor, the patriotism, and the business common-sense of American readers in behalf of international copyright, and it believes that such an appeal will not be heard in vain by the American people. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, President. G. W. GREEN, Secretary, .Whatever is just is for the benefit of all; and I wish we could have a law providing, between England and America, that "a copyright taken out in either country shall be equally valid in both." -HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, from a letter (October 8, 1878) to Mr. William Dulles, Jr., Philadelphia, Pa., printed in "The Century" for March, 1888. Can literary property be protected against theft and piracy? If so, it needs no argument to show that it should be; and if it be not done, the law-making power is in fault. Only by an impossibility can the law-making power be absolved from its obligation. - MARK HOPKINS, Williams College, in letter to "The Century." An international copyright law commends itself to every man who is honest enough to keep his hands out of his neighbor's pocket. - JOHN G. WHITTIER. - Several well-known English publishing firms have treated me honorably in the matter of royalty. One of them complained that after so doing the story in question was pirated into two British magazines, one of them, I think, in Scotland, — and run as a serial, to the injury of the sales of the book. From France, from Holland, from Italy, from Germany, where my books have been translated for fifteen years, I have never received one dollar. Let me say to the credit of one German publisher who negotiated on a business basis with the author, that his righteous effort was defeated by the competition of a less conscientious fellow-countryman before we could sign our contract. In many cases I do not even receive a copy of the volume of whose translated existence I am told. - ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. Slavery compelled a man's labor, but it gave him in return food, shelter, and clothing, such as they were; literary piracy seizes the fruits of a man's labor, and gives him absolutely nothing in return. There can be no question of the nature of the wrong, and no justification of it. . . . —W. D. HOWELLS, The Editor's Study, in "Harper's Magazine," October, 1887. I am perfectly satisfied that, the reading public in America being much larger than in England, and demanding cheap books, the result of a copyright law, if we ever get one, will be to transfer the great bulk of the book trade from England to this country, and with it the publishing of books. That is my firm belief. . . . I myself take the moral view of the question. I believe that this is a simple question of morality and justice. . . . One could live a good deal cheaper, undoubtedly, if he could supply himself from other people without any labor or cost. But at the same time—well, it was not called honest when I was young, and that is all I can say. I cannot help thinking that a book which was, I believe, more read when I was young than it is now, is quite right when it says that “righteousness exalteth a nation." I believe this is a question of righteousness. I do not wish to urge that too far, because that is considered a little too ideal, I believe. But that is my view of it, and if I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book, and that is a book honestly come by. - JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, Statement before the Senate Committee on Patents, Friday, January 29, 1886. The soft-handed sons of toil have tasks more trying than those of the roughest day-laborer, though his palms might shame the hide of a rhinoceros. How complex, how difficult is the work of the brain operative! He employs the noblest implement which God has given to mortals. He handles the most precious material that is modeled by the art of man: the imperishable embodiment of human thought in language. Is not the product of the author's industry an addition to the wealth of his country and of civilization as much as if it were a ponderable or a measurable substance? It cannot be weighed in the grocer's scales, or measured by the shop-keeper's yard-stick. But nothing is so real, nothing so permanent, nothing of human origin so prized. Better lose the Parthenon than the Iliad; better level St. Peter's than blot out the Divina Commedia ; better blow up Saint Paul's than strike Paradise Lost from the treasures of the English language. How much a great work costs! What fortunate strains of blood have gone to the formation of that delicate yet potent brain-tissue! What happy influences have met for the development of its marvelous capacities! What travail, what throbbing temples, what tension of every mental fibre, what conflicts, what hopes, what illusions, what disappointments, what triumphs lie recorded between the covers of that volume on the bookseller's counter! And shall the work which has drained its author's life-blood be the prey of the first vampire that chooses to flap his penny-edition wings over his unprotected and hapless victim? This is the wrong we would put an end to. The British author, whose stolen works are in the hands of the vast American reading public, may possibly receive a small pension if he comes to want in his old age. But the bread of even public charity is apt to have a bitter taste, and the slice is at best but a small one. Shall not our English-writing brother have his fair day's wage for his fair day's work in furnishing us with instruction and entertainment? As to the poor American author, no pension will ever keep him from dying in the poor-house. His books may be on every stall in Europe, in their own or in foreign tongues, but his only compensation is the free-will offering of some liberal-minded publisher. This should not be so. We all know it, and some among us have felt it, and still feel it as a great wrong. I think especially of those who are in the flower of their productive period, and those who are just coming into their time of inflorescence. To us who are too far advanced to profit by any provision for justice likely to be made in our day, it would still be a great satisfaction to know that the writers who come after us will be fairly treated, and that genius will no longer be an outlaw as soon as it crosses the Atlantic. - OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Letter to Secretary of American Copyright League, April 27, 1885. HELPS AND HINDRANCES IN THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE. THE New York Society for the Suppression of Vice was chartered by the legislature of the State of New York in May, 1873. Its object is to enforce the law against those evils which especially assail public morals, particularly the moral purity of the youth of the community. This organization, since its inception, has been supported by voluntary contributions. It held its fourteenth annual public meeting on the 17th of January last, in Association Hall, New York city, at which Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D., of Brooklyn and Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, D. D., of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York city delivered most eloquent addresses. The evening was very stormy and the walking bad. The lower part of the large hall, however, was well filled with a most intelligent and enthusiastic audience. The annual report presented at this meeting discloses something of the world-wide influences exerted to-day by the organization. During the past year the society has been in communication with allied organizations in our own land, as well as with friends of moral purity in foreign lands. The effect of its example, particularly in its uncompromising warfare upon obscene publications, seems to be felt even in heathen lands. From Bombay and Alahabad, appeals have come for help and advice in checking similar evils in India. Australia has turned upon obscene and lewd books and publications sent there from America, and these instrumentalities of incalculable mischief have been seized and destroyed. France, during the past year, has arisen against the devil's spawn of some of her modern writers, and their publications have been suppressed in the interest of good morals. In Switzerland, a man was prosecuted for selling obscene |