(c) The study of drawing or art is a recognized essential of a common school education, and educators are agreed that the study of art has a high educational value.

NOTE. See Prof. Paul H. Hanus, of Harvard University, on Educational Values."

(d) The educators of the country are a unit in their opinion that works of art should be free of import duties.

(e) Short arguments by two hundred college presidents in favor of free art accompany this brief.

THE INDUSTRIAL ARGUMENT.

I. Free art, through education in art, will add greatly to the wealth of the country because it will benefit the industries in whose products form and design play an important part, such as dress goods of silk, cotton, and woolen, jewelry, carpets, furniture, wall papers, pottery, lace, glass, and china ware, architectural features in metal and stone manufactures, etc.

(a) Free art is, the complement of protection with respect to such industries, and is absolutely essential to enable them to compete with foreign concerns whose governments have adopted the policy of fostering the fine arts.

(b) European countries have applied art education to industry with such persistence that it has produced manufactured articles of superior design.

(c) Such a policy has been followed for so many generations in France that the humblest artisan has an artistic taste and skill which gives greatly increased value to his work.

Mr. Mason, consul-general to France, in his 1907 report, gives the following as one of the reasons why France has held her own commercially, notwithstanding her poverty of coal and iron:

"And, above all, the instinct of artistic taste fostered and developed by education and governmental influence until it has become a national attribute."

(d) Germany, through the liberal introduction of works of oriental art and consequent wide-spread knowledge of Eastern taste and standards, has secured and held an enormous trade in Japan. are these the only examples that might have been adduced.

Nor

(e) Drawing was originally introduced in the common schools of America on the petition of manufacturers for the express purpose of improving the manufactures of the country.

NOTE.-See petition to the legislature of Massachusetts, 1869.

(f) Free art will help to secure, through enlarged opportunities for art education by object study, the advantages to artisans and artists in this country which are now found in a superior measure in countries abroad.

II. Free art by multiplying the art objects of the country will develop an artistic taste among the people, which will in turn create a demand for artistic products, and so call into existence new domestic industries which will give employment at high wages to skilled laborers, both men and women.

THE ARTISTS' ARGUMENT.

I. Free art will be an unquestionable benefit to American artists. (a) Through art education it will create an appreciation of art which will result in an increased demand for the product of the artists. It is a well-known fact that, as a knowledge of art has grown in this country within recent years, the intelligent patronage of American artists has increased, and collections composed specially of the works of American artists have grown in number and impor

tance.

(b) The American artists, with few exceptions, for many years have favored free art.

(c) Most of our leading artists have received their education in Europe. Free art will help to make this practice unnecessary by developing an art atmosphere in America which will provide the necessary environment for the growth of the artist.

(d) Our artists have been warmly welcomed and generously treated in Europe. Foreign art schools, galleries, and exhibitions, including the French salon, are thrown open to them free of charge, and they compete on equal terms for the prizes offered by foreign governments. These privileges give prestige and standing in the art world to our artists.

(e) Our American painter, Edwin A. Abbey, says: "American artists and their work are so liberally received and hospitably treated by all other countries that it is a matter of chagrin and embarrassment to me that laws are made by my countrymen which keep the work of artists of other countries out of the United States, laws which hamper our own artists and benefit nobody else."

(f) The duty prejudices American artists in the eyes of American purchasers by adding an artificial value to imported works of art.

(g) Art dealers here seeing the advantages certain to accrue not only from the more liberal importation of foreign works, but from the prospective growth of interest in art generally, are largely in favor of the removal of the present duty.

(h) Short arguments for free art by 250 artists and art dealers accompany this brief.

THE MUSEUM ARGUMENT.

I. The educational value of our museums is inestimable.

(a) About 16,000,000 people have visited the Metropolitan Art Museum of New York since 1880.

(b) The number of visitors in a few of our museums for the year 1907 follows:

Yale Art Museum, New Haven, Conn., average per Sunday.

1.115

San Francisco Institute of Art, before destruction, average.
St. Louis Museum__

37.000

142.769

Layton Art Gallery, Milwaukee..

28,568

Buffalo Fine Arts Academy.

120,683

National Museum (Museum building, Smithsonian building), Washington, D. C‒‒‒‒‒

363,698

177,624

Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D. C-.
Cincinnati Museum___

55,180

NOTE.-Most of the museums have art schools in connection with them. The students of these schools and of other art schools use the museums, and are given permits to copy the paintings and other art objects. Other artists also have these privileges.

(c) Small museums are springing up everywhere, especially in the Central West, West, and South, and in a few years no important community will be without one.

II. Free art will contribute very greatly to the establishment and growth of these museums.

(a) The present tariff law admits free only works of art imported directly for public museums. As only a small part of their accessions are obtained in this way, the evident purpose of Congress to encourage the collection of art for public museums is not attained.

(b) The most effective way of attaining this end is to permit individuals to import art free, because the public museums depend not only for their growth, but for their very existence, upon the gifts, bequests, and loans of individuals. The monthly bulletin of any museum makes this fact very evident. Private ownership is the great reservoir upon which they depend for their principal supply.

(c) Much more than one-half of the imported art in our public museums have been acquired by the gifts or loans of private collectors. 1. Four-fifths of the foreign collection of works of art in the Metropolitan Museum of the Fine Arts in New York have been thus acquired. The imported paintings are valued unofficially at $5,000,000. Half of them are owned by private individuals and loaned to the museum. Two million dollars' worth of paintings have been given. to the museum by individuals. Only half a million dollars' worth was purchased by or came directly to the museum.

2. One-half of the collection of the Corcoran Gallery at Washington, in value, was presented or is loaned by private individuals.

3. Of the 139 foreign paintings owned by the Boston Art Museum and on exhibition at a certain time, 57 were presented and 56 loaned to the museum.

4. Fifty per cent of the foreign collection of the Toledo Museum of Fine Arts came to it in the same way.

5. And also the principal foreign paintings in the Worcester Art Museum.

6. Sixty per cent of the foreign collection of the Chicago Art Institute came from private collections; 175 of the 220 paintings owned by the institute were presented to it, and 100 of the 125 loaned pictures came from private individuals.

III. It is perfectly evident that the public art collections would be richer to-day, but for the duty, by at least the amount of the duties paid, and this does not take into account the psychological effect of the duty in discouraging their purchase and importation, nor the art objects actually kept out of the country by the duty.

(a) Many American collectors, deterred from importation by the duty, keep their collections on the other side, where the people of other countries get the benefit of them through their loan for exhibition in the principal capitals of Europe. Thus the people of this country are deprived, so long as the duty remains, of the hope of

seeing publicly exhibited here, as unquestionably they would be, many of the most famous works of art of ancient and modern times. (b) Nearly all of Mr. Charles Parsons's donation to the St. Louis Museum, which forms the chief part of the museum, was imported by him, and Prof. Halsey C. Ives, who knew Mr. Parsons personally, says that "but for the duty Mr. Parsons would have purchased twice as much and the museum would now be so much the gainer."

(c) The Springfield Museum, which will go to the city upon the death of Mr. George W. V. Smith, its owner, would be much larger but for the duty.

(d) When the duty was raised from 10 per cent to 30 per cent in 1883, the works of art imported fell off in value from $3,380,639.15 to $1.191,206.67; when the duty was lowered in 1890 to 15 per cent, the value of the works of art imported increased from $2,061,018.93 to $2,559,308.43; when the duty was removed in 1894, the value of the works of art imported increased from $1,518.688.63 to $4.053.482.88: and, when the duty of 20 per cent was imposed in 1897, the value of the works of art imported fell off from $1,628,713.84 to $2,124,778.66. IV. It is a well-established principle among art and museum experts that the important art works inevitably drift from private to public possession by gift or bequest. The individual collector becomes the conduit from private to public ownership.

(a) Thus the Chicago Art Institute came into possession of three out of the four most important private collections in Chicago in the first ten years of its existence.

(b) The Harriet Lane Johnson, the Charles L. Freer, and the William T. Evans collections have recently been given to the nation. (c) In Philadelphia it is expected that the three most important private collections, containing 2,500 paintings, will be united and presented to the city.

V. In the last analysis the duty on art sacrifices the growth of our own art museums to the increase of foreign museums.

(a) This is due to the fact that foreigners and the agents of foreign governments have a distinct advantage in the purchase of art works in foreign markets, because their governments do not put a duty on works of art.

The American collector must add the amount of the duty to the purchase price. This makes it easier for the foreigner to get the works of art, and, as our museums depend upon the private collector, the obstacle of the duty impedes their growth.

VI. The American Association of Museums passed resolutions in favor of free art at its last annual meeting, and a petition signed by the officers of the art museums of the country accompany this brief.

ARGUMENT FROM PRECEDENT.

I. Congress has itself recognized the necessity of a policy of encouraging the fine arts, and it should carry this policy to its logical conclusion by putting works of art on the free list.

(a) This is demonstrated by the exemptions from duty which it has made, as shown in the notes to the tables showing the history of the art duty, accompanying this brief.

(b) The phrase "encouragement of the fine arts" actually appears in the law.

(c) Congress has also recognized the validity of our arguments by always keeping the art duties below the level of the other duties. 1. The following table shows the low duty on art compared with the average rate on dutiable imports:

NOTE. (a) The art duty has remained about 15 per cent, while the other duties have increased from 20 to 50; (b) art has been free during twenty-seven years, since 1879, and antiquities during forty-six years; (c) when other art was taxed 30 per cent in 1883, antiquities were free; (d) the duty was not increased for war purposes in 1861.

2. In construing the art schedules, the courts have sometimes based their decisions upon the ground that it was the intent of Congress to encourage a taste for art by making the duties on art low, or by putting art on the free list.

In Viti . Tutton (14 Fed. Rep., 241, p. 246) the court said, “The object of the act is doubtless to encourage a taste for art, and hence to admit the work of professional artists at a low rate of duty," and in U. S. v. Tiffany & Co. (160 Fed. Rep., 408, p. 410), "That Congress, realizing the importance of art to a comparatively new country, has in all the later tariff acts discriminated in favor of paintings and statuary can not be denied."

THE TARIFF ARGUMENT.

I. The duty on art has no place in the tariff theories of any school of taxation.

(a) Works of art are not within the theory of protection.

1. The American artist who, if there were any protection in the duty on art, would be the beneficiary, repudiates the duty and is a most earnest petitioner for its repeal. (See Artists' argument.)

2. Under the theory of protection noncompetitive products which are also necessities, like coffee and tea, are not dutiable, while competitive products, even though they may be necessities, like sugar or wheat, are dutiable. The latter is based on the principle that the duty keeps American capital invested in the United States and provides employment for American laborers at high wages, and that these advantages outweigh any objections on account of their being necessities.

3. Works of art are in the first class, because they are educational necessities and because they are noncompetitive in the commercial