sense. They are noncompetitive, because a work of art is a work of genius and not the product of a machine. There are no two alike, as in the case of manufactures, but each has its individuality. It is this individuality which attracts the purchaser. He asks not for a painting of a certain class or grade, but for the painting of a certain artist.

4. No one who believes in the theory of protection can consistently say, "First take the duty off of necessities," because that ignores the very fundamental theory of protection.

5. What possible competition can there be between a Rembrandt or a Valasquez and an American painting?

6. The act of 1832, passed by the Whigs, or National Republicans, was a distinctly protectionist measure, and it put art on the free list. 7. The act of 1861, as reported and passed by the House, put art on the free list.

8. The McKinley bill of 1890, as reported by the committee, put art on the free list.

(b) Art is not within the theory of taxing luxuries for revenue. 1. Art is an educational necessity, and becomes a luxury only in a primitive state of society.

2. The duty on art is a tax on knowledge and culture.

3. Almost no civilized nation of importance, as shown above, taxes art as a luxury.

4. The act of 1846 was passed by the Democratic party with the avowed purpose of putting the principles of free trade into operation as far as possible. It was based on the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Robert J. Walker, and one of its fundamental principles was that the maximum duty should be levied on luxuries. Art was made free in this act.

5. The act of 1857, a near approach to free trade, retained art on the free list.

6. The Democratic Wilson bill of 1894 put art on the free list.

7. As a revenue producer, the duty on art is not important, but if it were a revenue obtained at the loss of the intellectual advancement of the people is too expensive to be endured.

8. The need of revenue was never greater than during the civil war, but it was not deemed good policy to raise any additional amounts by increasing the duty on art.

9. It was estimated by the framers of the act of 1897 that the art duty would yield $1,000,000 annually, but it has been a distinct failure in this respect. The first year it yielded only $236,242.75; the halfmillion-dollar mark was not passed until 1905. In 1908, over ten years after, it had risen to less than $600,000.

(c) The list of important men in both parties who are on record in favor of free art is a most notable one.

1. Among others may be named Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Chester A. Arthur, John Hay, Richard Olney, James G. Blaine, Levi P. Morton, Whitelaw Reid, George F. Hoar, Joseph H. Choate, William L. Wilson, George V. Vest, William B. Allison, John C. Spooner, Charles Sumner, George F. Edmunds, John J. Ingalls, Thomas F. Bayard, and Stephen A. Douglas.

THE PUBLIC-OPINION ARGUMENT.

I. Congress should put art on the free list because the whole country is strongly in favor of such action.

(a) The 500 directors of the American Free Art League are distributed through all the States of the Union, and a glance at the personnel of the list, a copy of which accompanies this brief, will demonstrate that they represent the sentiment of the entire country.

(b) The newspapers of the country are practically a unit in favor of the removal of the duty.

A collection of extracts from 300 different newspapers favoring free art accompanies this brief. Respectfully submitted.

AMERICAN FREE ART LEAGUE,

By MYRON E. PIERCE,

Organizing Secretary and Counsel, 50 State Street, Boston, Mass.

(4) Dutiable according to material up to act of 1846.

() Free, if imported as an object of taste and not of merchandise. () Marble.

(4) Others.

(Artist's proofs, and others twenty years old, free, otherwise 25. (5) T. 1878.

() As per material.

Mr. DE FOREST. Now, gentlemen of the committee, you may ask what is the American Free Art League? Our board of directors numbers about 500. They are educators, men of affairs, artists, officers of universities or art museums, and represent every calling. They come from every State in the Union. A full list of them is presented to the committee. Our president is Bryan Lathrop, of Chicago. One of the most prominent members of our executive committee is Halsey C. Ives, director of the St. Louis Art Museum, who was art director of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, and who occupied the same position at the more recent St. Louis Exposition. We have a large general membership throughout the country. None of us have any pecuniary interest in the duties on works of art. We represent, as we believe, present and enlightened public sentiment on this subject. Quite aside from the representative position of our directors we present the opinions of some 200 college presidents and educators, the opinions of some 200 artists, and extracts from over 300 newspapers and magazines.

The object of the league is to secure the removal of duties from all works of art which have an educational value.

We ask that original works of art, including paintings and sculptures, shall be free of duty, and that objects of art of an ornamental character or of educational value, which shall have been produced more than fifty years ago, shall be likewise free of duty.

The particular amendment of the present tariff which we propose is contained on the first page of our brief.

Why do we ask this?

(1) To promote the education of our people.

Art education is mainly conducted by object lessons. It is only by the presence of artistic objects in schools, colleges, and museums that knowledge of art and appreciation of art can be increased. It is only by such increased appreciation that a demand is created which our artists and artisans can supply. We must obtain our object lessons for the teaching of art in large measure from abroad, and encourage their importation by making them free of duty.

Many European nations which are anxious to possess them are trying to prevent our obtaining them by the imposition of export duties. Now naturally it is madness for us who need them to exclude them by import duties. Ours is almost the only civilized nation which raises any tariff wall against objects of art. Free art has long been the policy of France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, Russia, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

(2) To promote the development of our museums and through them the art education of our people.

Almost all the material for our art museums must come from abroad. Most of it must reach the museum by private gift. Private ownership is the great reservoir upon which the museums depend for their principal supplies. Private ownership of art objects will be more or less, and the development of our museums will be rapid or slow, just in proportion as we do not discourage importations by the imposition of a duty.

True, direct importation by museums can now be made free of duty, but it is not by direct importations that our museums can grow. Unlike the museums of Europe, they have no government subsidies.

They can directly purchase but little. Their increase comes from gifts of those who have been tempted to acquire by a desire for acquisition and whose gift to the public is a second thought. great works of art in our country will sooner or later become the property of the people by being given to our public institutions. The more we tempt in the more the people will ultimately have.

All

The possible objections to putting art on the free list, and answers to them, are as follows:

(3) To promote the development of all our home industries in whose products artistic form and design play an important part.

(4) To benefit American artists by broadening the popular appreciation of art and thus broadening their market.

"Art is a luxury of the rich, and therefore should be taxed."

If pictures and statuary, like wine and tobacco, could be selfishly consumed by the rich who acquire them then they could be so classed, but their enjoyment by the rich who originally acquired them, even if not shared, is after all but a brief enjoyment, and the people through our museums and other public institutions fall heir to the heritage.

"Free art means less revenue."

A little less. It was under $600.000 during the last fiscal year-a paltry sum compared with the educational and artistic gain. It is much less than several European governments are paying out directly from their own treasuries to buy the very works of art which by this duty we are keeping out of our own country.

I desire, with the permission of the committee, to insert in the record a letter from Mr. Cox.

The CHAIRMAN. That may be done.
(The letter referred to is as follows:)

Mr. ROBERT W. DE FOREST.

134 EAST SIXTY-SEVENTH STREET, NEW YORK,

November 23, 1908.

DEAR SIR: I regret exceedingly that my service to the National Academy of Design is likely to render it impossible for me to be with the committee of the American Free Art League at its hearing in Washington. I do not doubt that all the general arguments against a tariff on works of art-arguments which affect me in common with all art-loving citizens-will be admirably presented by others; and those arguments should be decisive. But there are arguments that affect me especially, as a working artist, which I should like to present to the Ways and Means Committee. I should like to say to them:

"GENTLEMEN: I am a practicing professional artist—that is, a workingman who gains a modest livelihood by the labor of his two hands as truly as does a carpenter or a plumber. And I ask you to believe that we artists are not fools, and that we have some understanding of the conditions under which we live; when we ask you to remove the tariff on works of art we are no more inclined to cut our own throats than is the manufacturer who asks you to place a tariff upon goods which compete with what he produces. If what we ask for is different, it is because the conditions are different.

"Let me illustrate. Twenty-five years ago, when I had concluded my term of studentship and had to think of making a living, I determined to settle in the city of Cincinnati, on the theory that where there was little competition there should be less difficulty in finding work. Well, I tried it for a time, and I found that while there was little competition, there was no demand at all, at that time, for what I could do. I was like a corset maker on a South Sea Island before the missionaries came. So I thought I would go where there was more competition and more demand, and I came to New York with $25 in my pocket. Since then I have had some hard times, and I have never made a fortune, but I have contrived to live on what I could earn.

"The point of this is, that art is not a natural want that must be supplied; that in art the supply has always preceded and created the demand; that the

artist depends for his livelihood on educating his public to want what he can give them. That is why the artist always goes where there is the most art and where there are the most artists. A tax on works of art, so far as it is effective, tends to retard that general education in matters of art which creates the public on which the artist relies, and directly reduces his chance of selling his product. The more works of art that are brought into or produced in this country the more the people will want. The more the people are educated to know a good work of art when they see it, the more chance there will be of their patronizing native talent without fearing that it must be inferior to the imported article.

And I do not fear the importation of trash, for I believe that bad art has an educational value as well as good art. Most art lovers have begun by liking inferior things, which have gradually educated them to like something better. Let me illustrate again: I do not imagine that even the publishers of that estimable periodical will maintain that the illustrations in Harper's Weekly in the sixties were the highest manifestations of pictorial art. They represented painting to me when I was a boy in Ohio. As for sculpture, my notions of that art were derived from the wooden Indians in front of the cigar stores. This is literal fact. From the study of such things I went on, as opportunity offered, to the study of what was better until I determined that I must have the best, and went abroad, as was necessary then, to get it.

If you gentlemen have any care for the prosperity of American artists, throw the doors wide open to the competition of the world. I have confidence that our artists can meet it. The good things that come in will remain as an addition to the intellectual and material wealth of our country; the bad things will disappear, and in disappearing will have done their part in that education of the public on which the progress and prosperity of our native artists must depend.

This is something like what I should wish to say to the Committee on Ways and Means, and I hope some one else will say it for me.

Yours, very sincerely,

(Signed)

KENYON Cox, N. A.

Mr. GRIGGS. May I ask one question, Mr. Chairman?
The CHAIRMAN. Certainly.

Mr. GRIGGS. You speak of this new country of ours; you lay special stress on that. How old was France when she put art on the free list?

Mr. DE FOREST. France has never had any duty on art.
Mr. GRIGGS. Never?

Mr. DE FOREST. No, sir.

Mr. GRIGGS. How old was Germany?

Mr. DE FOREST. Germany never had any duty on art.

Mr. GRIGGS. I do not mean the German Empire, but the German States.

Mr. DE FOREST. Never.

Mr. GRIGGS. Austria?

Mr. DE FOREST. Austria never had any duty on art.

Mr. GRIGGS. England?

Mr. DE FOREST. England never had any duty on art. Italy has an export duty, and we have to pay that duty in order to get art objects.

Mr. GRIGGS. I understand that.

STATEMENT OF BRYAN LATHROP, OF CHICAGO, ILL., PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN FREE ART LEAGUE.

SATURDAY, November 28, 1908. Mr. LATHROP. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, 1 come from Chicago, and in behalf of Chicago and of the great West I appeal to you to put art on the free list.