International Copyright | Page 8

be expected to give up these for the poor half-loaf of protection accorded to his American brother we can hardly understand.
"IV. The trading of privileges to foreign authors for privileges to be granted to Americans is not just, because the interests of others than themselves are sacrificed thereby."
That strikes one as a remarkable sentence to come from Philadelphia. Here are a number of American manufacturers who ask for a certain very moderate amount of protection for their productions, and our Philadelphia friends, filled with an unwonted zeal for the welfare of the community at large, say, "No; this won't do. Prices would be higher, and consumers would suffer."
It is evident that this want of practical sympathy with these literary manufacturers is not due to any lack of interest in the enlightenment of the community, for the last article says:
"V. Because the good of the whole people and the safety of our republican institutions demand that books shall not be made too costly for the multitude by giving the power to foreign authors to fix their price here as well as abroad."
I think we may well doubt whether education as a whole, including the important branch of ethics, is advanced by permitting our citizens to appropriate, without compensation, the labor of others, while through such appropriation they are also assisting to deprive our own authors of a portion of their rightful earnings. But apart from that, the proposition, as stated, proves too much. It is fatal to all copyright and to all patent-right. If the good of the community and the safety of our institutions demand that, in order to make books cheap, the claim to a compensation for the authors must be denied, why should we continue to pay copyrights to Longfellow and Whittier, or to the families of Irving and Bryant? The so-called owners of these copyrights actually have it in their power, in connection with their publishers, to "fix the prices" of their books in this market. This monopoly must indeed be pernicious and dangerous when it arouses Pennsylvania to come to the rescue of oppressed and impoverished consumers against the exactions of greedy producers, and to raise the cry of "free books for free men."
There is certainly something refreshing in this zeal for the rights of the consumer, though we may doubt the equity of its application in this particular instance; but we can nevertheless hardly be satisfied to have an utterance like that of these resolutions quoted (as it is in the last edition of the Encyclop?dia Britannica) as "the latest American views on the subject."
The history of the efforts made in this country to secure international copyright is not a long one. The attempts have been few, and have been lacking in organization and in unanimity of opinion, and they have for the most part been made with but little apparent expectation of any immediate success. Those interested seem to have always felt that popular opinion was, on the whole, against them, and that progress could be hoped for only through the slow process of building up by education and discussion a more enlightened public sentiment.
In 1838, after the passing of the first International Copyright Act in Great Britain, Lord Palmerston invited the American Government to co?perate in establishing a copyright convention between the two countries.
In the year previous, Henry Clay, as chairman of a committee on the subject, had reported to the Senate very strongly in favor of such a convention, taking the ground that the author's right of property in his work was similar to that of the inventor in his patent.
This is a logical position for a protectionist, interested in the rights of labor, to have taken, and the followers of Henry Clay, who are to-day opposed to any measure of the kind, would do well to bear in mind this opinion of their ablest leader.
No action was taken in regard to Mr. Clay's report or Lord Palmerston's proposal.
In 1840 Mr. G. P. Putnam issued in pamphlet form "An Argument in behalf of International Copyright," the first publication on the subject in the United States of which I find record. In 1843 Mr. Putnam obtained the signatures of ninety-seven publishers, printers, and binders to a petition he had prepared, and which was duly presented to Congress. It took the broad ground that the absence of an international copyright was "alike injurious to the business of publishing and to the best interests of the people at large."
A memorial was presented the same year in opposition to this petition, setting forth, among other things, that an international copyright would "prevent the adaptation of English books to American wants." In the report made by Mr. Baldwin to Congress twenty-five years later, he remarks that "the mutilation and reconstruction of American books to suit English wants