Literary Copyright | Page 8

likes and dislikes, coupled also with the
same shrewd anxiety to ascertain a future demand that governs the
purveyors of spring and fall styles in millinery and dressmaking. Not
only the contents of the books and periodicals, but the covers, must be
made to catch the fleeting fancy. Will the public next season wear its
hose dotted or striped?
Another branch of this activity is the so-called syndicating of the
author's products in the control of one salesman, in which good work
and inferior work are coupled together at a common selling price and in
common notoriety. This insures a wider distribution, but what is its
effect upon the quality of literature? Is it your observation that the
writer for a syndicate, on solicitation for a price or an order for a certain
kind of work, produces as good quality as when he works
independently, uninfluenced by the spirit of commercialism? The
question is a serious one for the future of literature.
The consolidation of capital in great publishing establishments has its
advantages and its disadvantages. It increases vastly the yearly output
of books. The presses must be kept running, printers, papermakers, and
machinists are interested in this. The maw of the press must be fed. The
capital must earn its money. One advantage of this is that when new
and usable material is not forthcoming, the "standards" and the best
literature must be reproduced in countless editions, and the best
literature is broadcast over the world at prices to suit all purses, even
the leanest. The disadvantage is that products, in the eagerness of

competition for a market, are accepted which are of a character to harm
and not help the development of the contemporary mind in moral and
intellectual strength. The public expresses its fear of this in the phrase it
has invented--"the spawn of the press." The author who writes simply
to supply this press, and in constant view of a market, is certain to
deteriorate in his quality, nay more, as a beginner he is satisfied if he
can produce something that will sell without regard to its quality. Is it
extravagant to speak of a tendency to make the author merely an
adjunct of the publishing house? Take as an illustration the publications
in books and magazines relating to the late Spanish-American war.
How many of them were ordered to meet a supposed market, and how
many of them were the spontaneous and natural productions of writers
who had something to say? I am not quarreling, you see, with the
newspapers who do this sort of thing; I am speaking of the tendency of
what we have been accustomed to call literature to take on the transient
and hasty character of the newspaper.
In another respect, in method if not in quality, this literature approaches
the newspaper. It is the habit of some publishing houses, not of all, let
me distinctly say, to seek always notoriety, not to nurse and keep
before the public mind the best that has been evolved from time to time,
but to offer always something new. The year's flooring is threshed off
and the floor swept to make room for a fresh batch. Effort eventually
ceases for the old and approved, and is concentrated on experiments.
This is like the conduct of a newspaper. It is assumed that the public
must be startled all the time.
I speak of this freely because I think it as bad policy for the publisher as
it is harmful to the public of readers. The same effort used to introduce
a novelty will be much better remunerated by pushing the sale of an
acknowledged good piece of literature.
Literature depends, like every other product bought by the people, upon
advertising, and it needs much effort usually to arrest the attention of
our hurrying public upon what it would most enjoy if it were brought to
its knowledge.
It would not be easy to fix the limit in this vast country to the
circulation of a good book if it were properly kept before the public.
Day by day, year by year, new readers are coming forward with
curiosity and intellectual wants. The generation that now is should not

be deprived of the best in the last generation. Nay more, one
publication, in any form, reaches only a comparatively small portion of
the public that would be interested in it. A novel, for instance, may
have a large circulation in a magazine; it may then appear in a book; it
may reach other readers serially again in the columns of a newspaper; it
may be offered again in all the by-ways by subscription, and yet not
nearly exhaust its legitimate running power. This is not a supposition
but a fact proved by trial. Nor is it to