Twains Letters vol 4 1886-1900 | Page 9

causes
much comment--I believe that that is not an over-statement. Some of
this comment is palliative, but some of it --by patrons at a distance,
who only know the statistics without the explanation,--is offensive, and
in some cases even violent. Nine students have been called home. The
trustees of the college have been growing more and more uneasy all
these last months--steadily along with the implacable increase in your
census--and I will not conceal from you that more than once they have
touched upon the expediency of a change in the Professorship of Moral
Culture. The coarsely sarcastic editorial in yesterday's Alta, headed
Give the Moral Acrobat a Rest--has brought things to a crisis, and I am
charged with the unpleasant duty of receiving your resignation."
I know you only mean me a kindness, dear 1365, but it is a most deadly
mistake. Please do not name your Injun for me. Truly Yours.
Mailed Answer:
NEW YORK, Sept. 8. 1887. DEAR SIR,--Necessarily I cannot assent
to so strange a proposition. And I think it but fair to warn you that if
you put the piece on the stage, you must take the legal consequences.
Yours respectfully, S. L. CLEMENS.
Before the days of international copyright no American author's books

were pirated more freely by Canadian publishers than those of Mark
Twain. It was always a sore point with him that these books, cheaply
printed, found their way into the United States, and were sold in
competition with his better editions. The law on the subject seemed to
be rather hazy, and its various interpretations exasperating. In the next
unmailed letter Mark Twain relieves himself to a misguided official.
The letter is worth reading today, if for no other reason, to show the
absurdity of copyright conditions which prevailed at that time.
Unmailed Letter to H. C. Christiancy, on book Piracy:
HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87. H. C. CHRISTIANCY, ESQ.
DEAR SIR,--As I understand it, the position of the U. S. Government is
this: If a person be captured on the border with counterfeit bonds in his
hands--bonds of the N. Y. Central Railway, for instance--the procedure
in his case shall be as follows:
1. If the N. Y. C. have not previously filed in the several police offices
along the border, proof of ownership of the originals of the bonds, the
government officials must collect a duty on the counterfeits, and then
let them go ahead and circulate in this country.
2. But if there is proof already on file, then the N. Y. C. may pay the
duty and take the counterfeits.
But in no case will the United States consent to go without its share of
the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth
turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing
them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with
foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the
foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and
robbing the infant all alone by itself! Dear sir, this is not any more
respectable than for a father to collect toll on the forced prostitution of
his own daughter; in fact it is the same thing. Upon these terms, what is
a U. S. custom house but a "fence?" That is all it is: a legalized trader in
stolen goods.
And this nasty law, this filthy law, this unspeakable law calls itself a
"regulation for the protection of owners of copyright!" Can sarcasm go
further than that? In what way does it protect them? Inspiration itself
could not furnish a rational answer to that question. Whom does it
protect, then? Nobody, as far as I can see, but the foreign thief-
sometimes--and his fellow-footpad the U. S. government, all the time.

What could the Central Company do with the counterfeit bonds after it
had bought them of the star spangled banner Master-thief? Sell them at
a dollar apiece and fetch down the market for the genuine
hundred-dollar bond? What could I do with that 20-cent copy of
"Roughing It" which the United States has collared on the border and is
waiting to release to me for cash in case I am willing to come down to
its moral level and help rob myself? Sell it at ten or fifteen cents--duty
added--and destroy the market for the original $3,50 book? Who ever
did invent that law? I would like to know the name of that immortal
jackass.
Dear sir, I appreciate your courtesy in stretching your authority in the
desire to do me a kindness, and I sincerely thank you for it. But I have
no use for that book; and if I were even starving for it I would not pay
duty on in either to get it or