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LETTERS

ON

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT:

BY

H. C. CAREY,

AUTHOR OF "PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL SCIENCE," ETC. ETC.

SECOND EDITION.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON,

459 BROOME STREET.

1868.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.





PREFACE.


At the date, now fourteen years since, of the first publication of these
letters, the important case of authors _versus_ readers--makers of books
_versus_ consumers of facts and ideas--had for several years been again
on trial in the high court of the people. But few years previously the
same plaintiffs had obtained a verdict giving large extension of _time_ to
the monopoly privileges they had so long enjoyed. Not content therewith,
they now claimed greater _space_, desiring to have those privileges so
extended as to include within their domain the vast population of the
British Empire. To that hour no one had appeared before the court on the
part of the defendants, prepared seriously to question the plaintiffs'
assertion to the effect that literary property stood on the same precise
footing, and as much demanded perpetual and universal recognition, as
property in a house, a mine, a farm, or a ship. As a consequence of
failure in this respect there prevailed, and most especially throughout
the Eastern States, a general impression that there was really but one
side to the question; that the cause of the plaintiffs was that of truth;
that in the past might had triumphed over right; that, however doubtful
might be the expediency of making a decree to that effect, there could be
little doubt that justice would thereby be done; and that, while rejecting
as wholly _inexpedient_ the idea of perpetuity, there could be but slight
objection to so far recognizing that of universality as to grant to
British authors the same privileges that thus far had been accorded to our
own.

Throughout those years, nevertheless, the effort to obtain from the
legislative authority a decree to that effect had proved an utter failure.
Time and again had the case been up for trial, but as often had the
plaintiffs' counsel wholly failed to agree among themselves as to the
consequences that might reasonably be expected to result from recognition
of their clients' so-called rights. Northern and Eastern advocates,
representing districts in which schools and colleges abounded, insisted
that perpetuity and universality of privilege must result in giving the
defendants cheaper books. Southern counsel, on the contrary, representing
districts in which schools were rare, and students few in number, insisted
that extension of privilege would have the effect of giving to planters
handsome editions of the works they needed, while preventing the
publication of "cheap and nasty" editions, fitted for the "mudsills" of
Northern States. Failing thus to agree among themselves they failed to
convince the jury, mainly representing, as it did, the Centre and the
West, as a consequence of which, verdicts favorable to the defendants had,
on each and every occasion, been rendered.

A thoroughly adverse popular will having thus been manifested, it was now
determined to try the Senate, and here the chances for privilege were
better. With a population little greater than that of Pennsylvania, the
New England States had six times the Senatorial representation. With
readers not a fifth as numerous as were those of Ohio, Carolina, Florida,
and Georgia had thrice the number of Senators. By combining these
heterogeneous elements the will of the people--so frequently and
decidedly expressed--might, it was thought, be set aside. To that end,
the Secretary of State, himself one of the plaintiffs, had negotiated the
treaty then before the Senate, of the terms of which the defendants had
been kept in utter ignorance, and by means of which the principle of
taxation without representation was now to be established.

Such was the state of affairs at the date at which, in compliance with the
request of a Pennsylvania Senator, the author of these letters put on
paper the ideas he had already expressed to him in conversation. By him
and other Senators they were held to be conclusive, so conclusive that the
plaintiffs were speedily brought to see that the path of safety, for the
present at least, lay in the direction of abandoning the treaty and
allowing it to be quietly laid in the grave in which it since has rested.
That such should have been their course was, at the time, much regretted
by the defendants, as they would have greatly preferred an earnest and
thorough discussion of the question before the court. Had opportunity been
afforded it _would_ have been discussed by one, at least, of the master
minds of the Senate;[1] and so discussed as to have satisfied the whole
body of our people, authors and editors, perhaps, excepted, that their
cause was that of truth and justice; and that if in the past there had
been error it had been that of excess of liberality towards the plaintiffs
in the suit.

[Footnote 1: Senator Clayton of Delaware.]

The issue that was then evaded is now again presented, eminent counsel
having been employed, and the opening speech having just now been made.[2]
Having read it carefully, we find in it, however, nothing beyond a labored
effort at reducing the literary profession to a level with those of the
grocer and the tallow-chandler. It is an elaborate reproduction of Oliver
Twist's cry for "more! more!"--a new edition of the "Beggar's Petition,"
perusal of which must, as we think, have affected with profound disgust
many, if not even most, of the eminent persons therein referred to. In it,
we have presented for consideration the sad case of one distinguished
writer and admirable man who, by means of his pen alone, had been enabled
to pass through a long life of most remarkable enjoyment, although his
money receipts had, by reason of the alleged injustice of the consumers of
his products, but little exceeded $200,000; that of a lady writer who, by
means of a sensational novel of great merit and admirably adapted to the
modes of thought of the hour, had been enabled to earn in a single year,
the large sum of $40,000, though still deprived of two hundred other
thousands she is here said to have fairly earned; of a historian whose
labors, after deducting what had been applied to the creation of a most
valuable library, had scarcely yielded fifty cents per day; of another who
had had but $1000 per month; and, passing rapidly from the sublime to the
ridiculous, of a school copy-book maker who had seen his improvements
copied, without compensation to himself, for the benefit of English
children.

[Footnote 2: See _Atlantic Monthly_ for October.]

These may and perhaps should be regarded as very sad facts; but had not
the picture a brighter side, and might it not have been well for the
eminent counsel to have presented both? Might he not, for instance, have
told his readers that, in addition to the $200,000 above referred to, and
wholly as acknowledgment of his literary services, the eminent recipient
had for many years enjoyed a diplomatic sinecure of the highest order, by
means of which he had been enabled to give his time to the collection of
materials for his most important works? Might he not have further told us
how other of the distinguished men he had named, as well as many others
whose names had not been given, have, in a manner precisely similar, been
rewarded for their literary labors? Might he not have said something of
the pecuniary and societary successes that had so closely followed the
appearance of the novel to whose publication he had attributed so great an
influence? Might he not, and with great propriety, have furnished an
extract from the books of the "New York Ledger," exhibiting the tens and
hundreds of thousands that had been paid for articles which few, if any,
would care to read a second time? Might he not have told his readers of
the excessive earnings of public lecturers? Might he not, too, have said a
word or two of the tricks and contrivances that are being now resorted to
by men and women--highly respectable men and women too--for evading,
on both sides of the Atlantic, the spirit of the copyright laws while
complying with their letter? Would, however, such a course of proceeding
have answered his present purpose? Perhaps not! His business was to pass
around the hat, accompanying it with a strong appeal to the charity of the
defendants, and this, so far as we can see, is all that thus far has been
done.

Might not, however, a similar, and yet stronger, appeal now be made in
behalf of other of the public servants? At the close of long lives devoted
to the public service, Washington, Hamilton, Clay, Clayton, and many other
of our most eminent men have found themselves largely losers, not gainers,
by public service. The late Governor Andrew's services were surely worth
as much, per hour, as those of the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," yet
did he give five years of his life, and perhaps his life itself, for far
less than half of what she had received for the labors of a single one.
Deducting the expenses incident to his official life, Mr. Lincoln would
have been required to labor for five and twenty years before he could have
received as much as was paid to the author of the "Sketch Book." The
labors of the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella have been, to himself
and his family, ten times more productive than have been those of Mr.
Stanton, the great war minister of the age.--Turning now, from civil to
military life, we see among ourselves officers who have but recently
rendered the largest service, but who are now quite coolly whistled down
the wind, to find where they can the means of support for wives and
children. Studying the lists of honored dead, we find therein the names of
men of high renown whose widows and children are now starving on pensions
whose annual amount is less than the monthly receipt of any one of the
authors above referred to.

Such being the facts, and, that they are facts cannot be denied, let us
now suppose a proposition to be made that, with a view to add one, two,
three, or four thousand dollars to the annual income of ex-presidents, and
ex-legislators, and half as much to that of the widows and children of
distinguished officers, there should be established a general pension
system, involving an expenditure of the public moneys, and consequent
taxation, to the extent of ten or fifteen millions a year, and then
inquire by whom it might be supported. Would any single one of the editors
who are now so earnest in their appeals for further grants of privilege
venture so to do? Would not the most earnest of them be among the first to
visit on such a proposition the most withering denunciations? Judging from
what, in the last two years, we have read in various editorial columns, we
should say that they would be so. Would, however, any member of either
house of Congress venture to commit himself before the world by offering
such a proposition? We doubt it very much. Nevertheless it is now coolly
proposed to establish a system that would not only tax the present
generation as many millions annually, but that would grow in amount at a
rate far exceeding the growth of population, doing this in the hope that
future essayists might be enabled to count their receipts by half instead
of quarter millions, and future novelists to collect abroad and at home
the hundreds of thousands that, as we are assured, are theirs of _right_,
and that are now denied them. When we shall have determined to grant to
the widows and children of the men who in the last half dozen years have
perished in the public service, some slight measure of justice, it may be
time to consider that question, but until then it should most certainly be
deferred.

The most active and earnest of all the advocates of literary _rights_
was, two years since, if the writer's memory correctly serves him, the
most thorough and determined of all our journalists in insisting on the
prompt dismissal of thousands and tens of thousands of men who, at their
country's call, had abandoned the pursuits and profits of civil life. Did
he, however, ever propose that they should be allowed any extra pay on
which to live, and by means of which to support their wives and children,
in the interval between discharge from military service and
re-establishment in their old pursuits? Nothing of the kind is now
recollected. Would he now advocate the enactment of a law by means of
which the widow and children of a major-general who had fallen on the
field should, so far as pay was concerned, be placed on a level with an
ordinary police officer? He might, but that he would do so could not with
any certainty be affirmed. She and they would, nevertheless, seem to have
claims on the consideration of American men and women fully equal to those
of the authoress of "Lady Audley's Secret," already, as she is understood
to be, in the annual receipt from this country of more than thrice the
amount of the widow's pension, in addition to tens of thousands at home.[1]

[Footnote 1: The London correspondent of Scribner and Co.'s "_Book
Buyer_" says that Miss Braddon's first publisher, Mr. Tinsley (who died
suddenly last year), called the elegant villa he built for himself at
Putney "Audley House," in grateful remembrance of the "Lady" to whose
"Secret" he was indebted for fortune; and Miss Braddon herself, through
her man of business, has recently purchased a stately mansion of Queen
Anne's time, "Litchfield House," at Richmond.]

It is, however, as we are gravely told, but ten per cent. that she asks,
and who could or should object to payment of such a pittance? Not many,
perhaps, if unaccompanied by monopoly privleges that would _multiply the
ten by ten and make it an hundred!_ Alone, the cost to our readers might
not now exceed an annual million. Let Congress then pass an act
appropriating that sum to be distributed among foreign authors whose works
had been, or might be republished here. _That_ should have the writer's
vote, but he objects, and will continue to object, to any legislative
action that shall tend towards giving to already "great and wealthy"
publishing houses the _nine_ millions that they certainly will charge for
collecting the single _one_ that is to go abroad.

"Great and wealthy" as they are here said to be, and as they certainly
are, we are assured that even they have serious troubles, against which
they greatly need to be protected. In common with many heretofore
competing railroad companies they have found that, however competition
among themselves might benefit the public, it would tend rather to their
own injury, and therefore have they, by means of most stringent rules,
established a "courtesy" copyright, the effect of which exhibits itself in
the fact, that the prices of reprinted books are now rapidly approaching
those of domestic production. Further advances in that direction might,
however, prove dangerous; "courtesy" rules not, as we are here informed,
being readily susceptible of enforcement. A salutary fear of interlopers
still restrains those "great and wealthy houses," at heavy annual cost to
themselves, and with great saving to consumers of their products. That
this may all be changed; that they may build up fortunes with still
increased rapidity; that they may, to a still greater extent, monopolize
the business of publication; and, that the people may be taxed to that
effect; all that is now needed is, that Congress shall pass a very simple
law by means of which a few men in Eastern cities shall be enabled to
monopolize the business of republication, secure from either Eastern or
Western competition. That done, readers will be likely to see a state of
things similar to that now exhibited at Chicago, where railroad companies
that have secured to themselves all the exits and entrances of the city,
are, as we are told, at this moment engaged in organizing a combination
that shall have the effect of dividing in fair proportion among the wolves
the numerous flocks of sheep.

On all former occasions Northern advocates of literary monopolies assured
us that it was in that direction, and in that alone, we were to look for
the cheapening of books. Now, nothing of this sort is at all pretended. On
the contrary, we are here told of the extreme impropriety of a system
which makes it necessary for a New England essayist to accept a single
dollar for a volume that under other circumstances would sell for half a
guinea; of the wrong to such essayists that results from the issue of
cheap "periodicals made up of selections from the reviews and magazines of
Europe;" of the "abominable extravagance of buying a great and good novel
in a perishable form for a few cents;" of the increased accessibility of
books by the "masses of the people" that must result from increasing
prices; and of the greatly increased facility with which circulating
libraries may be formed whensoever the "great and wealthy houses" shall
have been given power to claim from each and every reader of Dickens's
novels, as their share of the monopoly profits, thrice as much as he now
pays for the book itself! This, however, is only history repeating itself
with a little change of place, the argument of to-day, coming from the
North, being an almost exact repetition of that which, twenty years since,
came from the South--from the mouths of men who rejoiced in the fact
that no newspapers were published in their districts, and who well _knew_
that the way towards preventing the dissemination of knowledge lay in the
direction of granting the monopoly privileges that had been asked. The
anti-slavery men of the present thus repeat the argument of the
pro-slavery men of the past, extremes being thus brought close together.

Our people are here assured that Russia, Sweden, and other countries are
ready to unite with them in recognizing the "rights" now claimed. So, too,
it may be well believed, would it be with China, Japan, Bokhara, and the
Sandwich Islands. Of what use, however, would be such an union? Would it
increase the facilities for transplanting the ideas of American authors?
Are not the obstacles to such transplantation already sufficiently great,
and is it desirable that they should be at all increased? Germany has
already tried the experiment, but whether or not, when the time shall
come, the existing treaties will be renewed, is very doubtful. Where she
now pays dollars, she probably receives cents. Discussion of the question
there has led to the translation and republication of the letters here now
republished, and the views therein expressed have received the public
approbation of men whose opinions are entitled to the highest
consideration. What has recently been done in that country in reference to
domestic copyright, and what has been the effect, are well exhibited in an
article from an English journal just now received, a part of which,
American moneys having been substituted for German ones, is here given, as
follows:

"We have so long enjoyed the advantage of unrestricted competition in the
production of the works of the best English writers of the past, that we
can hardly realize what our position would have been had the right to
produce Shakespeare, or Milton, or Goldsmith, or any of our great classic
writers, been monopolized by any one publishing-house,--certainly we
should never have seen a shilling Shakespeare, or a half-crown Milton;
and Shakespeare, instead of being, as he is,' familiar in our mouths as
household words,' would have been known but to the scholar and the
student. We are far from condemning an enlightened system of copyright,
and have not a word to say in favor of unreasoning competition; but we do
think that publishers and authors often lose sight of their own interest
in adhering to a system of high prices and restricted sale. Tennyson's
works supply us with a case in point--here, to possess a set of
Tennyson's poems, a reader must pay something like 38_s_. or 40_s_.--in
Boston you may buy a magnificent edition of all his works in two volumes
for something like 15_s_., and a small edition for some four or five
shillings. The result is the purchasers in England are numbered by
hundreds, in America by thousands. In Germany we have almost a parallel
case. There the works of the great German poets, of Schiller, of Goethe,
of Jean Paul, of Wieland, and of Herder, are at the present time 'under
the protecting privileges of the most illustrious German Confederation,'
and, by special privilege, the exclusive property of the Stuttgart
publishing firm of J. G. Cotta. On the forthcoming 9th of November this
monopoly will cease, and all the works of the above-mentioned poets will
be open to the speculation of German publishers generally. It may be
interesting to our readers to learn the history of these peculiar legal
restrictions, which have so long prevailed in the German booktrade, and
the results likely to follow from their removal.

"Until the beginning of this century literary piracy was not prohibited
in the German States. As, however, protection of literary productions
was, at last, emphatically urged, the Acts of the Confederation (on the
reconstruction of Germany in the year 1815) contained a passage to the
effect, that the Diet should, at its first meeting, consider the
necessity of uniform laws for securing the rights of literary men and
publishers. The Diet moved in the matter in the year 1818, appointing a
commission to settle this question; and, thanks to that supreme
profoundness which was ever applied to the affairs of the father-land by
this illustrious body, after twenty-two years of deliberation, on the
9th of Nov., 1837, decreed the law, that the rights of authorship should
be acknowledged and respected, at least, for the space of ten years;
copyright for a longer period, however, being granted for voluminous and
costly works, and for the works of the great German poets.

"In the course of time, however, a copyright for ten years proved
insufficient even for the commonest works; it was therefore extended by a
decree of the Diet, dated June 19, 1845, over the natural term of the
author's life and for thirty years after his death. With respect to the
works of all authors deceased before the 9th of November, 1837--
including the works of the poets enumerated above--the Diet decided
that they could all be protected until the 9th of November, 1867.

"It was to be expected that the firm of J. G. Cotta, favored until now
with so valuable a monopoly, would make all possible exertions not to be
surpassed in the coming battle of the Publishers, though it is a somewhat
curious sight to see this haughty house, after having used its privileges
to the last moment, descend now suddenly from its high monopolistic stand
into the arena of competition, and compete for public favor with its
plebeian rivals. Availing itself of the advantage which the monopoly
hitherto attached to it naturally gives it, the house has just commenced
issuing a cheap edition of the German classics, under the title
'Bibliothek fuer Alle. Meisterwerke deutscher Classiker,' in weekly parts,
6 cts. each; containing the selected works of Schiller, at the price of
75 cts., and the selected works of Goethe, at the price of $1.50. And
now, just as the monopoly is gliding from their hands, the same firm
offers, in a small 16mo edition, Schiller's complete works, 12 vols.,
for 75 cts.

"Another publisher, A. H. Payne, of Leipzig, announces a complete edition
of Schiller's works, including some unpublished pieces, for 75 cts.

"Again, the well-known firm of F. A. Brockhaus holds out a prospectus of
a corrected critical edition of the German poets of the eighteenth and
nineteenth century, which we have every reason to believe will merit
success. A similar enterprise is announced, just now, by the
Bibliographical Institution of Hildburghausen, under the title,
'Bibliothek der deutschen Nationalliteratur,' edited by Heinr. Kurz, in
weekly parts of 10 sheets, at the price of 12 cts. each. Even an
illustrated edition of the Classics will be presented to the public, in
consequence of the expiration of the copyright. The Grotesche
Buchhandlung, of Berlin, is issuing the 'Hausbibliothek deutscher
Classiker,' with wood-cut illustrations by such eminent artists as
Richter, Thumann, and others; and the first part, just published,
containing Louise, by Voss, with truly artistic illustrations, has met
with general approbation. But, above all, the popular edition of the
poets, issued by G. Hempel, of Berlin, under the general title of
'National Bibliothek saemmtlicher deutscher Classiker,' 8vo. in parts, 6
cts. each, seems destined to surpass all others in popularity, though not
in merit. _Of the first part (already published), containing Buerger's
Poems, 300,000 copies have been sold, and 150,000 subscribers' names have
been registered for the complete series. This immense sale, unequalled in
the annals of the German book-trade, will certainly induce many other
publishers to embark in similar enterprises._"--Truebner's _Literary
Record_, Oct. 1867.

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