This man lives in San Diego, Calif. I would like to have him. stand up and let the committee see Mr. Charles Wakefield Cadman of California.

[The gentleman arose.]

I have with me another creator, who in my humble estimation is one of the geniuses which America has developed in the creation of songs. I believe he has written more song hits than any man living, not alone popular songs but he has the gift of writing musical prose. Not alone that, but he then entered the motion-picture field and has written some great outstanding musical pictures. He started in with Alexander's Ragtime Band, that set the world to singing, and went on with music for revues and follies. I would like to have him stand up and have the committee see Irving Berlin.

[The gentleman arose.]

I would like to have the committee see George Gershwin, a great modern American composer, who has written some of the outstanding musical successes of this country in recent years. His present production, produced by the Theatre Guild, was a musical setting of that very fine play, Porgy. He wrote Of Thee I Sing, and he wrote Rhapsody in Blue, and he has written numerous American works. Now, gentlemen, I am going to ask Mr. Gershwin to arise. [The gentleman arose.]

Now, gentlemen, I am going to introduce a few more here for this reason: These gentlemen are not here particularly for themselves. They join with me in trying to protect the little fellow, because the hits in music are the exception. There is a great body of men in this country, devoting their lives to writing songs, music, and plays, and painting pictures. Berlin, Gershwin, and these men are here today, just like throughout the years Victor Herbert stood by my side and John Philip Sousa stood by my side, and they are standing here for themselves. This American Society is not a selfish organization, and I defy any broadcaster, hotel owner, or picture exhibitor to parallel our record in looking after our own. There is not a composer or author in the United States today on a dole or a relief project.

The Society looks after them.

I would like to present at this time the widow of a man who has written imperishable songs. He came from Pittsburgh and wrote an immortal song called the Rosary, he wrote Narcissus; he wrote Mighty Lak a Rose; he wrote the Venitian Suite, and he died & young man. He never heard of the American Society. It was not in existence, but his widow is a member of the American Society, and she gets money from the American Society, just as though Ethelbert Nevin were alive. Mrs. Nevin is down here today, and later on will testify before the committee, and I would like the widow of Ethelbert Nevin to stand up.

[The lady arose]. [Applause].

There is a big lumbering fellow sitting back here, and I am going to ask him to stand up. He comes from Massachusetts. He went out West and worked through the honky-tonks, and he found he had a creative gift, and this man wrote a great American folk song, like The Last Roundup, and shortly after he wrote The Old Spinning Wheel, and within 6 weeks wrote a magnificent popular song which everybody has heard, Wagon Wheels.

I would like the creator of those songs to stand up, Billy Hill.

[The gentlemen arose.]

I am asking these composers and authors to stand up because I have a very good object in this. I have the honor to speak for these, my colleagues and my friends, and inasmuch as there has been seeping through the halls of this Congress some false propaganda about barber shops and bootblacks, and that our people want that kind of money, as license fees I want to see one of these people before this committee. I want to see this bootblack and this barber shop fellow and this boardinghouse keeper who have been cited as victims. And I say now for them, this American Society welcomes to throw out anybody who says they want that kind of money. They do not want it. They only want it from those who use their works for purposes of profit and really those large enterprises who use their works.

It has been said here that this society charges hotels for radios. That is a lie. They only charge a hotel if a radio control affects the operation. This society does not charge for a hotel radio in any room in these United States, unless the hotel has a receiving set in a central room that they use for control, like an inner broadcasting station, and when anyone gets into the room they switch the room radio on from an instrument, a master control, so-called.

The society does not charge any hotel in these United States for a broadcasting operation nor does it ever intend to, nor any public room in a hotel.

But this issue which we are discussing now has been through the United States Supreme Court, in which the society was upheld in the Buck Jewall, La Salle case, that if the hotel, the establishment equips its rooms in such a manner that the hotel controls the program that goes to the guest listener in his room and he has not the choice of turning the dial and picking up any program in the United States, then the hotel comes under our rights.

What does the society do, and what is the sequel there? They charge the fee under such an operation of $1 per year per room. That is what the society charges hotels. How much does it cost the hotels to equip their rooms with radio? Is that exorbitant, $1 per year per room?

If a hotel has 400 rooms and 400 radio sets, and the hotel controls what you hear over the radio, then the hotels should pay $1 per year per room. Is that exorbitant?

What have these hotel men done? There has come to my desk a copy of a bill, a poster set up in rooms in hotels throughout this country urging guests to write your Congressman, to wire your Congressman, because "We cannot play radios in this room on account of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers."

Now, gentlemen, to call that a lie is going easy with them. Gentlemen, in any hotel in the United States, if a radio is put in your room, we do not charge the hotel unless it is a radio controlled by the proprietor of that hotel, which has a master control. That is all together a different thing.

Now, of course, you men are familiar that when I go to a hotel I have to pay for a radio in my room, and it is right. I do not mind that. If you are there for a week or a month that is all right. I do not mind paying that hotel, if they bring me up a radio set to my room, and I can have it, but Ascap does not get anything out of it.

Ascap does not charge the hotels. I think there is not a hotel in Washington under charges from Ascap.

What happened? These hotel gentlemen sensitized this Congress with propaganda and call us "racketeers." I bear down on that word "racketeers", because these same gentlemen are creators of the couvert charge, and if I know of any racket in this country, it is walking into a restaurant and being charged for a tip onto your bill for music. Then one of the grandest rackets I have ever heard of, starting back many years ago, is the so-called hat-check racket, where one of you gentlemen will pay $2 for a hat which has been in hock in a check room ever since the day you bought it. I do not know of a more insidious racket in this country than where you go to a place and cannot get your hat out except taking it out of hat-check hock when you leave.

What happens there? Does that "gal" get that money, the nickel, dime, or quarter? She does not. Does the hotel get it? Most of them lease the hat-check room as a concession to a fellow who thought up this racket, and in the major hotels in New York City and other great cities of this country the lessees pay as high as $10,000 a year as a concession to the hotel, and when you walk in they grab your hat and coat. Then the concessionaires have somebody there to spy on the hat-check girls so that none of this money escapes them. These are the hotel gentlemen who pay $200,000 a year for the music rights of the world, and they are down here begging and pleading with you gentlemen to release them from that $200,000. I am much afraid that they are associated with or possibly being used by a much greater power in the background, back of this legislation.

I am going to put that on the table here, the Power Trust. That is who is involved here. They are behind this bill. There is no question in my mind about it. I hope that when I get through you will be convinced. I trust you gentlemen will make notes on this question, and I want to go into it, and I will be very happy to go into it.

Now, what happened? The Duffy bill was reported out of the Senate committee, with a hearing to my knowledge, that lasted 1 hour, and Senator McAdoo was the only member of the Patent Committee present, and Senator Duffy the only witness. We had less than 1 hour. Mr. Burkan, George Creel, representing the Authors League of America, and Louise Silcox, the secretary of the Authors League of America, and Mr. Kilrow, and Mr. Hess, of the motionpicture industry-we had 1 hour before the United States Senate on a question so important that it is liable to change the entire creative force of this country, and the creators had 1 hour to try to put their story over. That is the truth.

Now, one hot day last August that bill passed the Senate, the 7th day of August. I do not know yet who voted for it. There is no record of it. We do not know. People who were there said there were not 13 men on the floor of the United States Senate the day that was passed.

Now, all I have asked you gentlemen here is to give some considerations to the problems that confront us. The author and the composer have seen sheet music drop 60 percent, the sales of sheet music. Before that it was the chief source of revenue to composers. It was 0 percent. The phonographic mechanics, the next source

of income which the creator had, has dropped 90 percent. What happened? More music is being played today than ever in the history of the world. Through the means of the radio in hotels, the motionpicture theaters and users, more music is being played than ever before, and the composer is getting less. There is not a composer or author in these United States getting 50 percent of the income that he got before this tremendous mechanical invasion came upon us. What happened here? The composer and the author naturally went to this society, where he had vested the right to publicly perform for profit, to help him and to give him some relief, and the American Society naturally wanted to increase its rates to the hotel man and the broadcaster and the picture exhibitor.

What happened? Right away they are down here to Congress to call us "racketeers", they are trying to utilize this committee to write their contract. The charge that they are making is that we utilize à $250 clause in this act as a club, as a legal club, to force men to take out a license and before we get through with the hearing we are going into that. That is the first thing they want out of the law: Remove from the act of 1909 the $250 damage clause. There is a very good objective in that for them. That will legalize piracy. They know, the song writers of this country know, the creative workers know, and the motion-picture industry know with the copyrights and the bicycling of films, what will happen to them. Two hundred and fifty dollars is a deterrent. That is why it was put in there after long debate, as a deterrent to stop men from stealing intellectual property and creative property.

Gentlemen, I am putting the cards here on the table because I think that is healthy. The main attack in the Duffy bill is aimed at the society that I have the honor to lead.

The same forces motivated the Department of Justice to bring an action against us as a monopoly. These forces are powerful. We realize what they mean, and realize the power of the stations broadcasting in these United States tonight who must have this music. In a way you cannot blame them if they can write their own ticket. They want to protect themselves, if 70 percent of their operations are music.

Last year $80,000,000 was paid to the broadcasters just for station facilities. That has nothing to do with the salaries the artists, or the orchestras get. That is just so much an hour. One hundred million dollars was paid there. Whom do we license? We license the station. We do not license the artist. The American Society gives the gentleman free accessibility to a reservoir of all of the works of the world embraced in our catalog. We give these gentlemen a license of accessibility to this reservoir of every kind of music: standard music, popular music, production music, shows, and everything-for them to dip into and take what they want.

Before we get through we are going to put in the record here and I am going to ask our general manager, Mr. Mills, who knows more about that than I do, going into the technical end of it, how much these broadcasters pay. We can give you in round figures what they paid the American Society. Last year they gave every author and composer in America and throughout the world, $2,500,000, to be distributed over 44,000 authors, composers, and publishers in 21 countries of the world.

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The American Society does this. It not alone gives these broadcasters and hotel men and picture exhibitors our works, but we have performing rights reciprocal treaties. If the English Performing Rights Society protects us in England, we protect them in the United States. They give us their rights and we give these to these gentlemen, which costs us about $450,000 a year out of this $2,500,000 which we distribute to these 21 nations.

There is another very important clause in this bill to which I would like to address myself, and before you get through with this question you will understand how important it is. The roots are extremely deep. That clause is this particularly innocent looking line in the bill which says that the right to produce includes the right to exhibit. Under the present Copyright Act I have two rights. These gentlemen now wish to merge these two rights. That is what is going to lead direct to the doorstep of the Power Trust, that innocent line.

I am going to tell you why it was brought in here. That was brought in here by the motion-picture exhibitor. He said that he wanted to rid himself of paying too much money for the right to exhibit his pictures. And I might as well put in the record now what the picture houses paid us. About 12,000 picture houses are licensed by the American Society, and they paid us last year $1,000,000 to be distributed among 44,000 creative workers and their publishers. These exhibitors had a seating capacity of about 22,000,000 people. Those gentlemen are down here asking that you take from us the right to exhibit which has been in the act since 1909, to relieve them.

It is possible that some of you gentlemen might be confused by a person talking copyright to you and the different rights that flow from this act. If you will permit me just for a second I would like to tell you how this operates.

If one of you gentlemen, born of your experience in this Congress, has a creative gift and wrote a story, whether it was true or mythical, and sold it to George Lorimer, of the Saturday Evening Post, or Bill Chenery, the editor of Collier's Weekly, that is just one right.

Let us say that Buck sits home and he reads this story in the Saturday Evening Post, Mr. Dunn's story, let us say, and he would like to make a play out of it. I cannot make that play from the Saturday Evening Post. I must go see Mr. Dunn, as it should be, because I am now a theatrical producer going to take this story, seeing dramatic possibilities in it, and hire a lot of actors, engage theaters, put on a production, and produce that play. That right belongs to Mr. Dunn.

If Mr. Zukor sits in his home and reads that story and says, "This would make a great picture", and wants to buy the picture, that is another right.

If you wish to produce that for purposes of profit that is another right.

I have found that there has been a very confusing thing about these rights. Congressmen have frequently said to me, "If I buy that sheet of music, why can't I play it, why can't I do anything I want with it?" It just so happens that that sheet of music is bought by you for private use, like a phonograph record; but the minute you take that piece of music, if there is an admission charged at the door for commercial purposes, or if you are going to sell that piece of music over again, either on a broadcasting station or in a theater