shall not be placed upon a level with labor, with the product of labor. All that we want you to do is to place the product of a man's brain on a level with the product of the man who makes a pair of shoes. If I go out here and pick up in the street a copy of Huckleberry Finn, or suppose I had done it years ago, and suppose Mark Twain or Harper and Brothers had never copyrighted it, and suppose I went out and found that Huckleberry Finn had never been copyrighted. I had had no hand in its creation; it was not my property; I had had nothing to do with it, what moral right should I have to go and print and publish Huckleberry Finn and sell it for my own private exploitation? Because these things are all private exploitation. There has been a great deal said about the public, but all that every interest wants here is simply a free hand to manufacture the stuff at as low a price as possible and sell it to the public at as high a price as possible. Now, these interests are all agreed, and the only interests that are not agreed on automatic and international copyright are those people that want to get something, some species of property for nothing.

I want to say one word in conclusion about the question of the librarians. Doctor Raney is not fighting for any principle. Now, I repeat that he is not fighting for any principle, because the principle that he wants he has fought for, and the principle that he wants is in this bill. The American Federation of Labor, in order that the United States could go into the Berne Convention, forfeited a right, and that right was that foreign authors should be printed in this country, that foreign authors should be manufactured in this country if they were copyrighted in this country. The American Federation of Labor sacrificed that right. In return for that and as a compromise with the librarians, this subsection was put into this bill, a section that permits a library to import one copy of a work at a time for use and not for profit, under certain circumstances. Those circumstances are these: If that work is published in America the librarian does not have to go without it. He goes to the publisher here in America and buys it. At what price? He buys it at exactly the same price that he can buy it abroad. Not only that, if he wants the English edition of a work rather than the American edition, he can get, under the exact terms of this work, from the proprietor of the United States conyright, he can get that English work, because this says-

provided the proprietor of the United States copyright of such work has, within 10 days after written demand, declined or neglected to agree to supply the copy demanded at a price equivalent to the foreign price thereof, and transportation charges, etc.

Now, his objection is not to the principle of the matter. His objection is to the machinery which the librarian is required to go through in order to find out if the work is published here in America. Now, understand that any books in foreign languages can come in here. They can import books in foreign languages. So, as far as the librarians are concerned, we are talking simply and solely with reference to a book published in English, in the English language.

The matter will resolve itself into this: The librarian can go to Baker & Taylor, or any other large distributor of books in this country, and order any book he wants, and get it. The counsel for

the publishers pointed out here yesterday that if you wanted a surgical instrument or a drug you would go to a druggist, and if you want a book, Baker & Taylor in New York will provide you with any book you want.

The register of copyrights has stated here to-day that the records of the copyright office are up to date, published three times a week, and are kept up to date, so that at any time any librarian can discover what books have been copyrighted here. There is not any principle involved. It is simply and solely a matter of going to some large bookseller, some large book house, and getting that book at a price equivalent to the foreign price. If you state that the librarians represent the public, then you will have to say, on the other hand, that the American Federation of Labor represents the public. This section is not a section on which three different sets of people have stood at odds; it is a compromise section, and the publishers and the American Federation of Labor have gone as far as they can, conceding and conceding and conceding, until they now say to the librarians," you can get your book and you can get it at the foreign price, and we have provided for it."

Now, one word more. I am not going to add anything to what Mr. Mills said about radio, but I do want to say this-and I do not think that this argument has been advanced in connection. with the literary productions of the ordinary literary author, the novelist or the short story writer, Mr. Bloom. Under the mechanical reproduction, compulsory license section of the act as it now stands, one of George Ade's fables can be reproduced on a disk and sold without any recognition of the copyright proprietor whatever. There is no provision in the present act by which an ordinary short sketch novel, essay, or humorous skit is entitled to any copyright protection when used upon a disk. Now, you are asked to recognize by this bill that radio is a new method of communication.

Mr. BLOOM. You do not want to go into radio, do you?

Mr. OSBORNE. I have got rights to protect here which relate to the literary author, that is all, and you have said, "We are going to give an exclusive right with reference to musical productions, but whoever propounded the bill has deliberately withheld from the literary author, the dramatic author

Mr. BLOOM (interposing). Why do you not offer an amendment? Mr. OSBORNE. No; I do not want any amendments to the bill. Mr. BLOOM. Do you want to offer an amendment to this bill? Mr. OSBORNE. No; this bill provides this bill which we support provides that there shall be in the author the exclusive right of radio broadcasting. I want to avoid the possibility of a section going into this bill which limits it merely to musical broadcasting. This bill is all right as it stands.

Mr. BLOOM. And the Dill bill is not?

Mr. OSBORNE. Oh, no; I will not go into radio. The Dill bill does not give us any exclusive rights in radio.

Mr. Wile wanted me to call your attention to a matter that he failed to mention, and that was as to the subsisting right. Under the present act an author has a 28-year term; then he has another 28-year term; and under the present act, if he dies before the end of the first 28-year term, it is very clear that on the second 28-year term his family alone owns that right. In practice, publishers have

been accustomed to take contracts by which the author agreed to give them the right to the subsisting term and also agreed to renew for their benefit. That has been the practice. The consensus of opinion seems to be that if he did make such a contract he could be compelled, if he lived, to take out a new copyright for the benefit of the publisher.

Now, when we came up to this point here the publishers made certain representations to us of this kind, stating that authors had been accustomed at the end of the 28-year period to hold up, even fair publishers, or that their families had; that that was the representation made by a textbook publisher and other people. We considered this whole matter very carefully in conjunction with them and with our own counsel alone, and we came to the conclusion that where a man had parted with his rights to a royalty, to his publisher-royalties are usually of a stated sum-that that should continue for the entire term and the renewal term, the entire term of this act, but if he had not, if he had sold on a lump sum, then either the author should have all the benefit of the new term or the publisher should have it or they both should, as the courts should decide. Now, we were willing to leave that matter on both sides to the determination of the court.

Mr. BLOOM. To the future?

Mr. OSBORNE. Yes.

Mr. BLOOM. You do not want to take the present decision in that, do you?

Mr. OSBORNE. Yes.

Mr. BLOOM. You want to take the present court decision in that? Mr. OSBORNE. We want to leave that matter to the determination of the courts under this bill. If a publisher has spent half a million dollars on a work and his return has been very small, it is very clear that he ought to be entitled to some consideration; if, on the other hand, he has a very valuable work and has spent very little money for it, and has made a great deal of money out of it, then it is clear that the renewal term-that the author ought to have most of the benefit of the renewal term.

That is all I have to say.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will take a recess until 2 o'clock this afternoon.

(Whereupon, at 1 o'clock p. m., the committee adjourned until 2 o'clock p. m. this day.)

AFTER RECESS

The CHAIRMAN. We are ready to hear you, Mr. Smith.

STATEMENT OF ALFRED L. SMITH, GENERAL MANAGER MUSIC INDUSTRIES CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, 45 WEST FORTY-FIFTH STREET, NEW YORK CITY

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Alfred L. Smith, secretary and general manager of the Music Industries Chamber of Commerce, with headquarters in New York City.

You had appearing before you this morning representatives of industries who have told you that they represent the fourth largest

industry in the country, and have shown you that they should be considered in this matter because of the tremendous importance of their industry and the welfare of this country, on account of its size. We do not represent a large industry in that sense; we are not one of the large industries of the country. We are a large industry with a great many millions invested, thousands of workers in our plants and in our stores, and, above all, we are an industry upon which literally millions of the public depend for something which they want, namely, music. And we come before you to discuss a question which is vital to the success of our industry.

We are going to talk on what some of the proponents of this bill have called petty rights, small rights. They have told you that there are going to be no difficulties with this bill so far as the main features are concerned, as far as the larger rights are concerned; but that a number of industries and individuals which are affected by the small rights can not agree and they are going to cause difficulty in the passage of this bill. We represent people who are interested particularly in what they characterize as small rights.

Gentlemen, they are not at all small to us, either measured in terms of necessity for them or in terms of the dollars and cents which we pay for the privilege of operating under them.

In this connection I think you should bear in mind that the term small rights is not exactly the term you might think it to be when your attention has been called to them by the proponents of this bill. You understand that the term small rights comes from the French term petit droit, which, literally translated, might be called small rigts, but the real translation from the French is not "small rights at all. The French have a term grand droit for the rights under the copyright, and as the original rights were extended they called these extended rights “small rights," until to-day we find not only there but here the small rights have become the big thing-the big thing certainly to the owners of musical copyrights as well as to our people who use them. So please do not think we are an industry coming to talk to you about small rights in this bill; they are the big thing in the bill.

Now, in 1909, after a great deal of consideration, the Congress extended, at the request of the owners, the musical copyrightsprivileges in copyrights. But at the same time they had a very practical problem to meet, and they met the situation by a set of regulations governing these new and extended privileges given to the musical copyright authors. Those regulations have come to be called mechanical license provisions. We are here to talk primarily to those mechanical license provisions.

I think it is clearly understood this is a bill by the Authors' League for the benefit of authors and others, as they call them, brain workers. It is a selfish bill. We have no objection to that, but it is a selfish bill; it is in their interest; solely in their interest. They do not hide that fact.

It is interesting to note that this bill is considerably different from the Perkins bill, and I want to call your attention to some of the remarks that were made a year ago when these same people were advocating the Perkins bill. You will remember that they talked very extensively about the fact we must have a lawful copyright bill,

that we must have a copyright bill that is theoretically correct, that will give the authors and composers all the rights which they are entitled to under the Constitution. They even went so far as to say that that bill had been drawn up without their instigation by a man we all know, who has had a great deal of experience, and a man whom we can all rely upon, perhaps not for the policies of copyright which we think should be put into effect, but, nevertheless, they said at the time that they would be willing to abide, as I remember it, by anything that Mr. Solberg wrote, without the dotting of an "i" or the crossing of a "t." Now they come here before you with an entirely different bill. During the year that has intervened there have been innumerable conferences.

Mr. BLOOM. Who do you mean by "they."

Mr. SMITH. I will come to that in just a moment, Mr. Bloom; I will explain what I mean. During the year there have been innumerable conferences between the various interests on this bill; primarily, however, between the Authors League and the various interests which a year ago opposed the Authors League, and apparently they found this theoretically correct bill is not a good bill from the practical standpoint. At any rate, there are a great many changes, and this industry and that industry and this faction and that faction have got what they, in their selfish interest, want and they approve this bill. Now, we do not criticise that at all, we think that is the way legislation has to be passed-legislation of this kind.

The reason I bring that out is to show you that this is a bill designed to protect the various interests, and we come here for protection just as much as the others.

Mr. BLOOM. Oh, no; I do not think you are right in that statement. Mr. SMITH. Let me give youMr. BLOOM. No; excuse me. You are making a statement here about a certain bill Mr. Smith. This bill is the same as any other bill. This bill tends to bring the different interests together and let them state their positions and try to find where the different branches and different trades are wronged or injured or whether they need protection. The bill is merely a foundation to work on. Mr. Vestal in introducing this bill had no particular industry in mind; there was no privileged legislation thought of here. It is a mere instrument to work on and to get the different ideas and suggestions. That is why we are here.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Bloom, that is just exactly what I called to your attention. That it was a bill designed to take care of this situation, and trying to take care of the various interests, and I told you that I approved of that thing.

The CHAIRMAN. May I make this statement for the record; I think I have not made it before and it probably ought to go in the record to show how this bill comes to be before this committee. Early in the session, or, really, before the session opened, I talked with parties who were interested in a revision of the copyright law. Having in mind the Perkins bill of last year and having in mind the fact that a great number of people opposed certain parts of the Perkins bill, I suggested that all the different parties who had objections to the Perkins bill, different interests throughout the