MARK TWAIN ON COPYRIGHT.

From the Century, February, 1886.

No one denies the foreign author's simple moral right to property in the product of his brain; so we may waive that feature and look at non-existent international copyright from a combined business and statesmanship point of view, and consider whether the nation gains or loses by the present condition of the thing.

As for the business aspect, a great argument of politicians is that our people get foreign books at a cheap rate. Most unfortunately for the country, that is true: we do get cheap alien books--and not of one kind only. We get all kinds-and they are distributed and devoured by the nation strictly in these proportions: an ounce of wholesome literature to a hundred tons of noxious. The ounce represents the little editions of the foreign masters in science, art, history, and philosophy required and consumed by our people; the hundred tons represent the vast editions of foreign novels consumed here--including the welcome semi-annual inundation from Zola's sewer.

Is this an advantage to us? It certainly is, if poison is an advantage to a person; or, if to teach one thing at the hearthstone, the political hustings, and in a nation's press, and teach the opposite in the books the nation reads is profitable; or, in in other words, if to hold up a national standard for admiration and emulation half of each day, and a foreign standard the other half, is profitable. The most effective way to train an impressible young mind and establish for all time its standards of fine and vulgar, right and wrong, and good and bad, is through the imagination; and the most insidious manipulator of the imagination is the felicitously written romance. The statistics of any public library will show that of every hundred books read by our people, about seventy are novels-and nine-tenths of them foreign ones. They fill the imagination with an unhealthy fascination for foreign life, with its dukes and earls and kings, its fuss and feathers, its graceful immoralities, its sugar-coated injustices and oppressions; and this fascination breeds a more or less pronounced dissatisfaction with our country and form of government, and contempt for our republican commonplaces and simplicities; it also breeds longings for something" better," which presently crop out in diseased shams and imitations of that ideal foreign life. Hence the "dude."

Thus we

have this curious spectacle: American statesmen glorifying American nationality, teaching it, preaching it, urging it, building it up-with their mouths; and undermining it and pulling it down with their acts. This is to employ an Indian nurse to suckle your child, and expect it not to drink in the Indian nature with the milk. It is to go Christian-missionarying with infidel tracts in your hands. Our average young person reads scarcely anything but novels; the citizenship and morals and predilections of the rising generation of America are largely under training by foreign teachers. condition of things is what the American statesmen thinks it wise to protect and preserve--by refusing international copyright, which would bring the national teacher to the front and push the foreign teacher to the rear. We do get cheap books through the absence of international copyright; and any who will consider the matter thoughtfully will arrive at the conclusion that these cheap books are the costliest purchase that ever a nation made. MARK TWAIN.

This

WILL COPYRIGHT REFORM RAISE THE PRICE OF BOOKS?

Brander Matthews in the Century for December, 1887. It is one of the assumptions of those who oppose international copyright, either ignorantly or wilfully, that this reform will raise the price We are all agreed of books in the United States. that the American people must have cheap books, yet the ordinary answer to this plausible assertion is modelled on Mr. Lowell's memorable saying that "there is one thing better than a cheap book, and that is a book honestly come by." I think it is possible to make a broader answer than this by boldly denying the assumption. The passing of the bill proposed by the American Copyright League will not raise the price of any class of books in the United States, with one possible exception. To this exception I will return shortly: in the meanwhile I wish to repeat my assertion, that books will not be any dearer in America after we have passed the copyright bill than they are now. The absence of International Copyright makes books cheaper here only in so far as American publishers are willing to take foreign books without paying for them. A consideration of the present condition and annual statistics of the American book-trade will show that the legal right to pirate is not now utilized by most American publishers, and that those who are still privateers seek their booty chiefly, if not solely, among books of one exceptional class.

PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY, the following table has been From the figures published annually in THE prepared to show the different kinds of books published in the United States during the past five years. (The classification is not quite that of the WEEKLY, but has been modified slightly by condensation.)

Taking up these classes in turn, we shall see what will be the effect on each of the passage of the bill of the American Copyright League. On the first class, education and language, there would be no effect at all, as the text-books now used in American schools were written by Americans and are covered by copyright: it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the American schoolboy never sees a book of foreign authorship in school-hours; I know that I never did until after I had entered college, and then very infrequently. Fortunately for the future of our country, young Americans are brought up on American books. The foundation of American education is the native Webster's Spelling-book. In some respects the making of school-books is the most important branch of the publishing business, and the passage of the copyright bill would not influence it in

any way; American school-books would be neither dearer nor cheaper.

In the second class, law, are included a tenth of the books published in the United States last year, and from the inexorable circumstances of the case most of these books are of American authorship and are already protected by copyright. All reports, and all treatises on practice and on constitutional law, etc., are of necessity national. Now and again an English treatise of marked merit may be edited for the use of American lawyers with references to American cases, but this is infrequent; and not often would the price of any work needed by the American lawyer be increased by the passage of the copyright bill.

Of books in the third and fourth classes-science and theology-very few indeed are ever pirated. Once in every three or four years there appears in England or France or Germany a book like Canon Farrar's "Life of Christ," the American price of which is lowered by rival reprints. A large majority of these books are written by American authors; and in general the minority by foreign authors are published here by an arrangement with the foreign author tantamount to copyright. Although purely ethical considerations ought to have more weight with readers of books of this class than with those of any other, yet it would be only infrequently that the price of any book of this class would be raised by giving to the literary laborer who made it the right to collect the hire of which he is worthy.

Taken together, the next three classes on the list-history; literary history and miscellany, biography and memoirs, description and travel, humor and satire; and poetry and the dramainclude nearly all of what used to be called Belles Lettres (except fiction), and they supply nearly a quarter of the books published in America. In these and in the preceding classes most of the books are of American authorship, and most of those of foreign authorship are published at just the same price as though they were by native writers. It would probably surprise most readers who imagine that the absence of International Copyright gives us many inexpensive histories and biographies and books of travel and poems, if they were to consider carefully the catalogues of the paper-covered collections which furnish forth our cheap literature. Among the chief of these collections are the Franklin Square Library and Harper's Handy Series. In 1886, there were issued fifty-four numbers of the Franklin Square Library, one of which was by an AmeriOf the remaining fifty-three, forty-six were fiction, and only seven numbers could be classified as history, biography, travels, or the drama-only seven of these books in one year, and they were less than one-seventh of the books contained in this collection. In the same year there were sixty-two numbers in Harper's Handy Series Deducting four by American authors we have fifty-eight books issued in cheap form owing to the absence of International Copyright. Of these fifty-eight books fifty-two were fiction, and only six belonged in other branches of Belles Lettres, -only six of these books in one year, and they less than one-ninth of the series. In these two cheap collections, then, there were published in 1886 one hundred and eleven books of foreign authorship, and of these all but thirteen were novels or stories. Not one of these thirteen books was a work of the first rank which a man might regret going without. It may as well be

can.

admitted frankly that these thirteen books would probably not have been published quite so cheaply had there been International Copyright; but it may be doubted whether if that were the case, the cause of literature and education in the United States would have been any the worse.

In the class of books for the young there are probably more works of foreign authorship sold than in any other class that we have hitherto considered, but in most cases they are not sold at lower prices than American books of the same character. Indeed, I question whether many English or French books for the young are sold at all in America. At bottom the American boy is more particular and harder to please than the American woman; he likes his fiction homemade, and he has small stomach for imported stories about the younger son of a duke. He has a wholesomer taste for native work; no English juvenile magazine is sold in the United States, although several American juvenile magazines are sold in Great Britain. We export books for the young, and we import them only to a comparatively slight extent.

We

I come now to the one class of books the price of which would be increased by the granting of International Copyright. This is the large and important class of fiction. Of course American novels would be no dearer; and probably translations from the French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian would not vary greatly in price. But English novels would not be sold for ten, fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five cents each. should not see five or ten rival reprints of a single story by the most popular English novelists. There would be but a single edition of the latest novels of the leading British story-tellers, and this would be offered at whatsoever price the authorized publisher might choose to ask, sometimes much, generally little. English fiction would no longer cost less than American fiction. The premium of cheapness which now serves to make the American public take imported novels instead of native wares would be removed; and with it would be removed the demoralizing influence on Americans of a constant diet of English fiction. That American men and women should read the best that the better English novelists have to offer us is most desirable; that our laws should encourage the reading of English stories, good and bad together, and the bad, of course, in enormous majority, is obviously improper and unwise. A well-nigh exclusive diet of English fiction full of the feudal ideas and superstitions and survivals of which we have been striving for a century to rid ourselves, is not wholesome for those who need to be strengthened and enlightened to do their duty as citizens of a free republic. The strongest argument against novel-reading just now is that the novel which an American is most likely to read is British. "Society is a strong solution of books," Dr. Holmes tells us; "it draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves." And in like manner society draws the vice out of what is least worth reading. Unfortunately, under the present state of the law, society in America is far less likely to get what is best worth reading than what is least worth reading.

The passage of the Authors' Copyright Bill would tend to correct this evil; it would make English novels dearer, probably; but it would have very little effect on the prices of other books.