If a man creates something he should be entitled to enjoy the profit during his lifetime; and after all, if it is 25 or 50 years, he should have some little estate to leave his family. Very few can save anything. For the prosperous hundreds in the profession, there are thousands who make a bare living.

I am afraid I can not speak to you with regard to facts as I can speak emotionally, and I feel anything that you do to help_the authors and composers will be a great blessing to them as well as to the public of the United States. [Applause.]

Mr. Buck. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, Mrs. William. A Dupruy.

STATEMENT OF MRS. WILLIAM A. DUPRUY, OF THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN PENWOMEN

Mrs. DUPRUY. I only intend to take a minute, and not take up any of the points of the bill, because I think they have been so well covered.

I just want to state that the League of American Penwomen, a national organization, organized along the lines, for the purposes of the Authors' League, has indorsed this bill as it has been written. and presented.

We have worked through the years here in Washington for better copyright laws, and we are very grateful for the work that has been done by the Authors' League, by these people in coming down and presenting this bill.

Our work for the women of this country, and I represent about 2,000 writing women-we are an old organization. We have been organized 30 years, and during that time have tried in many ways to better these conditions. We have finally had to take up the work of helping those who have suffered from our loose copyright laws. Being an organization of so many years of age, many of our women who joined us in the prime of their working life are now not able to work any more. There are many things that can happen to the writer in creative work, just physical things; the crippled hand, the eyes giving out.

Now, under proper protection these people, these women especially, could be cared for by the results of the work of their early years; for instance, you could go back into the writings of many of our women and find they had moving-picture rights, if you knew where the copyright lay. That was covered this morning by Mr. Butler.

We have had to raise and keep a fund in our organization, and the same is true, I think, of the Authors' League, to take care of these people, these women who should have the results, the fruit of their own work, so that is one of the reasons we are back of this bill. Another reason is that the writer works under great difficulties when he works under this feeling, this fear of losing the result of thet work. No one knows the fear that the creative worker has that some morning he is going to wake up and that this thing is not working properly, and that it is all he has, that there is a "to let" sign on his brain, the ideas are not coming.

Now he has the right to have his work so organized that he can go through a crisis in the work of his business, as any other business man can depend for a few years on the work that he has already

done, and this bill will insure that. I believe that if this bill, if this proper protection is given the creative worker, that we will have in this country one of the greatest revivals in arts and letters, another renaissance, the beginning of one of the greatest, most fruitful periods in the world, in the world of art, literature and music.

All that we ask is the right, the protection, to do this work and to feel that we are going to get the results of our labor. [Applause.]

Mr. BUCK. The chairman of the board of the Music Publishers' Protective Association, and a member of the administrative committee of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, Mr. E. C. Mills.

STATEMENT OF MR. E. C. MILLS, OF THE MUSIC PUBLISHERS' PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION, AND OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, AUTHORS, AND PUBLISHERS.

Mr. MILLS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, we get so serious about copyright that we find it difficult sometimes to effectively discuss it. After hearing Mr. Thomas this morning, and some of the remarks that have been made to-day by those who depend upon their creative capacity for their living, I realize my inability to adequately present a subject that I desire to present so well.

It is not strange to hear the motion-picture theater men here opposing the bill. It will not be strange to hear the manufacturers of phonograph records here opposing certain sections of the bill, nor the broadcasters, nor any of that host of institutions and enterprises that survive and exist solely through the creative capacity which is in the brains of certain men and women, to bring into existence the things that make possible their commercially profitable business enterprises. Naturally, the motion-picture people object to the pooling of copyrights. Of course, they object to a law enforcing copyrights, having any teeth in it, or providing any penalties for infringement.

As usual they refer to a case in Boston, where they allege there was a song not entitled to copyright which was made the basis of a suit, failing entirely, however, to report the decision of the court on the question, which was to sustain the author of the number and award him damages for its infringement.

They speak of freeing copyrighted works for use at religious and benefit performances, where the profits go to some educational or charitable cause. I am an old theater manager myself, and it is a favorite diversion of theater managers when business is poor to put on a benefit for the Knights of Columbus or Young Women's Christian Association, or some local hospital or charity, with the understanding that that establishment or that institution is going to get the profits, and there are never any profits. The overhead always consumes them.

This bill that is before you, as you have so frequently been told during these hearings, was prepared by Mr. Solberg, the Register of Copyrights. I am in a position to know whereof I speak when I say that he prepared it uninfluenced by any of these organizations that have been here present, and the suggestion made by Mr. O'Toole that conferences were held relative to this bill, the inference being that

the conferences were held with the register of copyrights, and he, Mr. O'Toole, not invited to those conferences, is erroneous.

Representing the Music Publishers' Protective Association, when I first heard of this bill, I made this official statement, that if the register of copyrights was preparing a bill and in its preparation was going to be uninfluenced and unadvised by any of the interests concerned, that we would underwrite the bill, no matter what it was, and accept it as he turned it out, because we knew that he would have the public interest at heart, that he would be fair to the creators and fair to those who make a commercial use of music, and without the crossing of a "t" or the dotting of an "i" we would support the bill as he prepare it.

Speaking for the music publishers, there are several things in the bill that we do not like. As publishers we think of music a good deal in the terms of the first note of the chromatic scale, "do." "Do, ray, me, fa, sol," and so on, but as publishers we are business men, and we think primarily of that first note in the scale in relation to publishing problems. About some of the things in the bill we are a little timid, but we have reached this conclusion in the industry, to which the book publishers seem not to have been able yet to subscribe, that we will best serve our commercial and selfish interests by assenting to and helping to secure enactment of such a bill as will accord a maximum of encouragement and protection to the real creator.

With the speaker who just preceded me, we believe that if the bill is enacted America will forge rapidly to the front in those things that have to do with culture.

There always has been plenty of objections to any bill which provides a maximum of protection for the creators, and there always will be. The history of copyright has been a history of compromise, and perhaps there are some compromises to be made on this bill.

You gentlemen constitute the judge and the jury. Those who have been heard as proponents of the bill want only what is fair. The new bill does some things that we think are very fair. There was a time when we had no copyright. There came a time when we had some copyright. Gradually the measure of the protection accorded was increased, and we had still better copyright. Now we want, as is human and natural, still more secure copyright; but as a result of the progressive development and improvement of copy right and scope of protection afforded, has the public suffered? On the contrary, it has been benefited.

Relatively the happiness, security, content, and peace of those who create these delightful things that are the subject matter of copyright has improved as the protection accorded them has been increased, and they have been giving you better work and will give us better work as the measure of protection accorded is still further increased.

The difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum will be here endlessly argued. We argued it hours and hours and hours at the hearings last spring, until you gentlemen were tired of hearing us, I know, and certainly we became mighty weary of debating trifling differences.

It is not for us as the creators of copyrightable works to be stiffnecked. I see no objection, if you are going to give copyrights to the creators of original musical and artistic works, to requiring im

print upon those works of a notice that they have been copyrighted, or are subject to copyright. It is fair enough to put the public on notice if copyright subsists in a work, and the fact may well be shown by a statement to that effect on the work.

There are a few things, perhaps, that notice can not be put on, such as statues and things like that, but they are exceptions.

It is fair enough, perhaps, that if this country is to accord to its own citizens copyright protection, that those who enjoy that protection should be willing to encourage American labor and American inventions to the point of assenting to the requirement that works originating in America be manufactured in America. Perhaps that requirement is fair. If, however, an assent to that requirement meant that we could not join the International Copyright Union, I think it would be a mistake to let the selfish considerations of manufacturing in the United States, a purely commercial proposition, the handicap of which in the long run we would overcome, just as our ingenuity and superior manufacturing facilities have overcome so many other similar considerations, it would be a mistake to oppose cultural advancement from purely commercial considerations, based solely on dollars and cents.

When I say that there were no conferences between the organizations that I represent and the register of copyrights, prior to the introduction of this bill or until this moment in relation to this bill, it is a simple statement of truth. We have underwritten a bill (this bill, H. R. 11258) which differs from the other bills that have been before you, and which was prepared in an office of the Government, by an officer of the Government, perhaps by the best posted man on practical copyright in the world, and certainly the best posted one in the United States. We knew then, and we know even better now that he could be relied upon to write a bill that would be fair to all interests.

Let me give you some illustrations of practical experience. Prior to 1909, in relation to musical copyrights, the phonograph record having come into existence, the manufacturers of those records under the laws that then existed were entitled to appropriate to their free and unrestricted uses any and all musical works, whether copyrighted or not, in the United States. They had a perfect legal right to appropriate the works, and did appropriate them.

There came a time, when in 1909 Congress thought it wise to require that they reimburse the creators of musical works for the right to thus use them, and a law providing for royalties to composers and others as copyright owners was passed, but the law, while theoretically intended to give the copyright proprietor the exclusive ownership of his copyrighted work, really said he should not have it exclusively, and that if he himself reproduced his copyrighted work in the form of a phonograph record, if he licensed another to so reproduce it, or if he knowingly acquiesced in its reproduction, he should file with the register of copyrights what is called a "notice of user," being an official notice for the official public record of the fact that he had either himself reproduced it, licensed another to reproduce it, or knowingly acquiesced in its reproduction. Failure to file that "notice of user" under the law was stipulated to be a complete defense to any action for infringement in the case of that particular composition.

Then the law went a step further, and said that, having himself reproduced it, licensed its reproduction or acquiesced therein, anyone could reproduce it regardless of the wishes of the copyright owner, by the simple act of writing a letter to the copyright owner and notifying him of an intention to reproduce it and serving a copy of that notice on the register of copyrights. Thus came about a condition wherein any manufacturer of phonograph records, regardless of his financial responsibility, regardless of his honesty, regardless of the cost of his product, was enabled to appropriate the copyrighted property without asking leave of anyone. The law did provide that if required by the copyright owner anyone who produced a number in that manner should account for royalties on or before the 20th of the month succeeding that in which before the manufacture or reproduction occurred, and reproducers could be required to render account in the form of a sworn statement.

The law went a step further, and said no matter how meritorious a work might be, how great the profit of the record manufacturer might be, regardless of any and all circumstances, no musical work should be worth more than 2 cents as royalty for mechanical reproduction, thus immediately leveling all works to the same value, the works of Herbert, a skilled master, technician in the art of music, to be of no more value than those of the merest tyro, or amateur, destroying immediately all the award that should inhere to the man who had spent his life studying the art and who had reached that time when he was enabled to produce works of great value to the public, and said to him, regardless of all this study and all this application, "Your work is worth no more than that of the beginner."

That situation presented the copyright owners with no serious difficulty for a while, in the first place because they were getting something they had never gotten before. Whatever they got from the phonograph record manufacturer was "velvet." Phonograph records were being manufactured in large quantities, and substantial sums were being derived from that source, but as the patents began to expire on the disk records, a constantly increasing number of firms engaged in the manufacture of them, with the result that there came into the business several irresponsible concerns who did not pay royalties, and the difficulties under the law of forcing them to do so are so great that generally litigation costs more than is gained as a result of it; not only that, but the honest manufacturer is subjected to the handicap of competing with the dishonest manufacturer.

We have been harmed these years since 1909 by this condition, but, more, not only did the law say that we must let anyone who wished to use our works do so and not charge more than 2 cents royalty per record, but the law said all the works created up to the time of its enactment, 1909, shall be valueless as far as mechanical reproduction privileges are concerned and in the public domain, and although copyright had been granted prior to the passage of this act of 1909 for a term of 28 years, and renewal for a like period, as far as mechanical privileges were concerned, the copyright was revoked, but all works after the law passed were to enjoy all the rights of protection under it. I submit there never was a more unjust condition imposed upon creators and their copyrights than that. Men in the height of their writing career who might have