enthusiasm, which by its Greek derivation means "the breath of the God."

All inspiration, all emotional quality seems to come from the outside, and our psychologists, if we propose to attend them, have further agreed upon the fact that the progress of an emotion is to express itself in a mental concept and the further tendency is for the concept to detach itself from the emotion and then to control it, to bring up or to subdue it, and at the needed moment to call it up again. Those concepts multiply. Their interchange and association are what we call art; and they find expression in symbols. A man can not think otherwise. A great writer has said that only by the permanency of nature do men think and converse, because if we understand each other and talk even imperfectly it is because a tree is a tree, because a rock is a rock, and because a star is a star, relatively, for us, eternally; our substantives are based upon those, and we form this interchange that we call speech.

We do not know why we are here I am not referring to this committee meeting. [Laughter.] But to this mundane sphere so full of harassment and interruption. If we can judge by the past, we are here for one purpose only, for art; because we know nothing of any other people except by its art. We know Egypt only by its magnificent temples and its Colossi. We know the Greeks only by the Parthenon and drama, and by their sculpture. We know the Romans by the Forum and their columns and the arch. We are sitting in a room where we confess it. There is not a decoration in this room that is not a thousand years older than Christ; all of it Greek, that egg and dart molding, that dental course, the acanthus leaf, the Corinthian pilaster and the columns, all Greek. Not a touch of the Roman, nothing of the arch shown here; all Greek. And that is all we know of them, except through their writings, which is also art.

If you will pardon me, I would like to ask the attention of the committee to a definition of art, and I want to do that because it is a great time saver. It will pay you a hundredfold upon the time I consume in its recital and the telling of its history. There are many definitions of art. Plato says "art is variety in unity." But that is incomplete, because ugliness can be also so defined.

Others down to Zola, who says "Art is nature seen through a temperament," which, of course, is partly true.

We have defined art in the application of our tariff law.

In that connection, some 15 or 18 years ago, a carved marble altar was coming into this country from abroad, and the architect who was importing it called it a "work of art."

The commissioner of customs stopped it as a thing of labor. Such able sculptors as MacMonnies, St. Gaudens, and Ward said it was not a work of art. The sculptor Ruckstull, whom you men will know by his equestrian Hartranft in front of the Pennsylvania capitol, by his Confederate monument in Baltimore, by his Wade Hampton statute in South Carolina, by the Confederate Women's Monument at Columbia, and by a number of other great decorations, especially Solon and one or two figures in the Library of Congress said this altar was a work of art, and he gave a reason for it, and his reason lay in the definition: "Anything made by man, the

intention of which is to express or to communicate an emotion is a work of art." That definition is impregnable.

At that time, although there had been constant controversies before the definition was given, the Commissioner of Customs of New York held that the altar in question was a work of art, and there have been no more disputes. If the intention of the product is to incite an emotion, to convey an emotion, to communicate one-it is a work of art.

The value of work of art for which protection is being asked here, and from which high consideration of its value to the Nation you will be constantly asked to descend upon some question of expedience --the value of the protection of art is not that the author may live, because there are a good many authors who can do other things. I have been self-supporting on top of a freight car, and I could do it again if the age restriction did not run against me. But men won't work if they can not be protected in their produce, and they won't develop if the first effort that they throw off is subject to predatory invasion.

You will be told that since this constitutional clause was written there have been so many discoveries and inventions that the clause is out of date. I remember a radio agent saying that neither motion pictures nor radio was of course contemplated when this was written, and his contention was that he had a right to ride in upon the flank of the author or of the artist. The claim took on the dimension of that of a person who would be excluded from the field if he illegally went in there and cut the grain with a sickle, but would be allowed to come in if he could show he had a McCormick reaper.

These men with whom I am associated will ask you to protect their songs; and you will find there is difficulty in considering the imponderable character of a song.

A song. What is it? There is nothing so slight, there is nothing so evanescent, there is nothing so ephemeral as a song, and yet nothing of such power.

I may not, like Major Putnam, have been addressing this committee for the last 40 years, although it may begin to seem to you that that is the case [laughter] either in its present composition or in its official status, but as a page in the Forty-first Congress I waited upon this committee adequately 55 years ago. That was before some of its most active members were born, or perhaps even contemplated. [Laugher.] And I saw a member, the equal of any man in this room, destroyed by a comic song. He was a man who had been elected to the lower House from Ohio; who had gone away and taken up his residence in New York; who was again elected there, and who was representing New York when he chose to attack Benjamin F. Butler, in what was rather vitriolic language. And when the chairman-I believe the House was then in the Committee of the Whole-was called upon to suppress him, the friends of Butler simply asked that Butler he allowed to reply, and Butler, as you men all know by the history of it, got up on the Republican side of the House and said, "I will reply to the gentleman from New York in the language of every newsboy on the street, "Shoo, fly; don't bother me. [Laughter. That was a popuar comic song.

Sunset Cox was not a very large man, and the refer

ence destroyed him. He never recovered from it; his usefulness in Congress was gone, and his importance at home faded out.

Mr. REID. I am not a candidate for reelection.

Mr. THOMAS. Well, sir, it might not depend entirely upon songs for any desired results, either to elect or debar you. There are other other reasons also irrelevant that I won't enumerate.

The Marseilles built more barricades in France than all the oratory of Victor Hugo.

What did we do with "John Brown's body lies molding in the ground"? What a recruiting thing that was, and the other words to it; the battle hymn of the Republic-"Mine eyes kave seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." And on the other side "Dixie," vibrant, wonderful Dixie, that for four years kept alive the smouldering camp fires of the Confederacy and afterwards sustained its people through all those dark years of carpet-bag domination and negro government; Dixie, which outlived that service and came to the North, and became a favorite there; Dixie, which made every southern banquet memorable and makes some moment of every banquet to-day, and which has passed from revolt and revolution to symbolizing the land of the magnolia and magnanimity.

What are we going to do with the song? A man was wise who said, "Let me write the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws." What did we do with George Cohan's "Over there"? That was created in an inspirational moment when this Nation stood on tiptoe and the drums went down the street; and to-day we are slowly creeping back in the tail end of that procession, having recovered from the vice to which we receded-the vice of materialism, without some of which, of course, we can not live. But let us not forget the emotional appeal, without which we can not advance.

I don't want you statesmen-I don't men you men who have anything of tenderness for particular industries but I want the statesman in each man here that transcends that thing to remember his country and remember if it lives it will be because of the writers of the song. Do not destroy them; don't snuff them out by discouragement. Let them grow. Do not assume the attitude of the boy with his first kitchen garden, who pulls up the growing vegetable each day to see if it has progressed.

I thank you men for your attention. You have got my idea. It is of a very deep and basic principle; and it is the thing that so obliterates these little questions, which I am quite sure you will adequately adjust, that they are hardly to be thought of at this moment. But the big thing is the exclusive right and the encouragement of art.

I thank you, gentlemen, for your kindness. [Applause.]

The CHAIRMAN. It is a quarter after 12; what is the pleasure of the committee? Shall we adjourn until 1 o'clock or half past 1?

Mr. REID. Can we not get the procedure? Are the proponents going ahead, or are we going to intermix?

The CHAIRMAN. That is for the committee to determine.

Mr. REID. Well, all right.

Mr. PERKINS. Pardon me, but Mr. Buck says one gentleman wants to catch the 1 o'clock train. Perhaps after we hear one more speaker we can fix the procedure.

Mr. REID. Who is it this time, now?

Mr. Buck. The next gentleman must leave on the 1 o'clock train. He is ex-president of the Authors' League and on the executive council. He is the author of Pigs is Pigs, Ellis Parker Butler.

The CHAIRMAN. If there is no objection, we will hear him.

STATEMENT OF MR. ELLIS PARKER BUTLER, NEW YORK CITY

Mr. BUTLER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am not going to take long, because I am put on now because I have to catch a train back to New York, which is imperative.

I want to say, first, if you will let me, that it has been a particular pleasure to me here to see George Haven Putnam and Robert Underwood Johnson, who was for years an editor of the Century, and who sits in the front row next to handsome Will Irwin, and were down here with Mark Twain when the copyright bill was introduced many years ago. I am going to ask Mr. Johnson to stand up, if he can, because he is one of the grand old men in copyright matters.

Mr. REID. You talk like Will Riley. [Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson arose.] [Applause.]

Mr. BUTLER. Mr. Chairman, I would give anything I have got, except my twins, I think, not to antagonize labor. I am a darned hard worker myself, and I know what it is to work hard all day laying bricks and things like that, and it touches my heart to see a man like Mr. Woll come up here after he has worked eight hours a day and have his heart broken because we have not conferred with him.

Ten years ago the Authors' League was founded because, we found that the authors alone could not get certain things done that were absolutely just.

As soon as we began to try to get things done, Mr. Chairman, we found that we could not do it on account of the copyright law. Nobody knew who owned anything. I do not know who owns half the stuff I have written, that is, the stuff I wrote in, say, the first eight or nine years of my life. [Laughter.]

We never thought of keeping any track of the copyright; and nobody knows now. If I sold something then to the Sterling Music Co., and the Sterling Music Co. has gone out of business, and the two editors have gone out of business, who is going to tell me whether they bought all the rights or part of the rights. Nobody on this committee can tell.

This bill is not going to take any money from publishers, motionpicture men, Mr. Woll, or anybody else. But it is going to give the authors a chance to use some of these rights they can not use now. It creates a new property, and we feel we have a right to come here and ask you to create a basic bill such as my friends over here are going to tell you about.

We do not give a darn about publishers. Let them have anything they want in this bill. We are satisfied. We have got two things we want: We must be in a position to go into the International Copyright Union, and we must be able to say who owns a thing when written, painted, or photographed. I do not see how anybody can object to that.

Ten years ago we began to thresh this thing out, and as soon as we tried to get a copyright to give us some idea who owned a thing,

what did we get? "No use trying to do that until we get a bill that will be the means of letting you go into the Berne convention and have an International Copyright Union.'

The minute we tried to do that, we found Johnson, Putnam, and Mark Twain when they got this first bill had been obliged to compromise with labor; a perfectly right thing to do. They got a wonderful bill and worked hard. But union labor at that time was not enlightened, and they demanded that all books be printed in America. They put in what was the manufacturing clause. So the first thing we found when we tried to get a new bill through was that we would have to arrange with labor to get the protection of other manufacturers and tariff protection to take the place of printing in America clause.

Then, what happened? We began conferences with labor and those_conferences with labor were all friendly. They have been fine, I will say that. And then that meant conferences with the users of labor, book publishers, and so on. A year ago we went to work and got an agreement with them that was satisfactory to everybody.

Then along came these motion-picture people, who, by God, are the worst pirates, who would sell the teeth out of our heads, if they could.

Mr. HAMMER. I move that that be stricken out of the record. Mr. BUTLER. I move that, too. I think I am getting too mad. I did not mean to say that.

Mr. REID. He just feels it.

[Laughter.]

Mr. BUTLER. Here is a letter dated January 9, 1925, to Mathew Woll, written by Mr. Schuler, secretary of the league, in regard to the new copyright bill:

Yesterday (January 8) I wired you to Chicago as follows: "New authors' copyright bill introduced this week. Hearing called for Tuesday. Asking one week postponement, in order confer with you as to any amendments you may think necessary to protect labor interests. No longer secretary Authors' League, but assisting in copyright matters. Where and when can I meet you? ERIC SCHULER.”

Then, the same day, a letter to Mathew Woll [reading]:

Since writing the inclosed we have received your telegram, and have called up and talked to Congressman Perkins at Washington on the telephone. He says he will have the hearing adjourned to some day during the week beginning January 19, and will advise us in plenty of time of the next date. Thank you for your telegram.

We had asked for this hearing to be postponed so we could confer with Mathew Woll and the other representatives of federated labor, so that we could come to some agreement.

Mr. Chairman, as far as that point is concerned, we have been trying to get in touch with Mr. Woll for days. Mr. Schuler telephoned to him last night, and made an engagement, and sat in the hotel waiting, and Mr. Woll did not come. He was having a dinner with the representative of one of the other interests who will probably oppose this bill, a perfectly right thing for him to do.

There are in this labor question two things: There are employers of labor and there is labor. The Authors' League is willing now-it has always been willing to have labor and employers of labor write that section of this bill themselves. We do not want anything