except to have that written so that we can get into this foreign copyright union. Let them write it. If you can get Mr. Putnam to say he is willing to have Mr. Woll write that, let Mr. Woll himself write it and put it in. We have not any particular interest in that.

We have not any interest in this thing Mr. Putnam brought up and in a number of these things which he brought up.

This bill was written by a man who knows more about copyrights and the actual working of it than probably anybody in the country. We fought with these different interests for years; for 12 years we have been trying to get them together and we could not do it. Now, we have written a bill that is frankly an author's bill.

Mr. REID. Would you give the name of a person who knows more about copyright probably than anybody in the country?

Mr. BUTLER. Mr. Solberg. There are some lawyers who are specialists who may know more than Mr. Solberg, but we have found his knowledge is remarkable. We asked him to write a bill that could be used. We read this bill; we passed on it in our meetings, and we asked to have it presented here, and Congressman Perkins kindly did so.

Anything that may come up to you gentlemen during the course of these sessions of yours that seems to be fair we will accept as authors. There is nothing we are afraid will fall down if you make a few changes. You are rational men and we are rational men. As a matter of fact, the authors live by their brains; their brains are all they have got; and if they can not come to men who have brains and accept a fair deal it is a dickens of a world.

I just want to end up by saying this: This is historical and it is awfully important. I have a story here called Pigs is Pigs, and, as you know, that is about all I ever wrote that anybody can remember from one day to the next. [Laughter.] That story was printed in a magazine and then as a book, and then Doubleday-Page wrote me one day and said, "We have an offer for Pigs is Pigs for motionpicture production," and I wrote them, "Go ahead and sell it"; and a little later they sent me the reply and they said, "Inclosed please find check for $25 in payment for motion-picture rights of Pigs is Pigs. This seems to be about what is being paid at this time.' So that is what I got, $25.

Mr. BLOOM. What date and year was that? Have you still got the $25?

Mr. BUTLER. No; that was spent long ago, I am sorry. But that must have been about 8 or 9 years ago.

I received this $25. And a couple of days ago a friend came to me and said-I do not know whether it was true-but he wanted to get up a new motion picture using Pigs is Pigs, and the Vitagraph Co., who had secured the rights, and he said they wanted $10,000 for that picture an increase from $25 to $10,000.

The reason we only got $25 for our things at that time was because nobody knew who owned them. When Doubleday-Page offered me $25 for half of that motion-picture right, I was getting $25 absolute velvet. Anything back of that time I do not know who owns. None of you authors know who owns your stuff back of that time, because the copyright thing is so involved.

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I had a letter dated May 16, 1907, from Paul R. Reynolds, my agent, and he said I have written to Forbin about the translation of Pigs is Pigs. I asked him what he would offer for it-that was May 16. On June 4, he said, "I have a second letter from Victor Forbin, who wishes to translate Pigs is Pigs. Both letters were rather indefinite. In his letter he says "The magazine which I shall translate will pay you royalty. I have written if he wanted simply French serial rights, that we would sell for $100."

Here is a magazine called "Riant" meaning laughing, published in France, published a couple of months after that, in which, under the name of the Slave Rule is published a picture of Forbin's translation of Pigs is Pigs, with original translation done by that well know French artist Zeux of whom he had never heard. [Laughter.] And for that Forbin never deigned to send me anything. Why should he? There was no international copyright. To go and collect a hundred dollars from him would cost me three hundred or four hundred. So nobody ever got anything from that.

What we ask is something like an international copyright, so that when we write a thing it will be copyrighted all over the world and it will be worth while for me to go in that foreign business.

Mr. Perkins, I don't know whether you know it, but American books on Western life sell wonderfully in Germany. For instance, Rex Beach and Kerwood and those people are selling more and more all the time.

I have constant sale for my short stores that have been published in America in English. They don't pay much, about $50 for rights. There is no market in Continental Europe anywhere for translated stories, simply because we can not go over there and give a right. They can steal, but it is not worth while to go over with a book or play because they can have it for nothing. Therefore, it does not pay our agents to open that market. And I tell you if we can get this bill through you will find you will open a market over there for American material that will be the best advertising this country ever had, because I will swear we never had an ambassador anywhere in the world who was equal to Mark Twain, and we will have Mark Twains who will have their works over there and they will be published.

That will open a big market for American material.

We organized this Authors' League. We found that there was a theory that the owner of the copyright owned the copyright. Nothing was further from the truth. About that time we began to be interested in who did own the other rights, because motionpicture stuff began to be valuable. You could get $25 for Pigs is Pigs. We went to work and tried to sell some of these rights, and we could not sell them because they said, "You don't own it." A case came up in regard to a play that was made from a story published in the Smart Set, and known as "Dam LaSalle," Dam LaSalle being the name of a man. This LaSalle case came up in the United States circuit court of appeals, and the decision was that there can be only one copyright in a thing; you can not copyright a story 12 times or 5 times. You can only copyright it once. That seems proper. Well, I sell a story to a magazine and the magazine buys from me the first American serial rights. There can be only one copyright in that thing; consequently, the only thing

that can be copyrighted are the first American serial rights; all the other rights belong to anybody else who wants to take it. That is the dictum in that court, and it has never been controverted.

That is why we want a bill that will give us a knowledge of who has the ownership of all the rights under copyright; in other words, you permit me to have the copyright in a thing I write. I can give, sell, or lease all the other rights. You always know that I have the basic right in those things. Why shouldn't that be? I sell, for instance, to you the first American serial rights. The assignment has to be registered in Washington. Anybody wanting to know anything about all the rights or that particular right will look at it in Washington. If it is not registered there as transferred, I still own all the rights. If you are registered as the man who has received the transfer rights, they know you own the right.

That is all we want. We are not out to skin anybody. We want to let everybody live. We don't want anything in this bill that is not fair to everybody.

The difficulty has been so far that it is hard to get these different interests together. The librarians want the books in free; the publishers do not want the librarians to have them free. It must be that gentlemen of your acumen can see that those things ought to be fixed. I only ask you to take into consideration these different things that are desired, and as long as they are fair, as long as you can give us the basic right of the author in his copyright and permit us to go into the Berne convention, so we can be with all the other nations of the world, except China and Russia, that is all we ask. I thank you very much for your attention.

Mr. VESTAL. I move that the committee do now recess until 1.30 o'clock this afternoon.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(Thereupon, at 12.40 o'clock p. m. the committee recessed until 1.30 o'clock this afternoon.)

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

Mr. BLOOM. Mr. Chairman, I would like to suggest that if there are people here who desire to be heard before the committee, whether they be affiliated with some of the organizations or appearing in person, that they kindly make their requests known to the chairman. so that the proper time can be allotted to them either now or later in the afternoon or at some other hearing.

Is there anyone in the audience who would like to be heard, whether you are representing any organization or yourself individually?

Mr. HESS. The Association of Motion Picture Distributors desires to be heard in opposition.

Mr. LOWELL. The Artists' Guild desire to be heard in favor of the bill.

Mr. BLOOM. Individuals can be heard as well as anyone representing organizations.

Mr. RANEY. The American Library Association, likewise speaking for numerous educational organizations, desires to be heard in favor of the measure.

Mr. VESTAL. I suggest that we proceed, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Very well.

Mr. Buck. Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce as a proponent of this bill Mr. Will Irwin. He is an author, playwright, was correspondent, and one of the most prominent contributors to newspapers and magazines in this country.

I introduce Mr. Will Irwin.

STATEMENT OF MR. WILL IRWIN

Mr. IRWIN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in order to get this thing on the record perhaps I had better state squarely just what the Authors' League is and what it represents. I think Mr. Butler in his admirable defense of our position this morning omitted that.

The Authors' League is the equivalent in this country-and I speak of it as an equivalent because we are new-of the British Society of Authors and of the French society whose English name is equivalent to the Society of Men of Letters.

We are a much newer organization, which was founded in 1912. I was one of the three men who started a small group consisting of Louis Joseph Vance, Owen Johnson, Gelett Burgess, Ellis Parker Butler, whom you heard this morning, and Rupert Hughes; and I and one or two others whose names I can not remember at this moment started it because we realized the ridiculous situation which the business end of our profession was in. We realized the necessity for a great many changes, both affecting publishers and authors, and realized from the very first day when we founded this thing the eventual necessity for a changed copyright bill.

It has grown into an organization having now, at the end of 12 years of existence, 1,800 members. It is a larger organization, perhaps, than its scope and name imply. It includes now four guilds, the Authors' Guild, that is, those who write for the magazines and write books; the Playwrights' Guild, which is a continuation really of the old American Society of Dramatists that comes in under this holding company; the artists, composed of illustrators and painters, and finally, but not of the least importance, the Screen Writers' Guild. If any one should make any list, from any point of view, of what would be considered the most prominent authors, illustrators, painters, dramatists, and screen writers in this country, he would find that perhaps 85 or 90 per cent of them would be members of the Authors' League of America.

The eighteen hundred, however, do not entirely represent that element. They represent the rank and file of the profession, and especially the coming young men and women who need protection most of all.

Mr. Butler, in his admirable speech, perhaps stated one thing wrong this morning. I think it was only a slip of the tongue. He did not state clearly enough, perhaps, the contention on which our whole bill is based. The consideration arising out of the DamLa Salle suit, as I understand the legal principle established, was that copyright belonged to him who first copyrighted it, and the copyright for everything belonged to that person. All rights were in the hands of him who first copyrighted a piece of manuscript.

We started in a day when very few magazine and periodical publishers, who usually are the first publishers of any piece of manuscript in our profession, when even the most ethical of them had certain practices very unfair to the author and when the least ethical could, if they wished, be robbers. I will give you an example, since we are all quoting experiences.

Just before the Authors' League was founded, and this was one of the reasons I started to found the league, I was sent by an American periodical-I will not mention any names; the names are immaterialup to an interior town to write a story of a most interesting politician, one of the most interesting American politicians who had a dazzling and very curious career. I wrote that story, and it happened to be one of those stories in fiction form. While the story was true, it was a sort of a novel. It was published, and nothing particular happened, but a few weeks after the appearance of that article the editor of the magazine was called up by a playwright, who said, "I have seen an article I should like to dramatize; may I?" The editor said, "Surely," and the playwright said, "Will you write me a letter to that effect?" The editor said he would, and he did.

Now, that particular editor was a good friend of mine and I have never blamed him in the least. His action illustrated the haziness of the customs of those times.

A year later I went to the theater and, lo and behold, there was my article, with long passages of my own language in the speeches. A month or two passed, and that show went on the road. The politician, who had not liked this article because it described him coldbloodedly, and that always makes a man angry, had done nothing at first, but he went to the theater and saw this thing and he immediately sued the publication and me for libel, and the dramatist got $15,000 in royalties and I got nothing but a libel suit.

Speaking of personal experiences, let me speak of this condition that existed then and could exist now. My wife, Inez Haynes Irwin, had written a series of popular short stories about the same people for one of the most reputable of American magazines. A year or two after their publication, she happened to learn from a friend who came from the Middle West that she had seen those stories screened, she had seen a film based upon those stories. She wrote to the magazine about it and they said, "Yes; we gave this right to the film company."

Time passed. Often, as you know, they refilm things. Within a year a proposition came up to refilm those stories and the company does not dare do so because the original correspondence in that matter has perished and the man who was the editor of that magazine is dead and another man who was there can not remember anything about it, and nobody knows who has the copyright.

Those things were happening continually when we started this thing.

Now, under that dam law-and I speak of the double meaning intentionally-under that dam decision there was only one thing we could do, and it was to appeal to what was the enlightened commerical interests of the publishers. They would not want to oppose us as a body, and that was the only thing we could do. So, year by year fighting each by each, we have brought about, with the best American periodical publishers, a trade custom of handing us back