right act. For 40 years he was editor of the Century Magazine and he has served as editor in chief for three and a half years of that 40. He is an ex-ambassador to Italy and one of the finest poets in America. I present Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson.

STATEMENT OF MR. ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I consider this the crowning privilege of my life, the opportunity to say a word here in favor of a measure which in my judgment is more. in the interest of the United States of America and of the civilized world at the same time than any other copyright bill that has been passed. I do not except even the bill of 1891 with which I was closely identified as a picket on the firing line, although that measure was in its day one of the greatest demonstrations of the ability of the United States of America to respond to a moral issue that has ever been passed.

I have great faith in the American people; I should have been ashamed to have represented them abroad if I had not. I believe that when their minds, their intelligence, has been fortified by the facts in regard to any measure whatever, their judgment is likely to be that of the highest and most desirable sort. I believe that on any question, after careful consideration, and it takes us a long time to cross a bridge after we get to it; we consider whether the bridge will stand it, what is to be found on the other side, whether we are able to get across or not, and whether we are carrying too large burdens; but when we once decide to go across we go across with a moral fervor as we did in the World War, which is something we may always be proud of.

Now, I come to you to speak primarily in my personal capacity. I do not presume to speak for the American Copyright League as such, because, after it had done its work in assisting in the passage of the great law of 1891, it concluded to remain in abeyance until some emergency should call it forth. That emergency existed in 1909, when I think its influence was of great service, and I believe that emergency exists now. We have not had time, the survivors of the council of that day, to have a meeting, but I believe that by a very large majority, if not by unanimity, the bill which is now presented for your consideration would receive a cordial indorsement. I am speaking also for the dead, for the members of the council who are no longer here to speak for themselves.

Mr. Chairman, it is a dangerous thing to speak for other persons, and it is a dangerous thing particularly to speak for the dead, but when you know, when you have fought and bled in a conflict with your associates and comrades, you may be able to speak with some authority as to what they thought.

I am venturing to read to you very quickly the names of those members of the council-there were 33 in all-who are no longer living. I wish to show you the quality of the moral judgments that went to the great victory of March 3, 1891, in connection with the passage of the copyright bill.

Among the members of the council were:

Mr. Hamilton Wright Mabie, editor of Outlook; Edward Everett Hale, author of "The Man Without a Country"; William Dean

Howells, leader in style of the whole American people in his generation; Thomas Nelson Page, a man known to many of you, of great importance in the literary world and my honored predecessor at Rome; James Whitcomb Riley, poet of the people; Henry M. Alden and E. L. Burlingame, respectively editors of Harper's and Scribner's magazines; Andrew Carnegie; Samuel L. Clemens, an uncompromising advocate of literary property and one of the greatest influences in the passage of that bill; Titus Munson Cohen; Robert Collier, the great preacher; Richard Watson Gilder, my predecessor as editor of the Century Magazine; Victor Herbert, the composer; F. D. Millet, whose heroism on the Titanic will never be forgotten; William Vaughn Moody, the poet; John Muir, the great man of the Pacific coast; and James Frank Perkins, a member of the House of Representatives.

These are men with whose opinions on this general subject involved in this bill I am thoroughly familiar. I know that, independently of the question of importation of books, which has been raised by Mr. Putnam and upon which I do not desire to express an opinion to-day except to say that I believe that all those trade relations could be thoroughly adjusted after the passage of this bill between the English author, the English publisher and the American publisher all those persons favored the following important features of this bill:

First, that we should join the International Copyright Union, and every step of the way that we took in the framing and in the advocacy of the bill of 1891 was directed toward that ultimate object. We knew we should have to compromise, and we did compromise, but we felt that the defects of the bill such as they would establish, would be determined by its operations. That object, a great object before us to-day, the object of this bill, and one thing which will be of great use to our country as well as to other countries, is the joining of the International Copyright Union. This bill is framed for that purpose. It is a forward-looking measure. It gives up nothing that has been accomplished in the interest of literary property or artistic property; and we know, and they knew, that that could not be accomplished except by the abolition of the manufacturing clause.

Now, may I say this, and I should like to have Mr. Woll hear what I have to say respecting the fears of our friends representing the labor unions. You may remember, those of you You may remember, those of you who are familiar with the history of the copyright law, that there could be no agreement as to a bill to be presented which had any chance of passing until consideration had been given to the point of view of the labor unions. This compromise was made and the labor unions were as faithful in their advocacy of the bill after that agreement was made as they were in their opposition to it before the agreement was made. We knew that then the thing to do was to get the people of this country indoctrinated with the idea that there was such thing as literary property. We knew that when the press, which had been very faithful to our cause, had actually come into the operation of this law, they would feel that they would never give up the principle of literary property in which they would have an intensive personal interest.

Now, that manufacturing clause, you will remember, was abolished by the law of 1909. You may be interested to know how that was brought about. In the years between 1891 and 1909, eighteen years, while the bill was under consideration, while the revision of the law was under consideration, I discovered that, after all, our good friends, the labor unions, were getting nothing out of one part of the manufacturing clause. They were getting nothing out of the part of it which applied to books in foreign languages, books of foreign authors in foreign languages. In 18 years only 19 books had been copyrighted. This was because of the difficulties of translation and because of the method of publishing things first in newspapers and magazines in other countries; and meanwhile, as I discovered, Germany had already instituted an inquriy as to what could be done to modify the American copyright law in connection with the manufacturing clause. Retaliation upon us had been threatened. Had Germany taken that step, it would have been followed doubtless by other countries in Europe.

At that time the American publications sent abroad amounted to $2,000,000 a year. I think it was more than that, but I prefer to understate it. I said to my committee, "I believe that the labor union men can be brought to see that they are gaining nothing from the manufacturing clause so far as it relates to books not in the English language. They were skeptical about this, but they said, “If you think you can do anything in that direction, go ahead.

So, armed with my statistics, I asked for an interview with James M. Lynch, president of the International Typographical Union, and I asked him to come to my place, as I was not well. He came and I presented this situation. I said, "Are you willing, for the sake of one book a year, for the sake of the money which you obtain for the manufacture of one book a year, to risk the chance of retaliation by other countries which will deprive you of your $2,000,000 a year of copyrightable work, which work would have to be copyrighted on the other side in order to secure you"?

Mr. Lynch saw the point at once and told me that he was perfectly willing that that part of the manufacturing clause should be abrogated. This was done.

Now, as a matter of fact, since that time the printers and printing trades have had much more work to do in translations from the French than they ever had before.

I think their fears in regard to the continued operation of the manufacturing clause are groundless and, in any event, I think that they should not be allowed to stand in the way of execution of the principle of the law.

Another thing which I know these men would favor is the extension of the term of the copyright 50 years after life. Fifty years is a very small term relatively, when you consider that a man has to leave something to his family, and the only thing an author can leave are his copyrights. He may write a book to-day and die to-morrow. His family has simply 50 years in which to enjoy the returns from his labors. That is something we provided for, and it seems to be admirably just.

Now, of course, I am sure also that they would indorse another feature of the bill, which is the penalty feature. It is the "teeth," so to speak, of the bill. I remember they used to say in Indiana,

where I spent my boyhood, that "every man was born either for or 'agin' the dog law," and when one candidate for office was challenged on the stump, heckled, so to speak some of you gentlemen may know the term-as to whether he was for or agin" the dog law, he replied that he was for the law but "agin" its enforcement.

Now, it is only the penalty clause of this bill that makes it worth while to pass the bill at all. I hope, gentlemen, therefore that you will keep steadily in mind that this bill, drafted as it is by a man not merely distinguished in America as a faithful and wise public servant, but with even a greater foreign reputation as an expert on copyright, that this is a measure which is going to place us on a higher plane with the whole civilized world.

We have not yet realized the full of our duty in regard to literary property. All the fervor of the old campaign of 1891, when Lowell and Longfellow and Holmes and Mark Twain-and I might mention a hundred or a thousand of them-united in appealing to Congress. for this measure; all of that moral fervor will lack something if we do not complete the perfect protection of literary property, which this bill will do.

It was during my brief term as ambassador to Italy that I considered it a part of my duty as well as my pleasure to put before the people of the country to which I was accredited the fine things that America had done-the return of the Boxer indemnity, the plea for the open door in China, and the two retirements from Cuba. Why, when I met English people, even before that, in previous visits to Italy, they said to me, "What? You are going to go out of Cuba? Oh, no; you are not going to get out of Cuba. You never meant to go out of Cuba when you said you would; you ought not to.'

They could not understand, could not conceive, that point of view of the Americans who would keep their promises as we kept ours.

Another thing to our honor is the repeal of the Panama exemption, where after a plausible passage of a bill we saw that we were in danger of violating our own word and on that very basis it was repealed.

The Monroe doctrine itself was something generous and just, and has done us fine service in the opinion of the world.

Now, I say to you in all seriousness, and weigh my words, that the passage of this bill will do as much as any other measure that I know of at the present time to place us on a higher plane than we now hold in matters of this kind among the nations of the world. We must not disregard the public opinion of the world and, more than that, we must not fail to regard the public opinion of our own country. What is it that makes us proud of our country? It is that she is doing great and noble things.

I plead with you not to let the force of this bill be lost in the appeals of commercial advantage.

Mr. Buck. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, thenext speaker for the bill will be an authoress and dramatist of national reputation. She is the author of the Charm School and numerous. other stories, and her novels have been dramatized and also screen versions have been made.

I present Alice Duer Miller, a member of the council of the Authors' League.

STATEMENT OF ALICE DUER MILLER

Mrs. MILLER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I want to call your attention to a very technical and yet very important point to the screen writers, and that is that under our present bill we can not copyright a scenario. Under Mr. Perkins's bill we could.

Now, a scenario, as you probably all know, is a document prepared for the production of a film. It is to the motion picture just what the script is to the theater or the manuscript to the book. It requires a great deal of technical knowledge. It is a large document, of perhaps 100 pages, containing 300 or 400 scenes accurately described, which is put into the hands of the director of motion pictures from which he makes the picture.

To illustrate, when I was coming to the train yesterday, through the Pennsylvania station, I saw a very familiar looking outfit of grinding cameras and kleagle lights, and I saw a motion picture was being taken. Some picture, I do not know whose, had reached that point where they had to take a picture of a girl buying a ticket at the station. It seemed very casual. A very pretty motion-picture actress was buying a ticket, but really somewhere in the station there was a director with a megaphone probably in one hand and a scenario in the other, and that scenario probably was reading:

Scene 101. Long shot of the Pennsylvania station; crowds hurrying to and fro. Helen or Mary, whoever it is, appears timidly in these sets.

Scene 102. Mary approaches the ticket office and offers her money.
Scene 103. Title: "Will 5 cents take me to Washington?"

It is as important, as difficult, as creative as the play, as the story. Now, we have been advised that when that scenario is not an adaption of a book, not an adaptation of a play, but an original scenario, it is not possible to copyright it. Under this bill it would be possible to copyright it.

One other point. Our American films are practically the only films abroad. Almost all the films there are American films. The foreign distributers and the foreign exhibiters get their share of the profits of those, and it is only right that the American author should get his or her small share of it. Under this bill the American writer of screen stories will be protected at home and abroad.

In conclusion, I should like to read a telegram we have received from probably the most celebrated director in the motion-picture field, Mr. Cecil de Mille, the director of the film, The Ten Commandments. It would have been a slip of the tongue to say that Mr. de Mille is the author of The Ten Commandments. Any one who saw him would say it is a great mistake. [Reading:]

Please express to the legislative gentlemen before whom you will appear my complete sympathy with any plan which will more adequately safeguard the interests of those who provide and produce the literature of the book, story, and screen. We of the photoplay have been hampered at times in our artistic development through lack of sufficient protection against those who prey on the successes of others.

Best wishes to your entire group.

Mr. Buck. Mr. Chairman, the next speaker is one of the greatest black and white artists living, and he is the president of the Artists' Guild of the Authors' League of America.

I present Mr. Orson Lowell.