STATEMENT OF MR. ORSON LOWELL

Mr. LOWELL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I want to say just a few words about the Artists' Guild, which is the artists' department of the Authors' Guild.

The guild was formed and came into the league about four years ago. It was formerly outside of the league, but we found that our problems were so identical with those of the league that we joined and became a department of that organization. We have a membership of about 400-392 or something like that-illustrators, composed of those who illustrate magazine text, of advertising artists, poster artists, cartoonists, fashion artists, and all that sort of thing.

Even at the risk of repeating some of the names that Mr. Connelly read to you, I should like to have you know thet ype of membership we have. Most of the people whose names I shall read to you have been members of the organization since it was started.

Charles Dana Gibson,, James Montgomery Flagg, Frederick Gruger, Charles E. Chambers, N. C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, William Meade Prince, Dean Cornwell.

Among the designers of advertising posters are Edward Penfield, Miss Naysa McMien, and Coles Phillips.

Among the decorative artists are W. D. Teague, Edward Edwards, C. B. Fels, F. L. Cooper, and E. A. Wilson.

Among women who design fashions and covers for fashion magazines are Miss Catherine Sturgess, Miss Helen Dryden, and Miss Mary McKinnon.

Of the cartoonists, there are Mr. Clare Briggs, Herbert Johnson, and Albert T. Reid.

Those are only a few of the names out of the 400. I am leaving out a lot of important names that I know of, and what I want to imply is that the great bulk of the illustrations in the magazines of this country and the best of the illustrations in the advertising art/ and of the cartoons is done by members of this Artists' Guild.

If you were to set off an explosion under this group of 400 artists you would cripple American illustration for 10 years. The whole of the Artists' Guild is in back of this bill, and we need it. The thing that causes us a great deal of annoyance is that the copyright for all of these things which we do is in the name of the publisher. In the case of a large series of drawings or a contract for cartoons or anything of that sort you can make it a part of the contract that you are to reserve certain rights, just as Mr. Irwin referred to reserving certain subsidiary rights in matter accepted by the Saturday, Evening Post. That can be done, but those of us who draw for the humorous and satirical papers, especially the younger men, and make single drawings for which he may not get very much-it may be $25 or $50 or $100-may face a situation, as frequently happens, where such a drawing may develop unexpected value in unexpected quarters. They develop a print value, or they syndicate them, or they sell the originals, or something of that sort.

If that copyright should be in the hands of the artist, he could control all this thing very readily, but when it is in the hands of the publisher he can not do so. You have to go to the publisher and ask him for one or more of these rights.

I know all of this from my own experience. I have drawn for the magazines for 30 years. Even when I was on the staff of Life, which was one of the most liberally inclined magazines in the world, we had to fight these things, not because they were playing the game in an unusual manner, but because they were playing it according to the rules in effect at that time. I would make illustrations and presently I would find that the things were being syndicated. They were being sold to the newspapers for republication. Then, when the things could be sold as prints and be suitable for framing there was another source of income to the publisher. Then they published a book of drawings by all of us, the good things in Life for the year, and there was something more. They afterwards sold the drawings, sometimes for advertising purposes, and later they sold the originals. Men in public life often buy, I find, the originals of these drawings. Sometimes political cartoons have a value.

There are four or five or half a dozen values that these drawings can have, but when you go to the publisher to get this thing away from him I always feel that his attitude is that of the philanthropist. He is merely giving you something which was yours all the time, but you could not get it without his permission.

I think that is all I want to say.

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I should like to call upon Mr. Teague, the former president of the guild, to say a few words. He was part of our copyright committee through two or three of our administrations and I am sure he has something worth while to say to you.

STATEMENT OF MR. WALTER D. TEAGUE

Mr. TEAGUE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, as Mr. Lowell has explained to you, we are the artists, the class of artists who are enlisted in the service of business. We are the men who illustrate the magazines and books and advertisements, make the cartoons for the newspapers and do all that vast amount of socalled commercial art work which is essential in the economic organization of to-day.

We are not, as you will see by looking at Mr. Lowell and me, a long-haired crowd. We give the barbers just as much business as nature will allow us to give them. We do not consider ourselves aesthetes in any sense, but I think we also speak, aside from our own organization, for all the artists of the country, because on this matter our views are the same and our problems are the same.

It is very difficult for us, who work in another medium than words, to follow such eloquent proponents of this bill as you have heard to-day, and I am very grateful to Mr. Thomas for having defined so ably this morning and so completely the meaning of art and its function in present day society, as well as its value. We feel that we have a part in that, a function in which we play a very important part in the cultural life of the day. We know we play a very important part in the economic life of the day.

We are not appealing now on any artistic grounds. We are coming here as craftsmen, as laborers. We work with out hands, assisted somewhat by our heads, and we are manual laborers in the eyes of the law in the same sense as any of the men whom Mr. Woll repre30335-251-5

sented this morning are manual laborers, and our chief reason for supporting this bill is that for the first time this bill raises us to the level of other manual laborers. It gives us the same rights to enjoy the fruits of our efforts that the tailor and the shoemaker and the cabinetmaker have.

The shoemaker buys the leather and makes a pair of shoes, and the tailor buys the cloth to make a suit of clothes. They display those articles in their shops, and if a man comes into that shop and steals those articles, the law immediately apprehends that man as a thief and undertakes to punish him and restore the property to its original owner. The law does not say to that tailor or cobbler, "Did you have those shoes or that suit of clothes photographed, and did you send the photograph to the copyright bureau in Washington, accompanied by an application blank and a fee of $1?"

The law does not say, "Did you receive your copyright in due course, and were your shoes or was your suit plainly marked to that effect? Because, if you did not, the thief was not a thief and you have no recourse under the law."

On the other hand, if Mr. Coles Phillips or Mr. Lowell takes a few dollars' worth of art material and paints a picture which is worth thousands of dollars and displays it publicly in a magazine, and if a man with a camera steals that picture and appropriates it to his own use, unless the artist has gone to the trouble to go through all those formalities the law holds he has no rights in his property and can recover no damages. That is manifestly an absurb situation.

Every one knows that no one has a moral right to take Mr. Phillips's painting or Mr. Lowell's drawing and use it without compensating him and without his consent, but the law is in the unfortunate position to-day of condoning a moral offense, what every one recognizes is a moral offense.

In supporting this bill we simply ask to have the law brought into line with the prevailing moral sentiment of the community and the practice of the more reputable publishers and advertisers. It is not a novelty, as has been explained again and again; this is the practice in all the countries which are members of the Berne convention, and has worked successfully for years. It simply means that when an artist produces a work of art, it is his. The minute he signs his name to it, it is his, it is his property the same way that his coat and his watch are his and nobody has any right to take it from him. In fact, it is undoubtedly true that a work of art is much more the property of the artist than any material possession, because he created it, he brought into being something that did not exist before, and it is his.

This anomalous situation results in a great many places and, of course, I am not going to recite them-they are too numerous and too involved but I want to tell you one incident that happened since we came to Washington. One of our young ladies, a very distinguished artist, was looking through some magazines at the hotel table, and she was astonished to find a cover on one of those magazines signed with her name. She recognized the drawing as one which she had presented to a friend as a gift 10 years ago, an early example of her work.

Now, by what device that drawing found its way onto that cover of that magazine we do not know. But there it is, and she has no

recourse. It is an example of her early work which she would not care to have appear to-day. It might very conceivably damage her reputation to some extent, and yet she is helpless.

Mr. REID. How would this bill help that case?

Mr. TEAGUE. This bill provides that when an artist has made a drawing and has signed his name to it, that drawing is his property and the copyright belongs to him. He can only divest himself of that copyright by contract. He can sell the drawing or, to be more exact, the material on which the drawing is placed, without parting with the copyright, and as long as the drawing exists he owns the copyright unless he has parted with it by contract.

Mr. BLOOM. Provided that they gave the drawing away 10 years ago?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes.

Mr. BLOOM. You mean, if you give it away you retain your copyright nevertheless?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes, or you may sell the copyright and retain the drawing under this law.

Mr. REID. Suppose a girl were wearing a ring that you gave her and she gave it to another fellow?

Mr. TEAGUE. Of course, that is not literary property.

Mr. BLOOM. The previous speaker spoke about copyrighting a drawing.

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes.

Mr. BLOOM. At the present time you are privileged to copyright your own drawing, are you not?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes, sir; if we take a photograph of that drawing or have it engraved and take proof of it and send it to Washington with an application blank and pay a dollar fee.

Mr. BLOOM. I know, but you have the same rights to-day to copyright your own material in your own name that the publisher has. have you not?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes, sir.

Mr. BLOOM. So that if you did want to take advantage of the copyright laws that existed to-day, you could copyright your material?

Mr. TEAGUE. You could. You must remember, however, that artists are not business men. They have not, as a rule, even secretaries or assistants. They work entirely alone and with deep concentration on the problems of their work, and it is a manifest injustice to require that an artist should go through all those formalities in order to protect his rights in property that is obviously his from the moment that he creates it.

Mr. BLOOM. Does not the shoemaker have to go through the same process that you would go through? If he designed a pair of shoes like the Coward shoes of New York City, would he not have to copyright that and do the same thing you have to do in order to protect his pair of shoes?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes, sir; but I want to make clear that a man's property in a drawing is not the physical drawing itself, which is not the property of value. You can take a photograph of a drawing, which is quite adequate for your purposes of reproduction. An artist's property is in the arrangement of lines and colors and tones that constitute the picture, not in the material, the canvas and paint.

Mr. BLOOM. In other words, you want the copyright to vest in the author upon the creation of the work-is that your idea?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes, sir; we want the authors' and artists' rights in the work which they do admitted on the same basis.

Mr. BLOOM. Your claim is that the same protection should also go to the others, irrespective of what branch they might fall in; that is, whether it is the author or the composer or the illustrator or anyone else, and as soon as you design or create something and put your name to it, that is your property?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes, sir; and we do not believe that the law should be in the position of condoning theft of valuable property under any circumstances.

Mr. BLOOM. You believe it should be up to the other fellow to find out whether it is your property or not and not for you to establish the fact that it is your property?

Mr. TEAGUE. Surely. You can go along the street out here and see a whole line of automobiles. You would not think of stepping into one of those automobiles and driving it off simply because there was not a placard on it with the owner's name.

Mr. BLOOM. Or, if there is a vacant piece of land, a man has not the right to build a house upon it simply because the name of the owner is not disclosed?

Mr. TEAGUE. The man who wishes to use that property should find the owner and make proper arrangements.

Mr. REI. But you believe that the man who wants to sell that land should have evidence of title somewhere?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes, sir.

Mr. REID. What you want to do, you want to create a drawing and if it turns out to be worth anything you want it, but if it does not you do not want to be troubled with the copyright office?

Mr. TEAGUE. Here is the question and I assume that you are a member of the committee.

Mr. REID. I happen to be a member of the committee and my name is Reid. The idea that you want to put in this bill is that you will create a drawing and sign your name to it and let it take its course in the world. If it amounts to anything, then you want to claim you are the owner of the copyright and you want to receive pay for that is that correct?

Mr. TEAGUE. Certainly.

Mr. REID. But in order to get that privilege, you do not care to go to the trouble of putting your name on it and sending it down to the copyright office?"

Mr. TEAGUE. We believe it should not be necessary to do that. Mr. REID. You do not want to do it?

Mr. REID. You could have the same rights when you did that. This young lady, if she had sent the drawing to the copyright office, would have been protected?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes, sir.

Mr. REID. Even 10 years?
Mr. TEAGUE. Yes, sir.

Mr. REID. And she would still have common law copyright? Mr. TEAGUE. That is quite right, but you are putting the American artist at a disadvantage. You are requiring of him something