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brains? Let us take an imaginary case. We will suppose that an eminent firm publishes a book, say, of reminiscences in two handsome volumes at $7.50, and that, notwithstanding the high price, the public buys four editions of it. That, surely, is a successful book, and one that ought to pay everybody concerned a living profit, and perhaps something more. Does A. B. think he could find out what share of the proceeds the author received and how much the publisher kept for himself, and, if he could, will he let us know?

"A private transaction? Oh, no, A. B., that is one of several mistakes into which you publishers occasionally fall. It is a matter of very considerable public interest. It concerns the community deeply that literature should be encouraged, and should be profitable to the producer of it. The patron on whom the author once in some measure depended has disappeared. The publisher has taken his place. He is, or ought to be, the Maecenas of the nineteenth century. But if Johnson were living now, do you think he would soften the terrible lines which he wrote under the sting of Lord Chesterfield's neglect?

'There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,-
Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail.'

"To substitute publisher for patron would spoil the metre. Would it much affect the sense? The publisher is a man of business, the author is not, or seldom is. Do you think publishers have always borne that in mind? They have drawn their own contracts. Have the interests of the author or of the publisher been most carefully considered in those printed forms, filled up according to circumstances which are presented to the author, all unacquainted as he is with affairs, for him to sign?

"Do not imagine, my dear A. B., that I address these questions to you because I mean to imply that you personally do not conduct your business on the most honourable principles. I am persuaded that you do. But I apprehend you would admit, or perhaps even assert, that among your many rivals in the business of publishing books are to be found some whose treatment of authors is less considerate than your own. I will not say, and perhaps you would not, that any of them are dishonest. I prefer to use a word which was a favourite with Matthew Arnold, and to suggest that in their dealings with the authors on whose productions their own prosperity depends, some of them are sometimes indelicate. You would not,

I think, refuse to go as far as that. You would say, no doubt, there are publishers and publishers, and that not every firm is so scrupulous in its transactions or so high-minded as your own.

VOL. I.

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"If they were, how would you explain, for example, the existence of the Incorporated Society of Authors, and what construction would you put upon some of its recent proceedings? Some of the most respected and popular authors of the day are members of that Society. They have executive committee, and that committee go so far as to declare that there are firms of so-called publishers which exist solely by robbery and cheating. Surely you, and all other publishers of high character and repute, must desire to dissociate yourselves as widely as possible from the scoundrels who profess to carry on the same business that you do. You would agree with the committee, would you not, in their urgent recommendation that authors should send their agreements with publishers for examination by the Society before signing? If there were clauses in those agreements injurious to the author, he would be warned not to sign. If there were none, no harm would be done. You would heartily disapprove, I am sure, every attempt to induce an unwary writer to bind himself not to publish in future with any other house than that which was then to issue a particular book—an attempt which Mr. Besant calls monstrous and indecent. You would, if the Society called upon you for advice, strike out that agreed statement of the cost of production which the less delicate publisher sometimes inserts; and is sometimes careless enough to exaggerate. You would not justify for a moment the refusal of a publisher to submit his books to examination, in order that his statement of the expenses of publication, of the number of copies printed and sold, and other such interesting and vital particulars, might undergo an independent audit. You will rejoice in the appearance of that little treatise on 'The Cost of Production,' and that other now preparing on 'The Different Methods of Publishing'; including, I think, the Half-Profit System, and probably pointing out the method by which the indelicate publisher charges the author full price for advertisements which cost the publishers nothing, and omits to deduct the discount he obtains on the nominal prices of paper, printing and other important items. Mr. Besant,

less scrupulous in his choice of words than our lamented friend Arnold, talks of frauds. You would join him in exposing and repressing and preventing them. In short, you and the Incorporated Society of Authors have so many aims and interests in common that you will perhaps permit me to wonder that you are not already a member of it. For the one person to whom it is of the utmost consequence that the business of publishing should be freed from all stains and all suspicion is the publisher."

C 2

The death of Mr. Fletcher Harper, the senior of the second generation of the brothers, removes another of the American firm which first began to recognize the right of English authors. Perhaps the child is already born in the United States who will, before he finally droops his snow-white head, see a tardy justice sullenly granted. But we must not hold out illusive hopes. The great American public from whom are taken the members of Congress are not exactly composed of gentlemen, nor are they in their public, any more than their private acts, guided by the delicate sense of honour for which we ourselves still try to retain a traditional reverence. In fact we are too apt to suppose that the cultivated, well-bred American cousin we meet here is a specimen-perhaps a little favourableof the ordinary citizen of that big Republic which will perhaps some day be great as well as big.

The attitude taken by the American editors and authors alike on the Copyright Question is everything that can be desired, or, indeed, expected of a body of gentlemen. It must not be thought, therefore, that in publishing Wilkie Collins's views we are in the least reflecting upon our American confrères. One of them writes, "The Copyright Bill was defeated by ignorance misled by greed, but we hope to retrieve our reputation soon. Everybody is hard at work to this end." Wilkie Collins says nothing so severe.

Here is a practical suggestion. Some time ago we poor English had to pay, justly or unjustly, £3,000,000 for the Alabama claims. The claims did not amount to half that money. Suppose the Government of the U.S.A. were to hand over the difference to British authors. The moral effect in the States of such an act of reparation would be enormous, while its material effect in this country would be, to say the least, extremely beneficial to a hard-working and deserving set of men and women.

This is what Mr. Lowell says:-"I have had too long experience of the providential thickness of the human skull, as well as of the eventual success of all reasonable reforms, to be discouraged by the temporary defeat of any measure which I believe to be sound. I am too old to be persuaded by any appearances, however specious, that truth has lost or can lose that divine quality which gives her immortal advantage over error. Foreign right to property in books stands precisely on the same footing as American home right, and the moral wrong of stealing either is equally great. But literary property is at a disadvantage, because, as the appropriation is not open, gross, and palpable, it is not regarded as wrongful. It touches the public conscience more

faintly. In ordinary cases it is the thief, but in this case the thing stolen, that is invisible. To steal is no doubt more immediately profitable than acquisition by the more tedious methods of honesty, but it is nevertheless apt to prove costlier in the long run. How costly our own experiments in larceny have been, only those know who have studied the rise and progress of our literature, which has been forced to grow as virtue is said to do, in spite of weight laid upon it. But, even if this particular form of dishonesty against which we are contending, were always and everywhere commercially profitable, I think the American people are so honest that they may be made to see that profit which is allowed to be legitimate by us alone among all civilised nations, profit, too, which goes wholly into the pockets of a few unscrupulous men, must have something queer about it, something which even a country so rich as ours cannot afford. I have lived to see more than one successful appeal from the unreason of the people's representatives to the reason of the people themselves. I am therefore not to be tired with waiting. It is wearisome to ourselves and to others to go on repeating arguments which we have been using these forty years, and which to us seem so self-evident, but I think it is true that no reformer has ever gained his end who has not first made himself an intolerable bore to the vast majority of his kind."

Out of the fine chorus of indignation which has ascended from the better class of American papers unto the heavens like incense, and, like that fragrant smoke, probably of small practical use, I extract the following from "America," a Chicago paper of great promise.

"The International Copyright Bill has been slaughtered in the House by protectionists after almost all the authors' interests in it had been sacrificed to the manufacturers and mechanics in order to get protectionist votes for the bill. There was very little protection for authors in the bill, and a great deal of protection for publishers and paper-makers and type-setters, and then the bill was knifed by the statesmen who have great respect for manual labourers, who are numerous on election day, and none for authors, whose vote is not a political factor. We Americans look well, do we not, rejecting an International Copyright Law for fear that it would make books dear; that is, after paying for the paper and the type-setting, we flatly refuse to pay anything additional for the author. Our statesmen oppose the bill because they want cheap books for the people. By all means then, let us steal the books as well as the learning, or the imagination contained therein. Let us repeal the law against horse stealing, and we may all ride.

This objection to the International Copyright Bill, that under it book purchasers would have to pay the foreign author of the book something, is the most shameful proposition I have happened to hear in Congress. The interest of the American author is perfectly plain; if the American publisher can get English copy for nothing, he will be proportionately unwilling to buy a copy of an American author. The Congress that proposes to pass the McKinley bill for the additional protection of American manual labour, refuses to pass the International Copyright Bill for the protection of American intellectual labour. It is easy to see what kind of labour we value most highly."

How it strikes the American author, again, is set forth by Mr. J. D. Gilden, in "The Critic."

Says Pirate A. to Victim B. :—

"You've got no reason to complain;
Just see how popular you be ;

Your books is read from Tex. to Maine.
"Were not the foreign stuff 'free grat.'
I'd buy some native fellow's wares ;
Just paste that 'memo.' in your hat,

And don't go puttin' on such airs."

"Aye, true enough my books are read,-
No doubt your imprint makes them sell;
But if on air I must be fed,

Why won't that fare serve you as well?
"Henceforth we both will write for fame,-
I write, you publish, free of charge;
Whatever type proclaims my name,
Yours shall be printed just as large.
"Should profits by some chance accrue,
Deed them forthwith to charity:
I'm rich, of course; and as for you,
What's wealth to popularity ?"

How the present question struck Wilkie Collins is pretty well known. The paper printed in this number by him was recovered by accident, and is here published by permission of his literary executor.

Mr. Edwin Waugh, the poet, is dead. With him dies a pension on the Civil List. It has been proposed to the First Lord of the Treasury that he should transfer this pension to Mr. Ben. Brierly, the well-known Lancashire writer. Mr. W. H. Smith cannot transfer a pension which dies with its recipient. He will, however, consider Mr. Brierly's claims.

The centenary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund took place on May 14th, the Prince of Wales being in the chair. This venerable Society was founded, and still exists, for the purpose of granting doles to distressed authors. It administers a good deal of money in this way every year. It is sad that there should be distressed literary men and it is very good indeed that there should be a fund for their relief. The Prince of Wales, in an excellent speech, dwelt largely on the precarious nature of the literary calling. The occupation of the literary man, he said, is uncertain; his remuneration is not high. There is no flow of promotion for literary men. All this is true indeed; it is said every year at the dinner; never once has it been asked by the Council of this Society why this remuneration of the literary man is so small-why his calling is so uncertain. Well it is small and uncertain because there is no rule arrived at as to the share which he should justly take in the proceeds of his own labours. When that rule is arrived at and put into practice the labours of the Royal Literary Fund will be confined to the relief of the distressed incompetent. It may be asked why our Society does not at once lay down this Golden Rule; well, there are two reasons, of which the first should be enough, viz., (1) that the Society has not yet arrived at the Golden Rule, though it is getting nearer, and (2) that there is no use in laying it down until public opinion is riper. It is a rule well known in legislation that to make laws before the people are ready for them, unless you can carry them out in spite of popular resistance and apathy, is not good government. Let us go on a little longer teaching people the reality of literary property and its sacredness. Let us go on a little longer hammering into the heads of authors their folly and madness in signing agreements by which they ignorantly give themselves away and go into slavery. We shall then have a better chance with our Golden Rule.

Mr. John Morley, who always speaks well on literature, made a very curious slip the other day. He stated that there are not fifty or even twenty men and women who live by authorship. Why, by the writing of novels alone there are at least fifty who make over a thousand a year, let alone a vast number, especially ladies, who live on incomes of a hundred or two made by authorship. As for this great mass we may find at an early opportunity something profitable as well as interesting to say about them and their incomes and their methods of work.

I have written a small pamphlet for the Publication Committee of the Society for the Promotion

of Christian Knowledge. My intention has been. to point out to this body, first, certain elementary laws which govern literary property and its administration, &c., and next, to set forth certain cases which illustrate their own administration of the literary property in their hand. Lastly, I have invited them to draw their own conclusions for themselves as to their own methods. There is no desire to make any money by this pamphlet which is published by Mr. Henry Glaisher in the Strand-and if any member of this Society would like a copy I will send him one on the simple condition that he undertakes to read it and to pass it on to some person interested in the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.

The following explains itself. The ingenious Rand, M'Nally and Company, of Chicago and New York, have added a new terror to literary men. Not only do they steal their works but they alter and mutilate and ruin them. The idea will doubtless be copied and widely adopted in Pirate-land. In a few years, probably, there will be two Rider Haggards in the field, one of Great Britain and the other of that other country, totally unlike each other and of literary reputation entirely different. Let us have patience.

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"A pirated edition of my novel 'Beatrice' has been forwarded to me, bearing your names as its publishers. I find, on lookng through it, that the book has been hacked and hewed till it bears about as much resemblance to the work which left my hand as an oaked felled and barked does to the same tree in leaf.

"Thus, to take one or two examples among many which offer :-Chapter 18 has been reduced to little more than three pages, and from chapters 25 and 26 some 16 pages have been omitted bodily. Nor is this all; another chapter has been misnamed, and in one place, at least, your editor, or, judging from the style, perhaps I should hazard, your compositor, has tried his hand at improving my text -has printed under my name words which I never wrote. In short, the story is turned into a string of disjointed situations, its life, spirit, and meaning are gone, all of which is done without warning to the reader, and, I need hardly add, without reference to the author.

"At first I believed that these evils must have been wrought maliciously, perhaps to save expense in the printer's bill, but reflection shows me that it cannot be. Of course, when the Legislature of your country, alone among those of civilized nations, has hoisted the black flag, not merely by tolerating an established custom but publicly and after full

debate thereby declaring the labour of foreign writers to be the spoil of any who wish to profit by it-it would be Quixotic of you to refuse to sail beneath that flag. But I feel convinced that your native courtesy and kindness would prevent you knowingly from treating an author as I have been treated in this instance. You would remember that in America almost the only good left to an English writer is his chance of a literary reputation, and this, at least, you would strive to protect in every way as some small return for the amusement he affords your readers and the money which he earns for you. Certainly, therefore, you would not send his work willingly from your press in such a questionable shape, and thus expose him to the contempt of critics and the wonder of your reading public.

"This being so, I have to ask, I am sure not in vain, that for the sake of your own fair name, as much as for the sake of mine, you will withdraw from circulation the pages of printed matter which are being passed off, no doubt unwittingly, by you among the American public as a reprint of my novel 'Beatrice,' and that you will give this letter of repudiation every publicity in your power. Awaiting the favour of a reply,

"I am, gentlemen, your obedient servant, "H. RIDER HAGGARD.

"To Messrs. Rand, M'Nally, & Co., Publishers, Chicago and New York."

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Coincidences (see p. 37) are interesting. Here is one sent me by a correspondent from the North. The editor of a certain paper lately received the scenario of a story submitted for his approbation. He liked it, and commissioned the author to write it for him. The day after he received the same story, that is, the same plot and the same set of characters distributed in the same way, from another correspondent writing from a different part of England. Therefore one of two things. Either two minds were at the same moment pursuing the same imaginary series of events, or two minds were at the same time cribbing from the same source. One would like to read the scenario. Perhaps it was only a commonplace plot such as one may read in any penny novelette. There is another explanation possible. One lady at least there is among us who adds to her income by the sale of plots for stories. There may be more than one plot inventor among us, and he or she may have sold the same plot twice over, a thing which has happened once or twice in the buying and selling of sermons.

THE EDITOR.

"THOU SHALT NOT STEAL:"

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE COPYRIGHT QUESTION. Addressed to an American friend by

You

WILKIE COLLINS.

OU were taking leave of me the other day, Colonel, when I received from the United States a copy of a pirated edition of one of my books. I threw it into the waste-paper basket with an expression of opinion which a little startled you. As we shook hands at parting, you said, "When you are cool, my friend, I should like to be made acquainted with your sentiments on the copyright question." I am cool now, and here are my sentiments.

I shall ask permission to begin by looking back to the early history of your own family. The fact is, that I wish to interest you personally in the otherwise unattractive subject on which I am about to write.

I.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, one of your ancestors, voyaging with the illustrious Hendrick Hudson, got leave of absence from the ship and took a walk on Manhattan Island, in the days before the Dutch settlement. He was possessed, as I have heard you say, of great ability in the mechanical arts. Among the articles of personal property which he had about him was a handsome watch, made by himself, and containing special improvements of his own invention.

The good man sat down to rest and look about him at a pleasant and pastoral spot-now occupied, it may be interesting to you to know, by a publishing house in the city of New York. Having thoroughly enjoyed the cool breeze and the bright view, he took out his watch to see how the time was passing. At the same moment, an Iroquois chief-whose name has, I regret to say, escaped my memory-passed that way, accompanied by a suitable train of followers. He observed the handsome watch; snatched it out of the stranger's hand; and, then and there, put it into the Indian substitute for a pocket-the name of which, after repeated efforts, I find myself unable to spell.

Your ancestor, a man of exemplary presence of mind, counted the number of the chief's followers; perceived that resistance on his single part would be a wilful casting away of his own valuable life; and wisely decided on trying the effect of calm remonstrance.

"Why do you take my watch away from me, sir?" he asked.

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Your ancestor said that he was not satisfied. "The thing you have taken from me,” he said, “is the product of my own invention and my own handiwork. It is MY watch."

The Indian touched his substitute for a pocket. "Pardon me," he replied, "it is mine."

Your ancestor began to lose his temper; he reiterated his assertion. "I say my watch is my lawful property."

The noble savage reasoned with him. "Possibly your watch is protected in your country," he said. "It is not protected in mine."

"And therefore you steal it?"

"And therefore I steal it."

"On what moral grounds, sir, can you defend an act of theft ?"

The chief smiled. "I defend it on practical grounds. There is no watch-right treaty, sir, between my country and yours."

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You and I, Colonel, are resolved to look this copyright question fairly in the face. Suppose we look at it from the historical point of view to begin with. The Dutch emigrants settled on Manhattan Island about two hundred and fifty years ago. They might have pirated the Island on the ground that it was not protected by treaty. But they were loth to commit an act of theft; they asked the Indians to mention their price. The Indians mentioned twenty-four dollars. The noble Dutchmen paid, and a very good price, too, for a bit of uncultivated ground, with permission to move your Wigwam" to the neighbouring Continent.

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In due course of time arose the Dutch City of New Amsterdam. Civilization made its appearance on Manhattan Island; and with civilization

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