New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-07-17
COPYRIGHT NOT A MONOPOLY


PROPERTY or SOLITARY CLASS OF woRKMEN
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. OF THE PUBLIC IN REGARD
TO THE RIGHTS OF AUTHORs-A HUNDRED AND
FIFTY POUNDS TO FIFTY THAT COPYRIGHT 70
NOT MONOPOLY.
To the Editor OF TIE Tribune.
| SIR: Those who do not bestow sympathy have no
right to ask it. But, If a man for years has been
quick TO feel and Jealous to relieve his neighbours
wrongs, he has earned right to expose his own
grefs and solicit redress. BY the same rule, should
n class that has openly felt and tried to cure the
wrongs Of others be deeply wr0nged itself that class
has a strong claim to be heard. For the public and
the State to turn deaf would be ungrateful;
and also impotic; it would be bre ch of the
| mutual compact that cements society, and tend TO
discourage tho public virtue of that worthy class
and turn its hearts milk TO gall.
Now the class "authors' may be said to rain SYM
pathy That class has produced the great Apostle Of
Sympathy in tli, ago and many of us writer's follow
in his steps, though we cannot keep up with his
stride In the Last fifty years legislation and public
opinion have purgcd the nation of many unjust and
cruel things; but who began the cureI In most
cases it can be traced to the writer's pen and his sim
pular power and habit of sympathizing with zen
whose hard case not his own. Accordingly, in
France and some other countries this meritonous
and kindly class is profoundly respected, and its in
dustry protected as thoroughly any other work
mans industry. But in Great Britain and her colo
nies, and her great ohoot. the class is personally
UNDERMINED and its property too often rillagcd, as
! if il was the production Of an outlaw or a beaver.
The notorious fOible of authors is dsunon; hut our
wrongs are bitter that they have at last driven us
in spite of our bcseting infirmity, into public
league for protection and they drive me to
your columns for sanctuary. L ask leave to talk
common sense, common justice, common humanity,
plain Arithmetic, and plain English, to the Anglo
Saxon race, about the property of authors, theme
which has hitherto been rendered unntelligible to
that race by bad English, technical phrases romantic
pcttifoggng. cant, equivOques, false summing.
direct les roundabout sentences. pOySylables, and
Bosh. Do not fear that will abuse the public pa
thence with sentimental grievances. l have lived
long enough that each condition of life has ITS
| drawbacks, and class must howl whenever the
shoe pinches or the world would be a kennel sadly
sonorous in the minor key. will jast observe, but
in cheerful spirit, that in France the sacred word
Academy means what it meant OF old, lofty as
| semblagc of writers and thinkers, with whom
Princes are proud to mingle; and that in
| England the sacred name is taken from writer's
| and thinkers, and bestowed with jocular bias
phemy upon q company of painters and engravers
most of them bad ones; that the great Apostle OF
sympathy, when dead, is buried by reclamation In
Westminster Abbey, but is not thought worthy OF
a peerage while lie lives; yet banker is, who can
show no title to glory but lot of moneys that what
puny honors a semi-barbarous but exceeding merry.
state bestows on the fine arts, are given in direct
ratio to their branlassness. Music number one.
Painting number two. Fiction, the King OF the tne
arts, number nothing. That authors pay the Queens
taxes and the parochia rates, and yet are compelled
to pay special and unjust tax 20 public Libraries,
while painters. on the contrary are allowed TO tax
the public full $4,000 a year for cave
to come into tho publics own shop. built by
the public, and there buy the painters pictures All
| these are AngloSaXon humOrs, that rouse the con-
tempt of the Latin races but they cannot starye
single author and his family. So we leave them to
advancing civilization, political changes, AMI tho
ridicule of Europe.
AUTHORS UNDER A CURSE.
But insecurity of property is curse no class can
endure nor is bound to endure 1t a relic of Bar
barism. Every nation has groaned under it at some
period: but while il lasted, it destroyed happiness;
il made fighting and bloOdshed habit, and criminal
retaliation form of justice Insecurity OF property
saIs public and private morality it corupts alike
the honest and the dishonest 1t eggs on the thief.
and justiies the paged proprietor in stealing all
round, since in him theft is but rctribution Under
this horrible there still groans solitary class
| of honest productive workmen, the Anglo-Saxon
author. by which word | mean the writer, who re-
ceives no wages, and therefore bis production be-
comes his property, and his sole means of subsst-
ence. To make his condition clear to plain men l
| will place him in row with other productive work.
men, and show the difference.
l. His own brother the Anglo-Saxon writer for
| wages, is never robbed of shilling lie has the
| good luck not to be protected by feeble statutes
| hut by the law of the land at home and abroad
| g His first cousin the LatinO-Cetic author has
his property made secure by the common law of his
nation and efficient statutes, criminal as well az
| civil.
| 3. The painter, the cabinotmaker, tho fisherman.
| the basketmaker, and every other Anglo-SaXon
workman who uses his own or open materials, and
receiving no wages, acquires the production, has that
production secured to him forever by the common
law with criminal as well as civil remedies.
NO REMEDY AGAINST PIRACY
| Only the Ango-Saxon author has no remedy
! against piracy under the criminal law, and feeble
| remedies by statute, which, as shall show are
sometimes turned from feeble to null by the misn
terpreatons of Judges hostile Through error to the
snrit and intention of the statute. The result of this
mess is that the British authors property Is paged
nj home ten times 0ftenor than any other productive
worllnaas property; that in Australia he Is robbed.
though his rights are not yet, publicly disputed;
! that in Canada he is picked out AS the one Britlsh
subject TO be half 0utawed and that he is fully and
formally outlawcd in the United States, though the
British writer for wages is not outlawed there nor
| the British mechanical inventor nor The British
printers-these artisans paid for printing III tho
United states British authors production-nor the
British actor ne delivers in NewlOrk for live times
~ many dollars as his performance IL worth those
lines which the British author has created with i've
/ N..,fa