Letters on International Copyright Part 3

"Reference to general principles for rules of immediate action on the part of those actually engaged in the dispatch of business, must, from the delay which it necessarily occasions, come to be regarded as a worse evil than action which is at variance with principle altogether."

Demand tends to procure supply. Destroy the demand, and the supply will cease. Science, whether natural or social, is not in demand in Great Britain, and hence the diminution of supply. We have here the secret of literary and scientific decline, so obvious to all who study English books or journals, or read the speeches of English statesmen. Empiricism prevails everywhere, and there is a universal disposition to avoid the study of principles. The "cheap labor" system, which it is the object of the whole British policy to establish, cannot be defended on principle, and therefore principles are avoided. Centralization, cheap labor, and enslavement of the body and the mind, travel always in company, and with each step of their progress there is an increasing tendency towards the acc.u.mulation of power in the hands of men who should be statesmen, the difficulties of whose positions forbid, however, that they should refer to scientific principles for their government. Action must be had, and immediate action in opposition to principle is preferable to delay; and hence it is that real statesmen are "shunned as an impediment to public business." The greater the necessity for statesmanship, the more must statesmen be avoided. The nearer the ship is brought to the shoal, the more carefully must her captain avoid any reference to the chart. That such is the practice of those charged with the direction of the affairs of England, and such the philosophy of those who control her journals, is obvious to all who study the proceedings of the one or the teachings of the other. From year to year the ship becomes more difficult of management, and there is increasing difficulty in finding responsible men to take the helm. Such are the effects upon mind that have resulted from that "destruction of nationalities" required for the perfection of the British system of centralization.

England is fast becoming one great shop, and traders have, in general, neither time nor disposition to cultivate literature. The little proprietors disappear, and the day laborers who succeed them can neither educate their children nor purchase books. The great proprietor is an absentee, and he has little time for either literature or science. From year to year the population of the kingdom becomes more and more divided into two great cla.s.ses; the very poor, with whom food and raiment require all the proceeds of labor, and the very rich who prosper by the cheap labor system, and therefore eschew the study of principles. With the one cla.s.s, books are an unattainable luxury, while with the other the absence of leisure prevents the growth of desire for their purchase. The sale is, therefore, small; and hence it is that authors are badly paid. In strong contrast with the limited sale of English books at home, is the great extent of sale here, as shown in the following facts: Of the octavo edition of the "Modern British Essayists," there have been sold in five years no less than 80,000 volumes. Of Macaulay's "Miscellanies," 3 vols.

12mo., the sale has amounted to 60,000 volumes. Of Miss Aguilar's writings, the sale, in two years, has been 100,000 volumes. Of Murray's "Encyclopedia of Geography," more than 50,000 volumes have been sold, and of McCulloch's "Commercial Dictionary," 10,000 volumes. Of Alexander Smith's poems, the sale, in a few months, has reached 10,000 copies. The sale of Mr. Thackeray's works has been quadruple that of England, and that of the works of Mr. d.i.c.kens counts almost by millions of volumes. Of "Bleak House," in all its various forms--in newspapers, magazines, and volumes--it has already amounted to several hundred thousands of copies.

Of Bulwer's last novel, since it was completed, the sale has, I am told, exceeded 35,000. Of Thiers's "French Revolution and Consulate," there have been sold 32,000, and of Montagu's edition of Lord Bacon's works 4,000 copies.

If the sales of books were as great in England as they are here, English authors would be abundantly paid. In reply it will be said their works are cheap here because we pay no copyright. For payment of the authors, however, a very small sum would be required, if the whole people of England could afford, as they should be able to do, to purchase books. A contribution of a shilling per head would give, as has been shown, a sum of almost eight millions of dollars, sufficient to pay to fifteen hundred salaries nearly equal to those of our Secretaries of State.

Centralization, however, destroys the market for books, and the sale is, therefore, small; and the few successful writers owe their fortunes to the collection of large contributions made among a small number of readers; while the ma.s.s of authors live on, as did poor Tom Hood, from day to day, with scarcely a hope of improvement in their condition.

Sixty years since, Great Britain was a wealthy country, abounding in libraries and universities, and giving to the world some of the best, and best paid, writers of the age. At that time the people of this country were but four millions, and they were poor, while unprovided with either books or libraries. Since then they have grown to twenty-six millions, millions of whom have been emigrants, in general arriving here with nothing but the clothing on their backs. These poor men have had every thing to create for themselves--farms, roads, houses, libraries, schools, and colleges; and yet, poor as they have been, they furnish now a demand for the princ.i.p.al products of English mind greater than is found at home. If we can make such a market, why cannot they? If they had such a market, would it not pay their authors to the full extent of their merits?

Unquestionably it would; and if they see fit to pursue a system tending to cheapen the services of the laborer in the field, in the workshop, and at the desk, there is no more reason for calling upon the people of this country to make up their deficiencies towards those who contribute to their pleasure or instruction by writing books, than there would be in asking us to aid in supporting the hundreds of thousands of day laborers, their wives and children, whom the same system condemns, unpitied, to the workhouse.

But, it will be asked, is it right that we should read the works of Macaulay, d.i.c.kens, and others, without compensation to the authors? In answer, it may be said, that we give them precisely what their own countrymen have given to their Dalton, Davy, Wollaston, Franklin, Parry, and the thousands of others who have furnished the bodies of which books are composed--and more than we ourselves give to the men among us engaged in cultivating science--fame. This, it will be said, is an unsubstantial return; yet Byron deemed it quite sufficient when he first saw an American edition of his works, coming, as it seemed to him, "from posterity." Miss Bremer found no small reward for her labors in knowing the high regard in which she was held; and it was no small payment when, even in the wilds of the West, she met with numerous persons who would gladly have her travel free of charge, because of the delight she had afforded them. Miss Carlen tells her readers that "of one triumph" she was proud. "It was," she says, "when I held in my hand, for the first time, one of my works, translated and published in America. My eyes filled with tears. The bright dreams of youth again pa.s.sed before me. Ye Americans had planted the seed, and ye also approved of the fruit!" This is the feeling of a writer that cultivates literature with some object in view other than mere profit. It differs entirely from that of English authors, because in England, more than in any other country, book-making is a trade, carried on exclusively with a view to profit; and hence it is that the character of English books so much declines.

But is it really true that foreign authors derive no pecuniary advantage from the republication of their books in this country? It is not. Mr.

Macaulay has admitted that much of his reputation, and of the sale of his books at home, had been a consequence of his reputation here, where his Essays were first reprinted. At the moment of writing this, I have met with a notice of his speeches, first collected here, from which the following is an extract:--

"We owe much to America. Not content with charming us with the works of her native genius, she teaches us also to appreciate our own. She steps in between the timidity of a British author, and the fastidiousness of the British public, and by using her' good offices' brings both parties to a friendly understanding."--_Morning Chronicle_.

If the people of England are largely indebted to America for being made acquainted with the merits of their authors, are not these latter also indebted to America for much of their pecuniary reward? Undoubtedly they are. Mr. Macaulay owes much of his fortune to American publishers, readers, and critics; and such is the case to perhaps a greater extent with Mr. Carlyle, whose papers were first collected here, and their merits thus made known to his countrymen. Lamb's papers of "Elia" were first collected here. It is to the diligence of an American publisher that De Quincey owes the publication of a complete edition of his works, now to be followed by a similar one in England. The papers of Professor Wilson owe their separate republication to American booksellers. The value of Mr.

Thackeray's copyrights has been greatly increased by his reception here.

So has it been with Mr. d.i.c.kens. All of those persons profit largely by their fame abroad, while the men who contribute to the extension of knowledge by the publication of facts and ideas never reap profit from their publication abroad, and are rarely permitted to acquire even fame.

G.o.dfrey died poor. The merchants of England gave no fortune to his children, and Hadley stole his fame. The people of that country, who travel in steam-vessels, have given to the family of Fulton no pecuniary reward, while her writers have uniformly endeavored to deprive him of the reputation which const.i.tuted almost the sole inheritance of his family.

The whole people of Europe are profiting by the discovery of chloroform; but who inquires what has become of the family of its unfortunate discoverer? n.o.body! The people of England profit largely by the discoveries of Fourcroy, Berzelius, and many other of the continental philosophers; but do those who manufacture cheap cloth, or those who wear it, contribute to the support of the families of those philosophers? Did they contribute to their support while alive? Certainly not. To do so would have been in opposition to the idea that the real contributors to knowledge should be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for the gentlemen who dress up their facts and ideas in an attractive form and place them before the world in the form of cloth or books.

We are largely indebted to the labors of literary men, and they should be well paid, but their claims to pecuniary reward have been much exaggerated, because they have held the pen and have had always a high degree of belief in their own deserts. Their right in the books they publish is precisely similar to, and no greater than, that of the man who culls the flowers and arranges the bouquets; and, when that is provided for, their books are ent.i.tled to become common property. English authors are already secured in a monopoly for forty-two years among a body of people so large that a contribution of a shilling a head would enable each and all of them to live in luxury; and if British policy prevents their countrymen from paying them, it is to the British Parliament they should look for redress, and not to our Executive. When they shall awaken to the fact that "cheap labor" with the spade, the plough, and the loom, brings with it necessarily "cheap labor" with the pen, they will become opponents, and cease to be advocates of the system under which they suffer. All that, in the mean time, we can say to them is, that we protect our own authors by giving them a monopoly of our own immense and rapidly growing market, and that if they choose to come and live among us we will grant them the same protection. We may now look to the condition of our own literary men.

LETTER V.

Our system is based upon an idea directly the reverse of the one on which rests the English system--that of decentralization; and we may now study its effects as shown in the development of literary tendencies and in the reward of authors.

Centralization tends towards taxing the people for building up great inst.i.tutions at a distance from those who pay the taxes; decentralization towards leaving to the people to tax themselves for the support of common and high schools in their immediate neighborhood. The first tends towards placing the man who has instruction to sell at a distance from those who need to buy it; while the other tends towards bringing the teacher to the immediate vicinity of the scholars, and thus diminishing the cost of education. The effects of the latter are seen in the fact that the new States, no less than the old ones, are engaged in an effort to enable all, without distinction of s.e.x or fortune, to obtain the instruction needful for enabling them to become consumers of books, and customers to the men who produce them. Ma.s.sachusetts exhibits to the world 182,000 scholars in her public schools; New York, 778,000 in the public ones, and 75,000 in the private ones; and Iowa and Wisconsin are laying the foundation of a system that will enable them, at a future day, to do as much. Boston taxes herself $365,000 for purposes of education, while Philadelphia expends more than half a million for the same purposes, and exhibits 50,000 children in her public schools. Here we have, at once, a great demand for instructors, offering a premium on intellectual effort, and its effect is seen in the numerous a.s.sociations of teachers, each anxious to confer with the others in regard to improvement in the modes of education. School libraries are needed for the children, and already those of New York exhibit about a million and a half of volumes. Books of a higher cla.s.s are required for the teachers, and here is created another demand leading to the preparation of new and improved books by the teachers themselves. The scholars enter life and next we find numerous apprentices' libraries and mercantile libraries, producing farther demand for books, and aiding in providing reward for those to whom the world is indebted for them.

Everybody must learn to read and write, and everybody _must_ therefore have books; and to this universality of demand it is due that the sale of those required for early education is so immense. Of the works of Peter Parley it counts by millions; but if we take his three historical books (price 75 cents each) alone, we find that it amounts to between half a million and a million of volumes. Of Goodrich's United States it has been a quarter of a million. Of Morse's Geography and Atlas (50 cents) the sale is said to be no less than 70,000 per annum. Of Abbott's histories the sale is said to have already been more than 400,000, while of Emerson's Arithmetic and Reader it counts almost by millions. Of Mitch.e.l.l's several geographies it is 400,000 a year.

In other branches of education the same state of things is seen to exist.

Of the Boston Academy's collection of sacred music the sale has exceeded 600,000; and the aggregate sale of five books by the same author has probably exceeded a million, at a dollar per volume. Leaving the common schools we come to the high schools and colleges, of which latter the names of no less than 120 are given in the American Almanac. Here again we have decentralization, and its effect is to bring within reach of almost the whole people a higher degree of education than could be afforded by the common schools. The problem to be solved is, as stated by a recent and most enlightened traveller, "How are citizens to be made thinking beings in the greatest numbers?" Its solution is found in making of the educational fabric a great pyramid, of which the common schools form the base and the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute the apex, the intermediate places being filled with high schools, lyceums, and colleges of various descriptions, fitted to the powers and the means of those who need instruction. All these make, of course, demand for books, and hence it is that the sale of Anthon's series of cla.s.sics (averaging $1) amounts, as I am told, to certainly not less than 50,000 volumes per annum, while of the "Cla.s.sical Dictionary" of the same author ($4) not less than thirty thousand have been sold. Of Liddell and Scott's "Greek Lexicon" ($5), edited by Prof.

Drisler, the sale has been not less than 25,000, and probably much larger.

Of Webster's 4to. "Dictionary" ($6) it has been, I am a.s.sured, 60,000, and perhaps even 80,000; and of the royal 8vo. one ($3.50), 250,000. Of Bolmar's French school books not less than 150,00 volumes have been sold.

The number of books used in the higher schools--text-books in philosophy, chemistry, and other branches of science--is exceedingly great, and it would be easy to produce numbers of which the sale is from five to ten thousand per annum; but to do so would occupy too much s.p.a.ce, and I must content myself with the few facts already given in regard to this department of literature.

Decentralization, or local self-government, tends thus to place the whole people in a condition to read newspapers, while the same cause tends to produce those local interests which give interest to the public journals, and induce men to purchase them. Hence it is that their number is so large. The census of 1850 gives it at 2,625; and the increase since that time has been very great. The total number of papers printed can scarcely be under 600,000,000, which would give almost 24 for every person, old and young, black and white, male and female, in the Union. But recently the newspaper press of the United Kingdom was said to require about 160,000 reams of paper, which would give about 75,000,000 of papers, or two and a half per head.

The number of daily papers was returned at 350, but it has greatly increased, and must now exceed four hundred. Chicago, which then was a small town, rejoices now in no less than 24 periodicals, seven of which are daily, and five of them of the largest size. At St. Louis, which but a few years since was on the extreme borders of civilization, we find several, and one of these has grown from a little sheet of 8 by 12 inches to the largest size, yielding to its proprietors $50,000 per annum, while Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham are still compelled to depend upon their tri-weekly sheets. St. Louis itself furnishes the type, and Louisville furnishes the paper. Everywhere, the increase in size is greater than that in the number of newspapers, and the increase of ability in both the city and country press, greater than in either number or size.

These things are necessary consequences of that decentralization which builds school-houses and provides teachers, where centralization raises armies and provides generals. The schools enable young men to read, think, and write, and the local newspaper is always at hand in which to publish.

Beginning thus with the daily or weekly journal, the youth of talent makes his way gradually to the monthly or quarterly magazine, and ultimately to the independent book.

Examine where we may through the newspaper press, there is seen the activity which always accompanies the knowledge that men _can rise_ in the world _if they will_; but this is particularly obvious in the daily press of cities, whose efforts to obtain information, and whose exertions to lay it before the public, are without a parallel. Centralization, like that of the London "Times," furnishes its readers with brief paragraphs of telegraphic news, where decentralization gives columns. The New York "Tribune" furnishes, for two cents, better papers than are given in London for ten, and it scatters them over the country by hundreds of thousands.

Decentralization is educating the whole mind of the country, and it is to this it is due that the American farmer is furnished with machines which are, according to the London "Times," "about twice as light in draught as the lightest of English machines of the same description, doing as much, if not more work than the best of them, and with much less power; dressing the grain, which they do not, and which can be profitably disposed of at one half, or at least one third less money than its British rivals"--and is thus enabled to purchase books. Centralization, on the other hand, furnishes the English farmer, according to the same authority, "with machines strong and dear enough to rob him of all future improvements, and tremendously heavy, either to work or to draw;" and thus deprives him of all power to educate his children, or to purchase for himself either books or newspapers.

Religious decentralization exerts also a powerful influence on the arrangements for imparting that instruction which provides purchasers for books. The Methodist Society, with its gigantic operations; the Presbyterian Board of Publication; the Baptist a.s.sociation; the Sunday-school, and other societies, are all incessantly at work creating readers. The effect of all these efforts for the dissemination of cheap knowledge is shown in the first instance in the number of semi-monthly, monthly, and quarterly journals, representing every shade of politics and religion, and every department of literature and science.

The number of these returned to the census was 175; but that must, I think, have been even then much below the truth. Since then it has been much increased. Of two of them, Putnam's and Harper's, the first exclusively original, and the latter about two thirds so, the sale is about two millions of numbers per annum; while of three others, published in Philadelphia, it is about a million. Cheap as are these journals, at twenty-five cents each, the sum total of the price paid for them by the consumers is about $700,000. The quant.i.ty of paper required for a single one of them is about 16,000 reams of double medium, being one tenth as much as has recently been given as the consumption of the whole newspaper press of Great Britain and Ireland. Every pursuit in life, and almost every shade of opinion, has its periodical. A single city in Western New York furnishes no less than four agricultural and horticultural journals, one of them published weekly, with a circulation of 15,000, and the others, monthly, with a joint circulation of 25,000. The "Merchants'

Magazine," which set the example for the one now published in London, has a circulation of 3,500. The "Bankers' Magazine" also set the example recently followed in England. Medicine and Law have their numerous and well supported journals; and Dental Surgery alone has five, one of which has a circulation of 5,000 copies, while all Europe has but two, and those of very inferior character.[1] North, south, east, and west, the periodical press is collecting the opinions of all our people, while centralization is gradually limiting the expression of opinion, in England, to those who live in and near London. Upon this extensive base of cheap domestic literature rests that portion of the fabric composed of reproduction of foreign books, the quant.i.ties of some of which were given in my last. The proportion which these bear to American books has been thus given for the six months ending on the 30th of June last:

Republications 169 Original 522

691

[Footnote 1: It is a remarkable fact that there should be in this country no less than four Colleges of Dental Surgery, while all Europe presents not even a single one.]

Of these last, 17 were original translations.

We see, thus, that the proportion of domestic to foreign products is already more than three to one. How the sale of the latter compares with that of the former, will be seen by the following facts in relation to books of almost all sizes, prices, and kinds; some of which have been furnished by the publishers themselves, whilst others are derived from gentlemen connected with the trade whose means of information are such as warrant entire reliance upon their statements.

Of all American authors, those of school-books excepted, there is no one of whose books so many have been circulated as those of Mr. Irving. Prior to the publication of the edition recently issued by Mr. Putnam, the sale had amounted to some hundreds of thousands; and yet of that edition, selling at $1.25 per volume, it has already amounted to 144,000 vols. Of "Uncle Tom," the sale has amounted to 295,000 copies, partly in one, and partly in two volumes, and the total number of volumes amounts probably to about 450,000.

_Price per vol._ _Volumes._

Of the two works of Miss Warner, Queechy, and the Wide, Wide World, the price and sale have been. $ 88 104,000

Fern Leaves, by f.a.n.n.y Fern, in six months. 1 25 45,000

Reveries of a Bachelor, and other books, by Ike Marvel. 1 25 70,000

Alderbrook, by f.a.n.n.y Forester, 3 vols. 50 33,000

Northup's Twelve Years a Slave 1 00 20,000

Novels of Mrs. Hentz, in three years 63 93,000

Major Jones' Courtship and Travels 50 31,000

Salad for the Solitary, by a new author, in five months 1 25 5,000

Headley's Napoleon and his Marshals, Washington and his Generals, and other works. 1 25 200,000

Stephen's Travels in Egypt and Greece. 87 80,000

" " Yucatan and Central America 2 50 60,000