The business of copyright entries and deposits, placed by law in charge of the Librarian of Congress, has slightly increased during the year now closed. There were entered in the office during the calendar year 1878, 15,798 publications of all kinds against 15,758 entries for the calendar year 1877. The copyright fees received and paid into the Treasury amounted to $13,134.50. The year preceding, the aggregate fees received were $13,076; showing an increase of $58.50. The copyrights of the year exhibit the following division as to classes of publications entered at the office : Books.. Musical compositions. Engravings and chromos. 5,632 3.424 3,772 372 269 1,053 1,081 51 131 13 15,798 Year-books, and annual volumes of Serials, 240, or one in every twenty-two; works on Medicine, Surgery, etc., 233, also one in twenty-two; Belles Lettres, Essays, Monographs, 531, onetenth; and miscellaneous publications, 200, or one in twenty six. The total for the year 1878 is 219 in excess of the number registered in 1877, and the increase 'lies chiefly in the theologicai works, where the new books numbered 531 in 1878, as against 485 in 1877; in educational works, which rose to 424 from 329 in 1877—an increase of nearly one hundred, probably due to the growing activity of School Boards and other scholastic agencies; in history and biography, which rose from 241 in 1877 to 312 in 1878; in year-books and annual volumes of serials, which stood at 225 last year year, as compared with 70 in 1877-an increase probably more apparent than real; and in belles lettres, 409 as against 249. The number of new novels and works of fiction registered was almost stationary in the two years, being 447 in 1878 and 446 in 1877. The figures in the new book column of 1878 showed an increase on 1877 in every The deposits of publications to perfect copyclass except in works on art and science, where there was a slight falling off. In the issues of right exhibit the following accessions to the colnew editions the past year showed a decreaselections, under each designation of copyright publications deposited under the law: on every class except in novels and fiction, which rose from 408 in 1877 to 432 in 1878. In the total issues during the various months of the year, November takes the lead with 671 volumes, December follows with 590, October with 522; and the lowest point is reached in August, when the total, both of new books and new editions, was only 290; but this is the only month in which the figures are below 300. It may be added that the full titles of all the volumes thus brought into account have been given in the Publishers' Circular, issued by Messrs. Sampson Low & Co., during the year. LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS' REPORT. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1 WASHINGTON, January 2, 1879. THE undersigned has the honor to submit herewith his annual report, exhibiting the progress of the Library of Congress and the business of the copyright department during the year closing December 31, 1878. The annual enumeration of the books just completed exhibits a gratifying growth in all the collections which go to make up the Library. The additions to the law department have been 3881 volumes, and to the miscellaneous library 17,656 volumes, besides 11,689 pamphlets and 2344 maps and charts. At the date of my last report, January 1, 1878, the whole Library numbered 331,118 volumes and about 110,000 pamphlets. The aggregate increase during theyear has been 21,537 volumes, and swells the aggregate contents of the Library to 352,655 volumes of books, besides about 120000 pamphlets. The accessions of the year have come from the following sources: Designs and drawings. Books Total... Periodicals. Musical compositions.. Total. AINSWORTH R. SPOFFORD, To HON. T. O. Howe, [We have omitted only the annual appeal for more room, which it is to be hoped Congress will at last heed.-ED.] WOODCUTS: CONCERNING THE TAKING OF PROOFS AND PRINTS. II. BY THEO. L. DE VINNE. we know no engraver audacious enough to propose it to a publisher. The question may be asked, Why do engravers make use of a method of taking proofs which cannot be repeated in practical printing? The usual answer of the engraver is that he has a (Reprinted, with the author's permission, from the London right to show his work to the best advantage. Printing Times.) THE Contrast of the cost of proofs with that of prints will be most instructive. This cost is not easily defined by figures, for there are differences in the size of blocks, in the quality of the engraving, and in the method of proving. Some engravers prefer to take proofs with their own hands, rubbing an impression by the aid of an ivory burnisher, cheerfully devoting an hour or more to this work. Others (in New York City) prefer to give their blocks to a professional proof-taker, who does the work on a hand-press, and who, by constant practice and familiarity with the ways of engravers, has acquired great skill in manipulating woodcuts. By many engravers these hand-press proofs are preferred to burnished proofs. They are often smoother and more silvery in tint; but their greatest merit is that they were taken on a press" and this is supposed to imply to the publisher and the printer that what has been done on one press can be done on another. The hand-press proof is offered as an incontestable voucher of the existence of certain merits in the engraving which can be reproduced on the machine press. Fifty cents may be fixed on as a low average in an estimate of the cost of artists' proofs. The price of proofs from large blocks is sometimes three or four times as much. Engravers who value their time would probably rate the average cost of a burnished proof at much more than fifty cents. At this rate, reckoning, as is just, at a uniform price per square inch, the cost of each sheet of 500 square inches of mixed cuts and types, "artistically" printed on a machine-press, would be five dollars. This reckoning is entirely fair; for the labor of inking and manipulating the cuts for an artistic proof increases with increase in the size of form; and if the engraver's and hand-prover's methods are imitated, the cost cannot be greatly diminished when many proofs are taken. Duplicates are never less than half the price of the first proof. If we accept the lowest price named by an expert as the average cost of each artist's proof, this price will be found greater than the price paid for proofs to the most famous printer of etchings or line engravings. In other words, the artist's proof of an engraving on wood costs more, size being equal, than an artist's proof of an engraving on copper or steel. No author or publisher can afford to have a book of illustrations printed by the methods that have been used in taking proofs of the cuts of that book. Here and there a wealthy man might be found who would not grudge the money, but he would not consent to the delay. He may, as is often the case, allow the cuts to be printed together by a separate impression, but he will not pay the cost nor suffer the delay of having them printed one by one, with a special beating and a special washing or wiping of the block before every impression. With some knowledge of fine books and editions, and some acquaintance with the methods of famous printers, we know no book printed by this process: The right, and indeed the duty, of the engraver to take an impression of every block he has engraved in the highest style of the printer's art is not to be questioned. It is but just that he should show to the publisher for whom the block has been cut what he has done in engraving, and what can be done by printing. And he has a right to put the standard very high; to make use of every process known in practical printing. But this right should stop with the legitimate processes of the art. For his own pleasure and guidance in the subsequent cutting of tints he may overload or rub in black in any portion of the block injudiciously cut too light, or he may wipe off the ink on the edges, and change the hard blacks to soft grays, or in any other way he may repair by skilful proving any fault in the cutting. Proofs taken with this purpose are instructive, but they are commendable for this purpose only. The right of an engraver to submit to a publisher a proof of this character as an evidence of his skill in engraving, when its greatest merits have been attained by tricks of printing, is quite another matter. To fill pale parts with black ink, to substitute grays for blacks, to mislead, even by indirection, the publisher to the belief that the brilliant effect of the proof can be reproduced in the presswork of a machinepress-these, surely, do not deserve any prolonged consideration. It is an abuse of language to call an impression made by these and other meretricious processes a proof. Why a proof? It does not truly show the engraver's work on the block; it is not a truthful model of the work that will be done by the pressman; it is, in most cases, only an illustration of what the engraver wishes he had done and has not done; of what he wishes would be, but which he well knows will not be, done. It is, in sad earnest, an exhibition of faith more than of works; for it is fairly covered by the theological definition-"the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" in the block nor in the print. COMMENTS ON BOOKS. " MR. MEREDITH TOWNSEND, one of the editors of the London Spectator, and for fourteen years a resident of India, says: Bayard Taylor's is the only book I ever saw on India in which I found no mistake." "A BOOK," says the Examiner (N. Y.), “which no teacher of English can afford to overlook, is Edwin A. Abbott's How to Parse,' which has recently been republished in this country. Mr. Abbott's ideas about parsing are radically different from those of Lindley Murray and his servile imitators-and to our mind, worthy of general adoption; but whether one accepts them or not, he will find in Mr. Abbott's book a good deal of incidental information and inspiriting suggestion with reference to our mother tongue." World, Post, Express, and Star, besides nine of nearly every important magazine in the country, including the three publications of the Harpers, for which he pretends to publish the prospectus of each of them in his legitimate publication, and in each of his eight papers without circulation (but for which he claims a large circulation).` The prospectus is set up only once, and as the press-work for all the papers is done at the same time, and the form is the same except a change of head, the prospectus of necessity must go through the whole. It is difficult for a person to see how a quarter of a column prospectus in the North Hero Recorder, which has a circulation of 24 copies, can benefit the New York Herald, or at least be worth $10. The same can be said as to the other New York dailies. DEFRAUDING THE PUBLISHERS. obscure newspapers. This plan has also been adopted by the publishers of magazines and (From the Burlington, Vt., Saturday Review, Jan. 18.) the costly reviews and weekly publications. OUR attention was called yesterday by a By this plan the publisher is able to procure prominent business man of this city to a species nine of each of the New York papers, includ of fraud which is being penetrated by a well-ing the New York Herald, Sun, Times, Tribune, known newspaper publisher, not a thousand niles from Burlington, by which not only a large number of the large publishers of the country are being defrauded, but many persons poorer and less able to stand the drain upon them. The modus operandi is as follows: The publisher in question purports to publish a large number of newspapers. On September 28 last the number was nine. These papers are got up on the patent outside plan, the outside of the publication being printed by the New York Newspaper Union. Now as each of these nine publications are precisely alike, there seems to be no especial reason why there should be a different head or title except for the purpose of fraud, which is charged on the streets. Not only are all of these papers alike, but none of them, except at the place where the publisher resides, have even an office. Without an abiding place, without a desk, without a clerk or a chick of a clerk, without any local employé, except a person employed to pick up an item or two, what can be the object of publishing to the world that a newspaper bearing such and such a name is published in such and such a place except it be for a fraudulent purpose? The names of some of these newspapers whose existence is a myth, and which can be but a delusion and a snare, we give below, together with the number of outsides printed for each by the Newspaper Union for September 28, 1878: But the legitimate circulation of these papers is not nearly as great as even the table gives them. By an arrangement with the Newspaper Union, the firm which prints the patent outside, the publisher must send to each of the Union's advertisers a free copy of the paper. This we understand was one week no less than sixteen copies. Subtract sixteen copies from each of these publications and the exchanges, and what is left ? Now for the object. As most of our readers know, the New York and Boston dailies require the publication of a prospectus a certain number of times before they will exchange with But it is not for defrauding such men as James Gordon Bennett, or George Jones, or Whitlaw Reid, or Mr. English, or the heirs of Wm. Cullen Bryant, or John Kelly, or the Harpers, that we make this exposé. They can afford to be occasionally defrauded and suffer no inconvenience, but it is for the advertisers at large. Not long since a number of sewingmachines were obtained in this same way, and a gentleman said to us a few days since that he purchased a $5 book for 75 cents of the pub. lisher of these papers, indicating that something is rotten nearer home than Denmark. The The enormous profit of this manner of publishing newspapers can readily be seen. edition of the North Hero Recorder costs the publisher about 25 cents per week-or about $10 per year, estimating for its customary temporary suspensions. As the publisher has a store where the product of "this splendid advertising medium" with its "large circulation" is sold, it is fair to say that the full subscription price of each of the publications re ceived in exchange is obtained. Add to this a sewing-machine or two, an order for partial pay on an organ and a piano, one for a carriage and the large amount of Burlington advertising put in especially to reach North Hero, and it will not be difficult to figure out at least a $500 income alone. Multiply this by eight and you have the profit of doing this newspaper publishing on credence. There is one view of this subject which we must admit amazes us. There are, as it is well known, a number of publications in the principal cities which profess to be a guide to ad vertisers, and which claim to expose fraud when attempted by the newspaper publishers of the country. In New York there is Rowell's newspaper list, while Pettingill has a similar publication at Boston, and Ayers in Phila delphia. Instead of giving any light to their advertising patrons, their publications whitewash such a fraud by publishing that such papers are published in their different places, and yet a person cannot be found in North Hero, and not a person in St. Albans, who ever saw the paper purporting to be published there, or who knows anything about them. Probably the same can be said of those which are dated from New York State. A DISCUSSION ON INTERNATIONAL to be the cleverest, most practical, and most COPYRIGHT. effective discussion of the subject yet made. Among others present were Mr. A. C. Armstrong, Mr. F. W. Christern, Mr. G. W. Carleton, Rev. B. F. De Costa, and Mr. W. R. Sperry, managing editor of the Evening Post; Capt. John Codman presided. OBITUARY. EDWARD HOPKINS CUSHING. ON the 14th inst., near midnight, Edward Hopkins Cushing died at his home in Houston, Texas. ON Thursday evening, January 30th, Mr. G. P. Putnam read his paper on International Copyright in its Relations to Ethics and Political Economy,"-which we hope to print entire later, before the New York Free Trade Club, at its rooms, 21 West Twenty-fourth Street. Mr. Putnam asserted the right of property in literary production, reviewed the copyright arrangements of other countries, gave a valuable historical summary of the efforts for international copyright made in this country, quoted and answered in a satiric vein the "Phil- Mr. Cushing was born at Royalton, Vt., June adelphia resolutions," showed the present prac- 11, 1829, graduated at Dartmouth College, New tical difficulties in the way of international | Hampshire, in June, 1850, and almost immedicopyright pure and simple, and summarized ately after his collegiate course was finished his own conclusions as follows: went to Texas. As early as September of that year he took up a school at Galveston, and from that time to the end of his life he continued to be a public teacher in Texas, either in the school room, as a journalist, in which profession he long occupied a prominent place, or as an active and intelligent bookseller. taught school at Galveston, and subsequently at Brazoria until 1853, when he took editorial charge of the Columbian Democrat, at Columbia, Brazoria Co.; and three years later he edited and published the Houston Telegraph, which owes to his labors its prominence. Rejecting the suggestion of open publishing, the plan of giving protection only to books of which the type had been set and the printing done in this country, and the authors' proposition to extend the right of copyright without limitation or restriction, we would recommend a measure based upon the suggestion of the British Commission, coupled with one or two of the provisions that have been included in the several American schemes: "1. That the title of the foreign work be registered in the United States simultaneously with its publication abroad. 2. That the work be republished in the United States within six months of its publication abroad. 3. That for a limited term, say ten years, the stipulation shall be made that the republishing be done by an American citizen. 4. That for the same term of years the copyrighted protection be given to those books only that have been printed and bound in this country, the privilege being accorded of importing foreign stereotypes and electrotypes of cuts. 5. That subject to these provisions the foreign author or his assigns shall be accorded the same privileges now conceded to an American author." He At the close of the war he engaged in the book trade in Houston and Galveston, dealing chiefly in school books, and winning for himself the reputation of a patron and promoter of learning and letters. It is said of him that "there is scarcely a scholar in Texas who has not enjoyed his friendship, and not a writer who has not received his hearty and substantial encouragement, and in the entire South the republic of letters did not have a more earnest, active, and able member. In every relation of life Mr. Cushing was distinguished, and, while he was well qualified to be a leader among men, he was none the less a sympathetic and true friend, an entertaining and instructive companion, a sterling man, an excellent citizen, and a Christian gentleman." COMMUNICATIONS. A QUESTION OF UNDERSELLING. A general invitation had been issued to those interested in copyright, and many publishers and literary men took part in the ensuing discussion. Dr. S. I. Prime made a strong appeal, in a humorous vein, in favor of the author's unrestricted right, on the ground of conscience; but he thought not only the House of Representatives but the public opposed international copyright. Mr. Randolph thought the public, when aroused to the question, would be in its favor; the question of copyright would be settled as soon as the reprinting difficulty was settled, and he prophesied that there would be international copyright within five years. Mr. John Elderkin was called on, but responded by calling out Mr. Charlton T. Lewis, who opposed the preceding speakers, and insisted that an author enjoyed his reward in the influence he exerted, and that he could not expect compensation outside his own country. Mr. R. R. Bowker combated this view, but argued that the copyright question could not be settled without due regard to existing tariff and manufacturing The saving is small, but it is on equality with conditions. Mr. Horace White gave it as his profits of the book trade, which all seem to be experience as a journalist that the public were going to other than the members thereof. Webneither in favor nor against international copy-ster's Dictionary, 4to, cannot be brought to this right, being totally uninterested in the subject. place and sold without positive loss at the price Mr. J. Appleton Morgan claimed as his own it costs as a premium with a numerous array of suggestion Mr. W. C. Prime's plan of settling periodicals; the trade in school-books and the matter, by changing the word citizen" in stationery was opened up to the dry-goods our copyright law to person," and supported and other lines, by jobbing Webster's spellthat project. A vote of thanks was passed to ers at same prices to them as to the regular Mr. Putnam, whose paper was said by several | book trade; and if the book trade as a trade has F. Leypoldt, Esq.: [The subscription price of the PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY is $3 plus postage 20 cents. We have no relations with the company named, or with other subscription agencies, authorizing any reduction, and commission is allowed to such only on condition of their holding to our rates. This is a principle which the PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY means to practise as well as preach. If a subscriber prefers to wait for his paper until it can be inclosed in a package from the news agencies, we have, however, no objection to their deducting or to his saving the postage. We do not mail directly in such cases, unless in ignorance of the reduction.] AUTHORS AT WORK. MR. JOHN FISKE proposes to give in Boston, this winter, six lectures on Early American History. The first lecture will treat of the discovery of America; the second of the different social types of colonist, Spanish, French, and English, and their aims; the third of the overthrow of French colonial empire, and rise of the English race to the foremost rank; the fourth of the Puritans and the constitutional questions at issue between the crown and the colonies; the fifth and sixth of the Revolution. BUSINESS NOTES. BANGOR, ME.-The firm of J. T. Bowler & Co., dealers in books, stationery, etc., has been dissolved, and the business will be continued by F. H. Smith. SIOUX FALLS, DAKOTA. - C. A. Natesta, bookseller and stationer, has sold out to T. Russell. TIDIOUTE, PA.-W. R. Dawson succeeds Evans & Dawson, booksellers. WASHINGTON, D. C.-Solomons & Chapman, books and stationery, have dissolved partnership, and James J. Chapman will continue the business. LITERARY AND TRADE NOTES. THE business of the firm of Chas. Scribner's Sons will go on without interruption from the death of Mr. Blair Scribner, as provided by the latter's will, Mr. Chas. Scribner taking the headship of the house. ROBERTS BROTHERS will publish this season a new and revised edition of Rev. J. H. Allen's "Hebrew Men and Times." It is an admirable work in its department of religious history, and, in its revised form, ought to have a large circulation. D. LOTHROP & Co. have nearly ready Miss Yonge's popular and excellent Young Folks' History of England," with many illustrations, forming a very agreeable and inviting introduction to English history. The volume on Rome is in preparation. A. D. F. RANDOLPH & Co. will presently issue the third Old Testament volume of Gray's "Biblical Museum;" "Studies in the Life of Christ," by Principal Fairbairn, a book of pracpleasant pen of Rose Porter, entitled "In the tical theology; and a new story from the Mist." THE American Almanac and Treasury of Facts," edited by A. R. Spofford, has among its many new features articles on the History and Principles of Taxation, Homestead and Exemption Laws in all the States, Facts concerning the Census, Statistics of Coal, the Iron Industries of the United States, a History of the Continental and Confederate Currency, the Budgets of Nations, the World's Stock of Precious Metals, the Insolvent Laws of all the States, Sugar Production, Silver Money and the Paris ConferST. STEPHEN, N. B.-C. H. Smith, book-ence, History of Resumption in England, Vital seller, was burned out in the recent fire at this Statistics of various nations, Cotton Production place. of the United States, etc. OSCEOLA, IOWA.-E. H. Wilson has purchased the book and stationery business of Abram Brubaker. BOOKS WANTED. H. D. CHAPIN, COR. MADISON AND DEARBORN STS., Louis Hennepin Travels. 2 v. in 1, with maps. ROBT. CLARKE & Co., CINCINNATI. Ahn's Italian Grammar.-D'Anver's History of Art. One Year or Two Homes, by Peard. J. FENIMORE, Box 4295, N. Y. Cooper, Afloat and Ashore. Good condition. Townsend G. S., P. O. Box 686, WASHINGTON, D. C. New York, 1850. cheap. JANSEN, MCCLURG & Co., CHICAGO. |