on quantities purchased, which in regard to schools (who are undoubtedly wholesale buyers, and entitled to concessions) should be the same either from publisher or retailer, so that neither would undersell the other The retailer should get his return either through a direct commission from the publisher or in the difference of rate between the quantities he purchases and the smaller quantity he sells to a particular school. Practically a retailer cannot often get a higher price than that advertised, whether called "trade list" price or what not; the present question is whether the discounts on "tradelist" prices can be somewhat enlarged by cutting down agency expenses. This seems to us the one way to combat the spread of the state supply fashion. We should like to see some one leading house boldly adopt this line of policy and appeal to the retail trade as its agents. Any temporary loss, we believe, would be more than compensated for in the long-run.

And now will the heads of the miscellaneous trade, spurred by the experience of the educa tional trade, exert some foresight? Their dan. ger is from the threatened breaking down of the distributing machinery. Of this, and how to meet it, we shall speak again at another time.

The Postal Bill threatens to suffer in the Senate by various amendments looking toward a return to the old complexity, which are said to have the support of various post-office officials whose thread of life seems to consist in red tape. Meantime the local post-offices and everybody who has to do with the mails are in increasing perplexity-the Department itself being occasionally the victim of its own too stringent rulings. The House bill should pass with no more amendments than are absolutely necessary for the protection of the government's interests.

THE second part of the "American Catalogue" is now in course of delivery, carrying the list through Lennox, more than half the first volume being thus finished; three months each will suffice for the printing of other two parts, so that by the beginning of the fall season the trade will have the body of the work at their command. The issue of the second (subject) volume will be an easier matter, although it will be found of scarcely less practical utility to the trade and of decidedly greater value to libraries, etc. The subscription list has been much extended since the issue of the first part, which has been received with very general satisfaction. We repeat that, as no larger edition than that now provided for can be issued, the type having been distributed as the sheets were printed, those desiring to be certain of copies should send their subscrip

tions promptly. The greater part of the edition has already been subscribed for, in this early canvass, and as yet the European market has not been worked.

THE new bibliographical enterprise, the Index Medicus, is also well under way, and specimen copies of the first monthly number, just issued, may be had by addressing Mr. Leypoldt. It is to be hoped the trade will assist in placing copies of this important index to current medical literature (books and periodical articles) with local physicians; every bookseller who has any medical trade also needs it for himself. The first number is peculiarly valuable for its full list of medical periodicals and transactions published the world over, scheduling about 600 home and foreign. The body of the index is carefully classified by specialties, and the names of the editors, Drs. Billings and Fletcher, give absolute assurance as to the quality of the work.

WE make no apology for giving much space to Mr. Putnam's vigorous paper on copyright, which will run through several issues. Prepared originally for the New York Free Trade Club, it presents certain views with which the trade as a body may not sympathize, in which respects it is to be taken on the writer's responsibility only. We give it complete, and in fact considerably extended, preferring to permit any who desire, to combat Mr. Putnam's views seriatim. It is certainly, on the whole, one of the strongest presentations of the subject ever made. What may be called a "symposium" on copyright, expressing the views of individual publishing houses and authors, which we commence in this number, will, we think, be found a valuable contribution to the subject.

We print in this issue two very suggestive letters opening a new line of investigation for publishers who have no desire to give something for nothing. In fact this whole matter of exchanges and free copies needs to be looked after more carefully than it is in nine out of ten publishing houses. We propose to follow up exposures of this sort so far as we have clues, and we desire any members of the trade or others who have been victimized to write us. Letters should be over their signature; otherwise we cannot fairly be asked to print their statements, but information will be held confidential in its origin when absolutely necessary. No one should hesitate to prosecute a swindler, nor should any one ask another to let him hide behind. We shall of course be careful not to print without warrant, but our columns will always be open to all well-authenticated exposures of fraud.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.—I.

BY GEO. H. PUTNAM.

(Read January 29th, 1878, before the New York Free-Trade Club, and revised by the author for THE PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY.)

THE questions relating to copyright belong naturally to the sphere of political economy. They have to do with the laws governing production, and with the principles regulating supply and demand; and they are directly dependent upon a due determining of the proper functions of legislation, and of the relations which legislation, having for its end the welfare of the community as a whole, ought to bear towards production and trade.

As students of economic science, we recognize the fact that, in all its phases, it is in reality based upon two or three very simple propositions, such as:

Two plus two make four ;
Two from one you can't.

That which a man has created by his own labor is his own, to do what he will with, subject only to his proportionate contribution to the cost of carrying on the organization of the community under the protection of which his labor has been accomplished, and to the single limitation that the results of his labor shall not be used to the detriment of his fellow-men.

It is not in the power of legislators to make or to modify the laws of trade; it is their business to act in accordance with these laws.

Economic science is, then, but the systematizing, on the basis of a few generally accepted principles, of the relations of men as regards their labor and the results of their labor, namely, their property. There is therefore an essential connection between the systems governing all these relations, however varied they may be. Soundness of thought in regard to one group of them leads to soundness of thought about the others.

Interested as we are in the work of bringing the community to a sound and logical standard of economic faith and practice, it is important for us to recognize and to emphasize the essential relations connecting as well the different scientific positions as the various sets of fallacious assumptions. Further, we can hardly lay too much stress upon the absurdity of the oft-repeated dictum that a system may be correct in theory yet pernicious in practice, maintaining, as we do, that where the application of a theory brings failure the result is due either to the unsoundness of the theory or to some blundering in its application.

We claim, also, that with reference to the rights of labor, property, and capital, the freetrader is the true protectionist. It is the freetrader who demands for the laborer the fullest, freest use of the results of his labor, and for the capitalist the widest scope in the employment of his capital; and it is he who asserts that the paternal authority which restricts the workingman in the free exchange of the products of his craft, which limits the directions and the methods for the use of capital, appropriates-or, to speak more strictly, destroys-a portion of the value of the labor and the capital, and prevents the ownership from being real or complete.

Authors are laborers, and their works are, as fully as is the case with any other class of laborers, the results of their own productive faculties and energies.

Copyright is defined by Drone as "the exclusive right of the owner to multiply and to dispose of copies of an intellectual production." It is also used as a synonym for literary property. Regarding literary property, Drone says: There can be no property in a production of the mind unless it is expressed in a definite form of words. But the property is not in the words alone; it is in the intellectual creation, which language is merely a means of expressing and communicating.

Copyright may therefore be said to be the legal recognition of brain-work as property.

It is akin in its nature to patent-right, which is also but the legal recognition of the existence of property in an idea, or a group of ideas, or the form of expression of an idea.

Literary laborers lay claim therefore to the same protection for a full and free enjoyment of the results of their labors as is demanded by those who work with their hands and who are in the strict sense of the term manufacturers. Such enjoyment would include the right to sell their productions in the open market where they pleased and how they pleased, and if this right to a free exchange is restricted within political boundaries, is hampered by artificial obstacles, the author is not the full owner of his material; a portion of its value has been taken away from him. In so far as international copyrights have not been established, this is the position of the author of to-day.

International patent-rights have been recognized and carried into effect much more generally than have copyrights. The patentee of an improved toothpick would be able to secure to-day a wider recognition of his right as a creator than is accorded to the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or of "Adam Bede."

"The existence of literary property," says Drone, "is traced back by record to 1558, when an entry of copies appears in the register of the Company of Stationers of London." Between 1558 and 1710 there was no legislation creating it as property or defining ownership, nor any abridging its perpetuity or restricting its enjoyment. It was understood therefore to owe its existence to common law, and this conclusion, arrived at by the weightiest authorities, remained practically unquestioned until 1774. During this earlier period there were some instances of the recognition of literary property, but the earliest reported case concerning such property occurred in 1666, in which the House of Lords unanimously agreed that "a copyright was a thing acknowledged at common law." A licensing act, passed in Parliament in 1674, and expiring in 1679, prohibited, under pain of forfeiture, the printing of any work without the consent of the owner. But the first act attempting to fully define and protect copyright in Great Britain was that of 1710, known as the 8th of Anne. It was entitled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning," and, declaring that an author should have the sole right of publishing his book, prescribed penalties against any who should infringe that right. Its evident intention was to more clearly establish, and make more easily defensible, the rights of authors, but curiously enough it had for its effect a very material limitation of those rights.

It provided, namely, that copyright should be secured to the author or his assigns for fourteen years, with a privilege of renewal to the author

"That, by the present law, the wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best of authors is tardily rewarded, precisely as a vicious, seditious, or blasphemous writer is summarily punished namely, by the forfeiture of his copyright.

"That your petitioner hath two children, who look up to him not only as the author of the Comic Annual,' but as the author of their being. That the effect of the law as regards an author is virtually to disinherit his next of kin, and cut him off with a book instead of a shilling.

"That your petitioner is very willing to write for posterity on the lowest terms, and would not object to the long credit; but that, when his heir shall apply for payment to posterity, he will be referred back to antiquity.

"That, as a man's hairs belong to his head, so his head should belong to his heirs; whereas, on the contrary, your petitioner hath ascertained, by a nice calculation, that one of his principal copyrights will expire on the same day that his only son should come of age. The very law of nature protests against an unnatural law which compels an author to write for any body's posterity except hi own.

Finally, whereas it has been urged, 'if an author writes for posterity, let him look to posterity for his reward,' your petitioner adopts that very argument, and on its very principle prays for the adoption of the bill introduced by Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, seeing that by the present arrangement posterity is bound to pay everybody or anybody but the true creditor."

In France perpetual copyright was guaranteed from very early times. The Ordinances of Moulines of 1556, the Declaration of Charles IX. in 1571, and the letters patent of Henry III. constituted the ancient legislation on the subject, but the sovereign had a right to refuse the guarantee whenever he thought desirable. In 1761 the Council of State continued to a grandson of La Fontaine the privilege that his grandfather possessed, on condition, however, that he should not assign it to a bookseller. The Revolution of 1789 modified this régime, and now copyright is guaranteed to authors and their widows during their lives, to their children for twenty years; and if they leave no children, to their heirs for ten years only. According to French law, a French subject does not injure his copyright by publishing his work first in a foreign country. No matter where the publication takes place, copyright forthwith accrues in France on his behalf, and on the necessary deposit being effected, its infringement may be proceeded against in a French court. Moreover, a foreigner publishing in France will enjoy the same copyright as a native, and this whether he has previously published in his own or in any other country or not. In Germany and in Austria copyright continues for the author's life and for thirty years after his death. The longest term of copyright is conceded in Italy, where it endures for the life of the author and forty years, with a second term of forty years, during which last any one can publish the work upon paying the royalty to the author or his assigns. The shortest term of copyright ists in Greece, where it endures for but fifteen from publication.

Drone, in his "Law of Copyright," says: "In the United States the authorities have been divided not less than in England regarding the origin and nature of literary property. Indeed, the doctrines there prevalent have ruled our courts. In 1834, in the case of Wheaton vs. Peters, the same question came before the Supreme Court that had been decided by the Court of King's Bench in 1769, and by the House of Lords in 1774-namely, whether copyright in a published work existed by a common law; and if so, whether it had been taken away by statute.

"The court held that the law had been settled in England to the effect that the author had no right in a published work excepting that secured by statute; that there was no common law of the United States, and that the common law as to copyright had not been adopted in, Pennsylvania, in which State the cause of this action arose; and that by the copyright statute of 1790 Congress did not affirm an existing right but created one. The opinion, which was delivered by Justice McLean, was concurred in by three of the judges, and dissented from by two, Justices Thompson and Baldwin, who defended the positions and recalled the arguments of Lord Mansfield and Sir William Blackstone. Justice Baldwin said: Protection is the avowed and real purpose of the act of 1790. There is nothing here admitting the construction that a new right is created. It is a forced and unreasonable interpretation to consider it as restricting or abolishing any pre-existing right.'

Previous to the act of Congress of 1790, acts securing copyright to authors for limited terms had been passed in Connecticut and Massachusetts in 1783, in Virginia in 1785, in New York in 1786, and in other States at later dates. The statute of 1790 gave copyright for fourteen years, with a renewal to the author, if living, of fourteen years further. In 1831 was passed the act already quoted, and in 1870 the regulation went into effect that a printed title of the work copyrighted must be filed with the Librarian of Congress before publication, and two copies of the complete book be delivered within ten days after publication.

In 1874 it was provided that the form of the copyright notice in books should read, "Copyright, 18-, by A. B."

"AMERICAN PUBLISHERS AND ENG. /LISH AUTHORS."

THE pamphlet on " American Publishers and English Authors," by "Stylus," previously announced and just published by Eugene L. Didier, Baltimore, proves to be a diatribe against American publishers as literary pirates, written with as much heat as though the writer had personal grievances as a rejected author to revenge. The point of the pamphlet is that American authors are put at a disadvantage because it is not necessary to pay English authors. Fairly presented, this argument has weight, but the 'prentice-hand of this writer indulges in such absurdities as the assumptions