Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/390

 358

COPYRIGHT

Hawley bill, 1885

Chace bill, 1886

only three opposed international copyright. Out of these, twenty-eight advocated international copy- right pure and simple; fourteen favored a manufac- turing clause; the others did not reply on this point. Congress adjourned, however, without taking definite action.

President Arthur, in his message of December, 1884, put himself on record as favoring copyright on the basis of reciprocity. A bill brought forward in the Publishers' Weekly of December 6, 1884, was in- tended by a form admitting of easy amendment, to fa- cilitate the passage of some kind of bill extending the principle of copyright to citizens of foreign countries under limitations set forth in subsequent sections of the bill. The Dorsheimer bill was reintroduced by W. E. English of Indiana, January 5, 1885, and on January 6 Senator Hawley introduced a general bill into the Senate. This latter, which covered all copyright articles, was understood to be favored by the Copyright League; it extended copyright to citi- zens of foreign states, on a basis of reciprocity, for books or other works published after the passage of the bill, by repealing those parts of the Revised Stat- utes confining copyright to "citizens of the United States or residents therein." No action was taken, however, on either the Dorsheimer or the Hawley bill.

In his first annual message, 1885, President Cleve- land referred favorably to the negotiations at Berne, and with the opening of the Forty-ninth Congress two bills were introduced into the Senate, that of Sen- ator Hawley, December 7, 1885, being essentially his bill of the previous year, and that of Senator Chace, January 21, 1886, a new bill, based on a plan put for- ward some years previously by Henry C. Lea, and now supported by the Typographical Unions and other labor organizations. The Hawley bill was on a sim-