Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/474

458 A. Yes.

Q. (Chairman). Then on the grounds that you have explained, you think the system would become before long wholly inoperative?

A. Not wholly inoperative, I think: inoperative for good, not inoperative for evil. In the course of this early phase to be passed through, in which houses issued rival editions against each other and got into this state of warfare, it would happen that the weaker would go to the wall: the smaller publishers would not be able to stand in the fight with the larger publishers, and they would tend to fail. And further, although treaties of peace would be eventually reached between the more powerful publishers, who would be afraid of each other, and dare not issue rival editions of each other's books, there would be no such feeling on the part of large publishers toward small publishers. If a small publisher happened to issue a successful book, a larger publisher would have no fear in issuing a rival edition of that. Hence, therefore, the tendency would be for the small publishers to be ruined from having their successful books taken away from them. But that would not be the only tendency: there would be a secondary tendency working the same way. For, after this fighting had gone on a year or two, it would become notorious among authors that if they published their books with small publishers they would be in danger of rival editions, in case of success, being issued by large publishers; but that, contrariwise, if they published with large publishers they would be in no danger of rival editions. Hence they would desert the small publishers; and in a double way the small publishers would lose their business. We should progress toward a monopoly of a few large houses; and the power which such have already of dictating terms to authors would become still greater.

Q. And if I understand you rightly, the power would be not only to dictate terms to authors, but of price to the public?

A. Yes, they would be able to combine. When you got a small number of publishers, and they could agree to a system of terms, the public would be powerless against them, and authors would be powerless against them.

Q. Then, in your opinion, is there any way by which works could be cheapened by legislative enactment?

A. There is one way, and that a way in principle exactly the reverse of that which is contended for in this measure; namely, the extension of copyright. I do not mean the extension in time; I mean the extension in area. On this point I am happy to say there appears to be agreement between the two sides. From the evidence which I have read I gather that it is proposed along with this limitation of copyright in time to extend copyright in area. I do not altogether understand the theory which, while it ignores an author's equitable claim to the product of his brain-work in respect of duration, insists upon the equity of his claim to that product of his brain-work, as extending not only to