Pay of American Authors

       Table of Contents

      1.

      “WE confess that we have never been able to see distinctly how the want of the International Law operation against our own writers.”—Ex. Paper.

      How we rob foreign authors, and how we argue in our legislative halls that it is an economical thing for us to pick the foreign pocket, are points too well understood to need discussion—but there are still found individuals who ask, innocently enough, in what manner the want of the International Law affects the pecuniary interest of the native American. The man who asks the question should first write a book or a magazine article, and then offer it to a publisher for sale.

      The publisher’s answer to the offer will be at the same time the practical reply to the general query.

      He will say—“My dear sir, you are a man of genius; and I am willing to admit, even, if you think proper, that you are a man of higher genius than—than—any one you have fancy to name. But, if I pay one dollar for your book, I am impliedly acknowledging that you are not only a man of greater genius than—shall we say Dickens?—but that you, who have never published a line, are more popular than he. For, observe! I can get Dickens’s works without the dollar. It is little better than piracy, I know; but custom sanctions it, and, therefore, I do not feel called upon to blush very particularly when I commit it. At all events, I prefer to blush a little, and save my dollar. I must, therefore, decline having anything to do with your book, for the present; but let me recommend you to Mr. A., or the house of H.—they may, possibly, be able to serve you.”

      The most momentous evil, however—an evil not the less momentous, because hitherto inconsidered—arising from the want of an International Copy-right Law, is the bitter sense of wrong aroused in the hearts of all literary men—is the keen contempt, and profound disgust which the whole Moral Force—which the whole Active Mind of the world cannot help entertaining, even if it would, against the sole region which refuses to protect it, or respect it—against the sole form of government, which not only robs it upon the highway, but justifies the robbery as a convenient and commendable thing, and glories in it when cleverly done.

      2.

      We said a few words yesterday on the general effect of our copy-right laws, or rather of our want of an international law, in depressing our literature by rendering compensations for it an impossible thing. We repeat that we said only a few words—a very few; but the true difficulty in treating a subject such as this is to say little enough. It should never be overloaded, and so mystified with words. No author—no litterateur who has a due sense of his own dignity, or of the dignity of the cause, will condescend to discuss it on any other ground than that of the broad and obvious Right. What, so far as concerns him (and common sense,) has Expediency to do with the question whether he shall or shall not be insulted and plundered? All that remains for him is resent the insult and take amends, at his first opportunity, for the plunder. Why, indeed, should he suppose that argument is at all pertinent in reply to sophistry so unadulterated—to Euphuism so pure? Expediency!—that it is expedient to do wrong is not merely a contradiction in terms but in fact. What nation has ever yet found it politic to inflict, for the sake of a seeming advantage, however general, avowed and continuous injury to even the humblest of her individuals? The moral evil of the natural law violated, will and must infinitely outweigh, in the end, any direct advantages that may, suppositiously or really, be obtained. But what if the individual thus openly injured by not humble? Should our legislators say to any body of our artizans—“It is expedient that you perish, one and all; for we fancy that in your death there will be a richer life to the nation as a whole”—let this be said plainly in our national halls, and the cheeks of the nation would forthwith tingle with shame—shame not because of the wrong, but of the power of that body of artizans to whom was intended the wrong. And of how much less influence are our literary men? One thing is certain—the institutions are not safe which persist in insulting them.

      3 The Magazines.

      The impossibility, in general, of getting pay from the booksellers for the copyright of books, has driven nearly all the American literateurs to Magazines contribution. There are few names of eminence in cis-Atlantic letters which are not occasionally seen, in starting capitals, in the content-table of one or more of our Monthlies:—the Quarterlies are anonymous, and for no better reason than that the British Quarterlies have been anonymous before them. Who, to-day, is so weak as to value an anonymous opinion and, unluckily, our reviews are for the most part either disingenuous essays concocted from the material of the book reviewed, or summaries of sheer opinion. Besides, who shall undertake to determine whether an anonymous criticism is or is not written by the author of the work criticised; or, if not precisely this, then through his instrumentality, or at his dictation?

      But to our sheep:—Not long ago we observed, in the Democratic Review, an essay on “American Criticism” in which we were startled by the assertion that the contributions in “Graham” and “Godey” were without exception, trash. We quote from memory, but are sure of the sense of the passage. Now an assertion of this kind is “mere pride and arrogance, and the evil way, and the froward mouth.” it will not do to maintain, even in the choicest phraseology, that the writings of such persons as Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Child, Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Stephens, Mr. Seba Smith, Mrs. Ellet, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Hale, Miss Leslie, Miss Sedgwick, Fanny Kemble, “Fanny Forrester,” Cooper, Paulding, Simms, Kennedy, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Halleck, Bryant, Lowell, Hoffman, Mathews, Duyckinck, Tuckerman, Grattan, and so forth—it will not do, we say, to maintain, even in the pages of the Democratic Review, that the contributions of these writers are trash. And we have merely glanced over the long list in our mind—there are numerous other names equally eminent which no doubt we have omitted. Such are the “regular contributors” to “Graham,” to “Godey,” and to “The Columbian,”—the three principal three-dollar Magazines.

      4 Synopsis of the International Copy-Right Question.

      A day or two since we spoke of the pay afforded our literary men by the publishers of Magazines. These gentlemen may have every inclination to be liberal; but what can they well do in the face of all the periodical literature of Europe, reprinted here at no father cost than that of the mechanical execution? Any American, for eight dollars, may receive any four of the British periodicals for a year.

      The immediate advantage to our people, so far as the pocket is concerned, is of course sufficiently plain. We get more reading for less money than if the International Law existed; but what we mean to say is, that the more remote disadvantages are of infinitely greater weight. In brief they are these:—First we