If you should run across Mr. Kennan--[George Kennan, who had graphically pictured the fearful conditions of Siberian exile.]--please ask him to come over and give some readings. I will take good care of him.
ALEXANDER III.
144--Collect.
CONSTANTINOPLE, February.
DR. MARK TWAIN, Washington.
Great Scott, no! By the beard of the Prophet, no! How can you ask such a thing of me? I am a man of family. I cannot take chances, like other people. I cannot let a literature come in here which teaches that a man's wife is as good as the man himself. Such a doctrine cannot do any particular harm, of course, where the man has only one wife, for then it is a dead-level between them, and there is no humiliating inequality, and no resulting disorder; but you take an extremely married person, like me, and go to teaching that his wife is 964 times as good as he is, and what's hell to that harem, dear friend? I never saw such a fool as you. Do not mind that expression; I already regret it, and would replace it with a softer one if I could do it without debauching the truth. I beseech you, do not pass that bill. Roberts College is quite all the American product we can stand just now. On top of that, do you want to send us a flood of freedom-shrieking literature which we can't edit the poison out of, but must let it go among our people just as it is? My friend, we should be a republic inside of ten years.
ABDUL II.
III
MARK TWAIN'S LAST SUGGESTION ON COPYRIGHT
A MEMORIAL RESPECTFULLY TENDERED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
(Prepared early in 1909 at the suggestion of Mr. Champ Clack but not offered. A bill adding fourteen years to the copyright period was passed about this time.)
The Policy of Congress:--Nineteen or twenty years ago James Russell Lowell, George Haven Putnam, and the under signed appeared before the Senate Committee on Patents in the interest of Copyright. Up to that time, as explained by Senator Platt, of Connecticut, the policy of Congress had been to limit the life of a copyright by a term of years, with one definite end in view, and only one--to wit, that after an author had been permitted to enjoy for a reasonable length of time the income from literary property created by his hand and brain the property should then be transferred "to the public" as a free gift. That is still the policy of Congress to-day.
The Purpose in View:--The purpose in view was clear: to so reduce the price of the book as to bring it within the reach of all purses, and spread it among the millions who had not been able to buy it while it was still under the protection of copyright.
The Purpose Defeated:--This purpose has always been defeated. That is to say, that while the death of a copyright has sometimes reduced the price of a book by a half for a while, and in some cases by even more, it has never reduced it vastly, nor accomplished any reduction that was permanent and secure.
The Reason:--The reason is simple: Congress has never made a reduction compulsory. Congress was convinced that the removal of the author's royalty and the book's consequent (or at least probable) dispersal among several competing publishers would make the book cheap by force of the competition. It was an error. It has not turned out so. The reason is, a publisher cannot find profit in an exceedingly cheap edition if he must divide the market with competitors.
Proposed Remedy:--The natural remedy would seem to be, amended law requiring the issue of cheap editions.
Copyright Extension:--I think the remedy could be accomplished in the following way, without injury to author or publisher, and with extreme advantage to the public: by an amendment to the existing law providing as follows--to wit: that at any time between the beginning of a book's forty-first year and the ending of its forty-second the owner of the copyright may extend its life thirty years by issuing and placing on sale an edition of the book at one-tenth the price of the cheapest edition hitherto issued at any time during the ten immediately preceding years. This extension to lapse and become null and void if at any time during the thirty years he shall fail during the space of three consecutive months to furnish the ten per cent.